What is Fitzgeraldesque?
By Maddie Langlinais
Trigger Warnings: racism as shown in Fitzgerald's works, discussion of violent killings
F. Scott Fitzgerald is recognized as one of America's greatest writers. His prose is beautiful and descriptive, filled with exquisite metaphors, but I think the most significant trait to his writing is how he tackles the themes of Social Class and wealth, and how being an elite affect how you perceive the world. Fitzgerald likes to write his rich, upper-class, born-with-a-silver- spoon type characters with a distinct air of effortlessness: having money makes life unbearably easy for these people, and that careless ease is what makes their lifestyles both so aspirational and so destructive.
Usually when the words “careless” and “Fitzgerald” pop up together, people jump straight to The Great Gatsby; and they're right to! The book is filled with examples, from Jordan Baker, heiress and professional golfer who wins her matches by paying off referees, to Tom Buchanan, who had the audacity to have an affair directly under both his wife’s nose and the woman’s husband’s nose. And then of course there’s Tom and Daisy together, moving away from New York and running away from the mess they made over Gatsby, which earned the famous “carelessness” line in the first place (pg. 179). These are the 1%, the top of the food chain, who are so rich that no problem truly shakes them for long. That carelessness is a luxury few can afford, even people who do have the money, like Gatsby.
Gatsby wasn’t born into wealth, instead having to crawl his way from the bottom to the top to get a hold of his fortunes, so even when he’s rich he can never truly be considered one of the “1%”, (firstly because he’s not pedigree, but secondly) because he can't afford to be careless, even at the top. I think my favorite examples of this is the library scene from chapter 3, where the old man, Nick and Jordan see how Gatsby’s set the stage for his party:
[The old man] nodded.
“Absolutely real — have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and — here! Let me show you.”
Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures”.
“See!” He cried triumphantly. “It's a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fellow is a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, 2 didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”
He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.
(The Great Gatsby, pg. 45-46)
Gatsby decorated his house in order to reflect the wealth he has, as a status symbol for how much he’s worth. Where a born-rich host might have used fake books to decorate, Gatsby can’t afford to. Every detail must be perfectly in place for the ‘illusion’ to work: that being, that he belongs in the world of the rich. The problem is that he’s trying too hard, has too much drive and ambition, which is why he was eventually rejected and thrown aside by the old money society.
Another great example of this careless-1% concept is found in The Diamond as Big as The Ritz. The Washingtons are presented as the richest people in the world, and their house sits high up and far away, vaguely Olympus-like in its splendor, isolated from the rest of the world. While the Washingtons sit more on the side of parody and exaggeration compared to other Fitzgerald characters—they own a mountain made of a single, flawless diamond—they are still one of the more terrifying examples. The thing about the Washingtons is that, because they are so rich, they consider themselves above the average human being, but where the Buchanans at least have a measure of human empathy, these people are entirely alienated from any concept of ethics or consequence.
An average person would be horrified to hear that their friends needed to be euthanized every summer, because murder is a horrible thing to do to a person, but the Washington’s are more concerned with how getting rid of their guests affects them or their fortune. When Kismine tells John that he is going to have to die sometime within the week, she's less concerned about his coming death and more concerned with that she’s “ruined the rest of the week” for them both. While one might argue that Kismine has her heart in the right place, her sheltered life has led her to have no realistic sense of priorities, even in the face of danger:
Suddenly the whole portico of the negro quarters cracked asunder, a geyser of flame shot up from under the colonnades, and great fragments of jagged marble were hauled as far as the borders of the lake.
“There go $50,000 worth of slaves,” cried Kismine, “at prewar prices. So few Americans have any respect for property.”
(Fitzgerald: Novels and Stories, 1920-1922. Pg. 945)
At first, you expect her to deliver this line coldly, like she’s bored, but instead she’s genuinely shocked and concerned about the “property damage” (which is worse!). Kismine and the rest of her family are so sheltered and isolated from average people that they have no capacity for proper empathy, or truly grasp the weight and consequences of their choices. Instead they live in a world where only they really matter, even long after that world is destroyed.
But not all of Fitzgerald's 1% characters act like this. One of my favorite examples is with Yanci, from The Popular Girl. At the beginning of the story, Yanci is rich and bored. She comes from a long line of substantial people and carries that reputation in her “aristocratic” face and lazy, languid movements, spending most of her social life acting elegant and unbothered and letting the local boys pursue her tirelessly. However, when her father dies and she realizes that she has barely any money to her name, the first thing she does is go to get her hair done.
This seems like a petulant and foolish thing to do, but here’s the thing: Yanci’s no floozy. Where the Washingtons didn’t understand the consequences of their actions, Yanci is acutely aware of everything she does. She's been faking that lazy carelessness ever since her father started drinking too hard, and she’s well practiced in keeping it in place, like a mask, to convince her friends and community that they’re still honorable and worthy of their popularity.
Every choice she makes is for a reason: she gets her hair done to help make her feel better about the situation, and to keep a fresh look. Then she moves herself into a hotel, despite it being a little more costly, because she wants to keep up the appearance that she still has money.
When she realizes that she's at the end of the rope she goes to New York to subtly woo a former lover Scott into marry her, and while she is desperate (we know this because we are reading from her perspective), she makes certain that she doesn’t appear that way under any circumstances. She arrives seven minutes late before meeting him for lunch at a lavish restaurant, and she stays calm and composed the entire night.
They danced several times. Never by word or sign did Yanci betray more than the most cursory interest in him until just at the end, when she offered her hand to say goodbye.
“Goodbye, Scott.”
For just the fraction of a second — not long enough for him to be sure it had happened at all, but just enough so that he would be reminded, however faintly, of that night on the Mississippi boulevard — she looked into his eyes. Then she turned quickly and hurried away.
After she took her dinner and a little tea room around the corner. It was an economical dinner which cost a dollar and a half. There was no date concerned in it at all, and no man — except an elderly person in spats who tried to speak to her as she came out the door.
(The Popular Girl, Act 8, Last Two Paragraphs)
For her part Yanci is a brilliant actress. In keeping her father's alcoholism from the public eye, she learned to keep that carelessness on display throughout her descent. Even in her weakest moments she was able to control herself and her image, and when there was no one to impress she had enough pride to spare to be a little cheap when no one's looking. For that, I'd consider her an honorable and sympathetic character.
A rich person can be a terrible, morally corrupt individual, or simply an average person trying their best, but regardless, in Fitzgerald’s eyes, being rich allows you the luxury to be careless, in a way that people without money cannot afford to be.
Bibliography Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Fitzgerald: Novels and Stories, 1920-1922. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Popular Girl.
Author Bio
Maddie is a graduate of the University of Evansville with a bachelor's degree in creative writing. Her passions lie in reading fiction, specifically fantasy and science fiction pieces with intricate world-building and social commentary, as well as writing critical reviews in music, movies and television. She has written several poems and short stories, though she has yet to publish any of them in an official capacity, and have aspirations to work in the fields of literature and publication.
This piece was written for in the author's junior year of college, for a class titled ENGL 330: Fitzgerald and Hemingway.