{"id":3724,"date":"2012-12-15T07:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-12-15T07:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eltweekly.com\/elt-newsletter\/?p=3724"},"modified":"2012-12-15T07:00:47","modified_gmt":"2012-12-15T07:00:47","slug":"vol-4-issue-51-research-paper-f-scott-fitzgerald-novelist-of-the-jazz-age-manners-by-seema-chaudhary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/?p=3724","title":{"rendered":"Vol. 4 Issue 51 \u2013 Research Paper: 'F.Scott Fitzgerald: Novelist Of The Jazz Age Manners' by Seema Chaudhary"},"content":{"rendered":"

ELTWeekly Vol. 4 Issue#51 | December 17, 2012 |\u00a0ISSN 0975-3036<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

This paper is submitted by\u00a0Mrs. Seema Chaudhary<\/strong>, Ph.D Scholar, Meghalaya University, Shillong, Assistant Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth University Institute of Management & Research, New Delhi.<\/em><\/p>\n

ABSTRACT<\/strong><\/p>\n

The aim of this article\u00a0 is to establish Fitzgerald as the novelist of manners\u00a0 with suitable examples from the four novels of\u00a0 Fitzgerald : This Side of Paradise<\/span> (1920), The Beautiful and Damned<\/span> (1922), The Great Gatsby<\/span> (1925) and Tender Is the Night<\/span> (1934) .\u00a0 Looking at the various novels the conclusion is\u00a0 that Fitzgerald was successful in creating simultaneously a type of protagonist who could be romantic in chasing his own illusions, and at the same time\u00a0 providing a social concern about the Jazz generation with its mass production, installment purchasing, a stream of social scandals and\u00a0 crimes altogether, a restless decade denouncing old values and unsuccessful in finding any new set of values.<\/p>\n

He created individual characters like Amory Blaine, Jay Gatsby and Dick Driver who are representatives of his own romantic view of life. In effect , \u00a0Fitzgerald\u2019s works present a fine blend of an ironical picture of the Jazz age society and the romantic vision of individual protagonists. In this blend , if the primary characters are romantically inclined, the secondary characters represent the bootlessness \u00a0underlying the brilliant surface of Post War Society. Undoubtedly, the fact is that Fitzgerald looked\u00a0 with a critical eye at his time , the Twenties, towards the manners and values of the younger generation.<\/p>\n

Key Words: Novelist of manners, social concern , ironical picture, jazz age, post war society, \u00a0set of values.<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scott Fitzegerald \u00a0projects the foibles, vanities , conventional attitudes and other short comings \u00a0of people of human character in the hope of their being corrected. Social problems were given great prominence even during the eighteenth century when the English novel started developing with Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding,. Richard Chase rightly says: \u2018\u2019Jane Austen is if not the greatest, at least the purest novelist of manners, her kind of novel being the archetype ofthe form1<\/sup>.\u2019\u2019 . On the other hand ,\u00a0 a \u00a0novelist like Thomas Hardy alternates between short stretches of dialogue and long descriptive commentary in scenes and situations. In the case of \u00a0modern novelists such as James Joyce, it is an attempt to read deep into the human consciousness in a novel like Ulysses<\/span>. Fitzgerald as a novelist of manners confirms to the American tradition of concentrating on men more than on society as he pays attention to\u00a0 the individual characters and the various hidden shades of behavior.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Critical Perspective Of Various Novels Of Fitzegerald<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Great Gatsby:\u00a0 A Social Comedy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This novel provides a satirical account of the lost generation with its misplaced values. The emphasis is evenly distributed between the comic environment \u00a0and Gatsby\u2019s single-minded pursuit of a romantic vision. Daisy emerges as the most reprehensible character in the novel, a picture of\u00a0 selfishness in sharp contrast to the self sacrificing Gatsby. Tom Buchanan satisfies his vanity both ways. Nick, the narrator, is a fine creation, a mixture of a critic and an objective observer of life. It is Nick who builds up a contrast between an unethical immoral, crude, sensual atmosphere and a sensitive, refined, sentimental soul breathing in this atmosphere. In the words of Trilling, his fiction \u2018\u2019keeps fresh because it is so specifically conscious of its time\u2014its continuing power comes from the courage with which it grasps a moment in history as a great moral fact.2\u201d<\/sup><\/p>\n

[2] This Side of Paradise<\/span>:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Romance and realistic Power<\/span>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The romantics strain in his novels can be perceived \u00a0mainly by his novel \u2014This Side of Paradise<\/span>.\u00a0 Even, Arthur Mizener\u00a0 aptly states\u00a0 in his essay, \u2018Scott Fitzgerald and the 1920\u2019s\u201d that Fitzgerald was remarkable in \u00a0the sense that \u2018\u2019he was not a historian, even of ideas, he was a poet, a man who experienced this idea, felt it a-new and as if no one had ever experienced it before, and felt it therefore wholly in terms of the world he lived in3<\/sup>.\u2019\u2019Neither the author nor his characters aim at achieving wealth as a means of achieving social importance and romance. Class, money and display of money is secondary to him. The way in which people reacted to one another and to their surroundings during that crucial Inter-War period is what Fitzgerald projects in his novels as there is no bitterness in Fitzgerald\u2019s This Side of Paradise. For Amory, \u2018\u2019if living isn\u2019t a seeking for the grail it may be damned amusing game.4<\/sup>\u2019\u2019 .<\/p>\n

