LITR 5535: American Romanticism
 
Sample Student Research Project, fall 2003

Yvonne Hopkins
LITR 5535 2003 research project

The Legacy of Romanticism in The Great Gatsby  

            The development of American Literature, much like the development of the nation, began in earnest, springing from a Romantic ideology that honored individualism and visionary idealism.  As the nation broke away from the traditions of European Romanticism, America forged its own unique romantic style that would resonate through future generations of literary works.  Through periods of momentous change, the fundamentally Romantic nature of American literature held fast, a fact clearly demonstrated in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald.   In an era of post-war disillusionment, when idealism succumbed to hedonistic materialism, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s romantically charged novel, The Great Gatsby, emerged in direct counterpoint to the disorder and apathy of Modernism.  In his depiction of the idealist, Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald created a link with America’s literary past and the romantic yearnings of a nation struggling to re-define itself. If Romanticism exemplifies individualism, idealism, and transcendence, then Jay Gatsby, as a romantic protagonist, testifies to the legacy of Romanticism in American literature. 

            In keeping with the Romantic tradition and its reverence for individualism, Fitzgerald presents a protagonist whose “Platonic conception of himself” marks him as unique (Fitzgerald 104).  Possessing a natural “heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” Gatsby’s “romantic readiness” evolves long before his crucial encounter with Daisy Fay, finding inspiration in his association with the self-made pioneer-tycoon, Dan Cody.  Described as “a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since Seventy-five,” Cody represents the romance of the frontier, an era when the land still beckoned, when exploration, speculation, and risk-taking frequently led to fame, notoriety, and fortune (Fitzgerald 104, Way 91).  In his propensity for living on his own terms, Cody projects the free-spirited individualism that deeply influences the young and impressionable Jimmie Gatz.  Yet, as much as Cody’s influence proves significant, it is Gatsby’s innate sense of wonder that sets him apart, linking him to an “epic sense of destiny” and vision that allows him to transcend the parameters that shape and dictate the lives of the majority (Lehan 15).  In disassociating himself from his past, Gatsby embraces the possibility of re-inventing himself; however, as a true romantic, he aspires to a pristine image beyond himself. Thus, when Daisy Fay enters his life, she becomes the manifestation of all that commands his desire and purpose (Way 90).  Essentially, in Daisy, Gatsby finds the key to the final development in his romantic vision as “she blossom[s] for him like a flower […] [making] the incarnation complete” (Fitzgerald 117). 

            Daisy’s impact on Gatsby is immediate and cathartic.  As “the golden girl” she represents the ultimate prize, “the best part of a world […] of heightened, refined delight, the realization not only of [Gatsby’s] desires but of generalized desire as well” (Fitzgerald 127, Lathbury 60).  Inevitably, in the limitless capacity of Gatsby’s imagination, Daisy is elevated to the ideal, becoming the embodiment of “the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves” (Fitzgerald 157).  As such, she is not easily won and reigns luminously, “gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor” (Fitzgerald 157).  As “a penniless young man [with] no real right to touch her hand,” Gatsby remains profoundly aware of his shortcomings, yet desire compels him to take what he can “ravenously” in the pursuit of his dream girl and romantic ideal (Fitzgerald 156).  Thus, when Gatsby makes love to Daisy, he commits himself to her utterly and completely, aware that he has “forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath [so that] his mind will never romp again like the mind of God” (Fitzgerald 117).  In effect, Gatsby’s brief but intense courtship of Daisy shapes and defines his life from that one intractable moment in time when “the imagination and the will are arrested – in a state of suspension – by an idealized concept of beauty and love” (Lehan 72).  In preserving a “romantic state of mind” Gatsby creates an intense longing and a sense of expectation and hope that “keeps the world beautifully alive” (Lehan 72).  In essence, Gatsby’s idealization of Daisy and his reverence for the past convey his  romantic yearnings and establish his credentials as a definitive romantic hero.

