The Great Gatsby: The Ragged Transition From Victorian “Self-Made”
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The definition of what it is to be a man is one of fluidity and contradiction. In Gail Bedermans essay “Remaking manhood through race and civilization”, she proposed that as the United States entered into the 20th century, the framework behind white manhood was challenged by the economy, women and minorities, as well as by men themselves. This confrontation of the Victorian ideals resulted in a tumultuous transition from the hard-working self-made man to its antithesis, the leisurely well-rounded man. The various stages and conflicts of this transformation can be seen in F. Scott Fitzgeralds turn-of-the-century novel, The Great Gatsby. Using Bedermans essay as a guide, it becomes apparent that four of the male characters, Tom, Nick, Gatsby and Wilson, are in different phases of the Victorian to Modern evolution, demonstrating the inherent complexity of remaking manhood.
To adequately analyze the modernization, or lack thereof, that exists in Fitzgeralds characters, a reflection on Bedermans essay is necessary in order to distinguish the causes and features of the two stages. First, the Victorian man. During the 1800s in the United States, the self-made man was a prized feature of society. Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, working ones way up the corporate ladder and running a business was not only the norm, it was expected. This process required a great deal of strong character and powerful will which were equated to “masculine passions” (Bederman 12). The acquisition of these traits (or passions) directly affected the family life because “by gaining the manly strength to control himself, a man gained the strength, as well as the duty, to protect and direct those weaker than himself: his wife, his children, or his employees” (Bederman 12). According to Bederman, not only was family life affected, but also the entire societal construct of the middle-class was tied into these passions. She states that “a manly character built on high-minded self-restraint was seen as the rock on which middle-class men could build their fortunesby the end of the century, a discourse of manliness stressing self-mastery and restraint expressed and shaped the middle-class identity” (12).
The turn of the century brought a different kind of man to the forefront. Economic changes rendered the ambition of owning ones own business almost impossible and the expanding low-level clerical work “meant that young men beginning their careers as clerks were unlikely to gain promotionas their fathers had” (Bederman 12). With these narrowing career options, the self-restraint of the Victorian man became less relevant and new opportunities for leisure became more appealing. Also, the decreased earning potential of the middle-class man eroded the previous sense of power over those considered weaker. The modern man began to re-establish his power through physical fitness and strength (via team sports and strenuous exercise), opposing excessive femininity and overindulgence in leisurely activities. The previous Victorian ideals were then cast-off as outdated and weak resulting in the creation of “the new epithets sissy, pussy-foot, cold feet and stuffed shirt to denote behavior which had once appeared self-possessed and manly but now seemed overcivilized and effeminate” (Bederman 17). A cherished hard-working self-made man was transformed into an easygoing well-rounded man.
For some men, this transition from old to new was relatively smooth, for others it wasnt. In The Great Gatsby, the narrator Nick Carraway represents the easy side of this change. He is the product of Victorian self-made men, his great-uncle having “started the wholesale hardware business that [his] father carries on to-day” (Fitzgerald 3). This old style of man lives on through Nick not only in his appearance (“I never saw this great-uncle, but Im supposed to look like him” (Fitzgerald 3)) but also in his education at New Haven. Ironically, this Victorian heirloom is also where he first meets Tom Buchanan, whose conflicting modern-Victorian ideals will be discussed later. However, influenced by the changing tide of manhood, Nick moves away from his old family and takes up residence in the East, gets a different job as a bond salesman and aspires to “become again that most limited of all specialists, the well-rounded man” (Fitzgerald 4). Nicks conscious effort to achieve this status results in a successful and rather smooth shift from the Victorian to the modern. His untroubled change provides a neutral backdrop to the stormy transition of the other men in the novel, hence his role as narrator.
There exist two extremes of this transition within Nicks narration: the extremely hard-working Victorian man stuck in a new environment and the quick-and-dirty ultra-leisurely modern man. George Wilson, the garage operator, represents the unsuccessful adaptation in the modern era. He has worked up to owning an auto business and takes care of his wife Myrtle. However, in the onslaught of the well-rounded man, he is left in the dust. Not only is his business falling apart but his wife has taken control of him and he disappears in her shadow. He is no longer a man but a mere remnant of an expired era. His presence acts as not only an example of the failure of Victorian ideals to survive, but also as a basis for comparison against the other men and their degrees of modernity, and their conflict with him grows out of an increasing despisal for the ideals he represents.
The other end of the spectrum, this quick-and-dirty ultra-leisure man takes form in the character of Jay Gatsby. Sprung from self-made roots, much like Nick, Gatsbys transformation differs from his because it was one of rapidity and deception. His switch from one to the other occurred on a lake (water being an important sign of rebirth) as he rowed out to a yacht. On the shore he was James Gatz, son of a farmer, by the time he reached the yacht he was Jay Gatsby, aspiring millionaire and bootlegger. He fully enjoys the life of parties and frivolity, celebrating a life of ease. According to Bederman, who said that “many middle-class men…[found] identity in leisure instead of work” (13), Gatsby has achieved that aspect modernity. He is not only laid-back but also an educated man, an Oxford-man (if only for a minute), which makes him an intellectual in the eyes of others. The large variety of people that attend his parties, from movie producers to importers, gave him an impression of variety, that not only was he smart and relaxed, but well-rounded. Gatsby was a modern man, however his dishonest conquest of this title drew much scorn from