[3]\u00a0\u00a0 The Beautiful and Damned <\/span>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Projection of prevailing values<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This novel projects only three characters, Antony Patch, Maury Noble and Dick Caramel, and a prominent heroine Gloria Gilbert . the fiction , in which\u00a0 the two protagonists simply reduce themselves to at life of luxury and dissipation. Mizener makes a biting remark: \u2018\u2019They (Antony & Gloria) are pitiful and silly rather than beautiful and damned5<\/sup>.\u2019\u2019 Though the novel has been considered as an aberration by many critics , even then the three books of the novel progressively trace the development in the two protagonists way of life from their complete abandonment to dreams and to a discovery that their dreams have turned to nothing else but only nightmares.\u00a0 Fitzgerald\u2019s aim was to make this novel a satire on the wealthy set of people \u00a0haunting \u00a0theatres, restaurants, cabarets and luxurious hotels.<\/p>\n

[4] Tender is the Night:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Projection of American\u00a0 society.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Set in the Americanized Riviera, the novel, as Maxwell Geismer puts it \u2018\u2019is probably overloaded with references to the American empire, American men and women, American manners, clothes, faces and even American trains- absorbed as they are in an intense destiny of their own6<\/sup>\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n

Dick Diver is presented as a symbol of America, dynamic, young, strong and innocent. Fitzgerald\u2019s portrayal of Nicole and Dick symbolizes the two extremes, Nicole symbolic of the corrupt and exploiting society and Dick- the natural idealist, is determined to realize his dreams. \u00a0His devotion to Nicole parallels to that of Gatsby\u2019s devotion to Daisy and while both men are destroyed by their meaningless lives .\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The First World War with its widespread violence, terror and blood-shed had\u00a0 left humanity deeply scarred.<\/p>\n

The sensitive psyche of the writer in the twenties revolted against the deplorable state of affairs. Thus appeared on the literary scene in America such novelists as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Possos, who each in his own way became a genuine spokesman of that age-an age that came to be popularly termed as \u2018the Jazz age. Fitzgerald is an author, who is a representative figure of his age, mirroring in his works the Twenties, a significant period of social disintegration.\u00a0\u00a0 A regular study of sociology cannot so successfully mirror a society as a novel can. The novel by virtue of its bulk, presents a very detailed picture of society from both the individual and the collective points of view. In this sense, Fitzgerald\u2019s This Side of Paradise<\/span> and The Great Gatsby<\/span> give a more intimate knowledge of the Twenties than any descriptive book by a sociologist. Brian Way calls Fitzgerald \u2018A Social novelist\u2019, with no reliance on ideology, myth or symbol. \u2018\u2019For Fitzgerald the most significant kind of reality is to be found in the observed manners of the immediate social group.7\u201d His novels are truly committed to, \u2018\u2019render reality closely and in comprehensive detail,\u2019\u2019 and thus we find in his novels a complete report of the manners of men in his times.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 1<\/sup>Richard Chase: The American Novel and its Tradition (Ludhiana, Kalyani Publishers, 1973), p.158.<\/li>\n
  2. 2<\/sup><\/span> Lionel Trilling, Liberal Imagination<\/span>. Essays on Literature and Society<\/span> (New York: Viking Press, 1933).P.163<\/li>\n
  3. 3<\/sup>Arthur Mizener: \u2018\u2019Scott Fitzgerald and The 1920\u2019s\u2019\u2019 In Kenneth E. Elbe (ed). F. Scott\u00a0<\/span>Fitzgerald: A Collection of Criticism<\/span>: (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973),\u00a0pp.99-100.<\/li>\n
  4. 4<\/sup>.F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise,<\/span> (London: Penguin Book Ltd., 1977), p.60.<\/li>\n
  5. 5<\/sup>Arthur Mizerner, The Far Side of Paradise (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1951)<\/span>, p142<\/li>\n
  6. 6<\/sup>Maxwell Geismer, The Last of Provincials: The American Novel 1915-1925<\/span>, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Vo., 1947), p.329<\/li>\n
  7. 7<\/sup>Brian way, Scott Fitzgerald and the art of social fiction<\/span> (London: Edward Arnold, 1980) pp.2-3.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Have you heard about the international bestseller How English Became Globish\u201c>Globish by Robert McCrum? Suddenly the term Globish seems everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","omw_enable_modal_window":"enable","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,39,45,211,331],"tags":[873,1632],"class_list":["post-3724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elt-articles-and-research-papers","category-elt-newsletter","category-elt-research-articles","category-eltweekly-vol-4-issue-51","category-english-language-teaching-competitions","tag-elt-research-papers","tag-seema-chaudhary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltweekly.humbeestudio.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}