            In many respects, the intensity of Gatsby’s love for Daisy and his pledge to win her, exude an innocence and idealism reminiscent of courtly love.  When Gatsby returns from Europe, bearing the uniform of the soldier-knight, he makes “a miserable but irresistible” pilgrimage to Louisville to bask in the “melancholy beauty” of the place that gave birth to his dream (Fitzgerald 160).  In paying homage to the past, Gatsby projects nostalgia for a bygone era, a time of innocence and hope. More importantly, the romantic sojourn suggests the impossible nature of Gatsby’s quest as he seeks not only to reminisce, but also to capture the very essence of a time when anything seemed possible, when he could mount the ladder to “a secret place […] and suck on the pap of life [gulping] down the incomparable milk of wonder” (Fitzgerald 117).  While Daisy has married in Gatsby’s absence, his love for her only intensifies, taking on a life of its own, proving more significant than the object itself: “It had gone beyond her,

beyond everything” (Lewis 49, Fitzgerald 101).  As a result, the consuming nature of Gatsby’s love and his steadfast allegiance to Daisy’s memory reflect the “following of a grail,” elevating his devotion to a quest of mythic proportions synonymous with the epic quality of Romanticism and the grandeur of courtly love (Fitzgerald 156, Morgan 168).   

            In other respects, Gatsby’s worship of Daisy from afar reinforces the concept of courtly love.  Undeniably, as a romantic ideal, Gatsby’s love thrives on “the lure of the unattainable” (Morgan 171).  In the five years since his last encounter with Daisy, Gatsby, the modern knight, returns from the war a hero, bearing the arms of accumulated wealth, and establishing a fortress across the bay from the object of his dreams.  At this point, Daisy no longer exists simply as herself; rather, her essence is embodied in the green light that emanates from her dock, signaling her presence to Gatsby.  As Gatsby stands alone, arms outstretched “towards the dark water in a curious way […] trembling,” a sense of his ritualistic worship emerges, along with the realization that Daisy has become more symbolic than real in Gatsby’s imagination (Fitzgerald 24, Lehan 78).  In his silent “vigil” Gatsby creates a “vacuum of perpetual loneliness,” emphasizing the purity and “sacredness” of his quest and the almost heroic singular nature of his vision (Fitzgerald 153, Morgan 171). 

            The element of courtly love is further enhanced by Daisy’s ethereal presence.  At once “vague and impalpable,” Daisy, as her name suggests, projects fragility and other-worldliness in the purity of her “white girlhood,” the rippling and fluttering” of her white dress, and the musicality of “her low, thrilling voice” (Fitzgerald 12-13, Lehan 74).  Also, as if to acknowledge the allure of her beauty and charm even nature smiles on her as “the last sunshine [falls] with romantic affection upon her glowing face” later “deserting her with lingering regret” (Fitzgerald 18).  Resoundingly, Daisy reigns “High in the white palace, the king’s daughter” secure in her “perfect reputation” (Fitzgerald 127, 82).  As such, she symbolizes the damsel in the ivory tower, remote, beloved, yet unattainable. For Gatsby, Daisy exists in a parallel universe, part memory and part dream; beyond reach, yet infinitely desirable.

            In his quest to capture Daisy’s love and approval, Gatsby, like a knight of old, must demonstrate his worth. Therefore, his struggle to overcome his circumstances becomes an ennobling exercise in which he displays his “force and attractiveness” to Daisy (Lathbury 59). In his accumulation of wealth and the extravagant display of possessions, Gatsby seeks to prove that he is deserving of his lady’s love.  As he accompanies Daisy on a tour of his mansion, he measures the value of everything he owns according to the “response it [draws] from her well-loved eyes” (Fitzgerald 97).  In displaying his worldly goods, the symbols of arms and accomplishments, Gatsby hopes to win Daisy’s respect, attention, and love.  In effect, he begs not only to be judged, but also to be judged worthy.

            In other respects, Gatsby’s actions define him as the modern knight, the protector and defender, forever watchful, though from a distance, of his lady. (Morgan 168).  In the years since Daisy’s marriage, Gatsby remains palpably aware of the circumstances of her life as he eagerly reads “a Chicago paper […] just on the chance of catching a glimpse of her name” (Fitzgerald 84).  Moreover, his devotion inspires him to follow her east, to the suburbs of New York City, wherehe builds his mansion across the bay from the glittering white palace of her abode.  Later, when their love affair revives, he becomes her champion, defending her from his enemy’s (Tom) wrath, engaging in a verbal duel in the modern battlefield of the city apartment to secure her love: “Why not let her alone, old sport” and “You’re not going to take care of her any more” (Fitzgerald 133,140).  Furthermore, when events spiral out of control and Daisy unwittingly kills Myrtle Wilson, Gatsby comes to her rescue, nobly assuming her guilt in order to save her honor, then observing a lonely moonlit vigil to watch over and protect her (Fitzgerald 151, Morgan 167).  Resoundingly, Gatsby’s actions and attitudes echo the chivalry of a by-gone era, a time when self-sacrifice defined the ultimate expression of love, a time when the romance of ideal love was as illusory as it was elusive.

            Inevitably, in seeking his romantic ideal, Gatsby dares to dream the impossible, leaving him vulnerable to the fact that nothing, not even Daisy, can compete with his “capacity for wonder” (Fitzgerald 13).  Moreover, in placing Daisy on a pedestal, Gatsby elevates her beyond the real and attainable, placing her in the untenable position of competing with an illusion of perfection: “There must have been moments […] when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (Fitzgerald 101).  In pursuing his dreamlike vision of Daisy, Gatsby loses the sense of who she really is.  Inevitably, the revival of the love affair and the possibility of attaining his dream prove almost anti-climactic, threatening to diminish Daisy’s value as an “enchanted object” (Fitzgerald 98).  Inherently, Gatsby’s love stems from a time of innocence and optimism, forever crystallized in that “Keatsian frozen moment” five years earlier, when, on a starlit night, he pledged his soul to a dream (Lehan 14).  However, with the passage of time much has changed; the world has become “meaningless and almost wholly loveless” except, of course, in the realm of Gatsby’s romantic imagination.   

            Undoubtedly, Gatsby’s worship of Daisy and his quest to regain her love echo the natural impulses of Romanticism.  In addition, the transcendent quality of Gatsby’s love reinforces the romantic notion of an ideal love that moves beyond the corporeal and the temporal.  When Gatsby re-enters Daisy’s life, the reality of marriage and motherhood has long overshadowed the romance of youth and passion. In her wistful recognition of Gatsby’s name, “she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know,” Daisy’s romantic consciousness stirs, and, inevitably, the desire for adoration and love re-emerges (Fitzgerald 83).   As such, both Daisy and Gatsby are romantically predisposed to their eventual reunion; she from the need to be desired; he from the long anticipated fulfillment of a dream.  When they meet, Daisy responds to a radiant Gatsby in a voice “full of aching, grieving beauty [that] told only of her unexpected joy” (Fitzgerald 94).  As their re-awakened passion ignites, a sense of absorbing intimacy that transcends time and place develops as they remain conscious only of each other: “Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space” (Fitzgerald 125). In their mutual rapture, Gatsby and Daisy share an exclusivity that places them, if only briefly, beyond the boundaries of their physical, social, and psychological spheres.  In effect, a romantic bonding takes place so that as Daisy leaves one of Gatsby’s parties, a sense of longing and attraction lingers as she glances towards “the lighted (…) steps” as though something beyond the refrain of the melancholy song is “calling her back inside” (Fitzgerald 115).  Essentially, Daisy’s renewed affair with Gatsby and her involvement with his world force her to confront the lack of romance and excitement in her own life: “After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world” (Fitzgerald 115). In finding her life wanting, Daisy cherishes her role as the beloved object of “five years of unwavering devotion” and finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gatsby’s unconditional love (Fitzgerald 115).

            Just as Daisy’s appeal arises from her ethereal qualities and captivating  charm, part of Gatsby’s charisma lies in his innocence and romantic perception that the past can be repeated.  However, in order to recapture the past and win Daisy’s heart, Gatsby must focus on “the possibility of realizing love in the meretricious dream-factory culture of America” (Lathbury 70). When he remarks to Nick that Daisy’s voice “is full of money,” Gatsby reveals his fundamental understanding of Daisy’s connection to wealth and the subsequent urgency of his need to acquire it.  In his belief that money can buy anything, even the past, Gatsby projects a naiveté concerning the limitations of money, especially money acquired by nefarious means (Lewis 51). 

            When he moves east, Gatsby takes with him the free-for-all entrepreneurial values of the frontier that in the urban landscape of the city become subverted, forming the subculture of the New York underworld in which he becomes a speculator (Lehan 14). However, in the consumer driven climate of post war America, the city emerges as the “new nexus of power,” creating hierarchal social systems that never existed on the frontier (Lehan 34).   In Gatsby’s naïve assumption that “money is money,” he fails to recognize the social implications of its source as well as the idea that only the right kind of money counts (Lehan 57).  In effect, the transcendental nature of Gatsby’s love comes into conflict with the social class structure and “earthy materialism” he must partake of in order to win Daisy (Lehan 14).  As misguided as his purpose and means may be, they nonetheless resonates from the pure, romantic ideal of his love. 

            In striving to become a part of Daisy’s world, Gatsby unknowingly “violates a cultural norm” by seeking to “buy into a tradition instead of accepting one” (Lewis 54).  However, as a scion of frontier romanticism, Gatsby holds to the notion that an individual can transcend the actual to re-invent himself and break free from the constraints that seek to undermine his purpose and vision.  What Gatsby fails to realize is that money alone cannot buy Daisy; rather, she requires old money and its evolved lifestyle of “ease and discrimination” (Lathbury 59).  Reinforcing this idea is the fact that when Daisy becomes Mrs.Tom Buchanan she marries into established wealth and quickly assumes the “fashioned tastes, values, attitudes, manners and intellects” of the upper classes (Lathbury 59).  In effect, Daisy reflects the sophisticated refinement that reflects the antithesis of the crass, vulgar style of Gatsby’s world.  As much as she appears momentarily charmed by Gatsby’s excesses, Daisy experiences an essential revulsion at the blatant “emotion” on display and the “raw vigor” of life explicit in the uninhibited behavior of the party guests: “She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place” that Broadway had begotten […] She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand” (Fitzgerald 114).  In effect, Daisy’s reaction to such ostentation and energy reflects the disdain of the upper classes for the nouveau riche.  Inevitably, despite the “purpose and vitality” behind Gatsby’s newly acquired fortune, tainted wealth cannot measure up, and Daisy retreats into her world of privilege and old money.  

            As a dreamer whose ideals stem from a profound belief in the “orgiastic future,” Gatsby is ill-equipped to deal with the fallout of his affair with Daisy (Fitzgerald 13).  Even as he senses her slipping away from him, “with every word she was drawing further and further into herself,” he cannot relinquish the illusion of his already “dead dream” (Fitzgerald 142).  To do so would be to abandon the romantic vision that has, for so long, inspired and energized his existence, giving his life purpose.  Essentially, in aspiring to a dream, Gatsby loses the ability to distinguish between Daisy, the idealized object, and Daisy, the real and insubstantial woman.  Despite all that has transpired, Gatsby cannot perceive Daisy’s “basic insincerity,” and clings, instead, to the fragile hope that the dream will prevail.  Having lived with the same illusion for so long, Gatsby is unprepared for its inevitable dissolution and can only reel against the harsh reality of a world without love, a world without hope: “he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald 169).

            As much as Gatsby’s love exists and finds expression in a corrupt world, it remains essentially beyond it.  Arising from a pure vision, it appears conspicuously out of sync with the new “material world” represented by Tom and Daisy Buchanan (Fitzgerald 169).  Vested with the quaintness of chivalry and idealism, the innocence of Gatsby’s love is crushed under the “hard malice” and destructive energy of the Buchanans’ world (Fitzgerald 155).  In the climactic moment when the old world and the new, the ideal and the real confront each other, Gatsby’s insistence that Daisy had never loved Tom, that her love was simply “personal,” expresses a concept of love and self-delusion that “defies reality” (Fitzgerald 110, Lathbury 112).  In demanding a declaration that Daisy cannot make, Gatsby betrays his obsession with a dream, creating the sense that the illusion of love has become more vital than the reality.  As such, Gatsby, the romantic, renders himself impotent as all that he cherishes is reduced to nothing but the ghost of a dream.  Robbed of his essential reason to be, Gatsby can only move tragically “through the cooling twilight […] toward death” (Fitzgerald 143).

            Ironically, Gatsby falls victim to his own heroic vision, unable, in the final analysis, to find anything commensurate with his limitless “capacity for wonder”  (Fitzgerald 13).  Ultimately, Gatsby’s romantic nostalgia projects the innocence of an era when the singular pursuit of a dream epitomized nobility. In a modern world reverberating with disillusionment, Gatsby’s romantic readiness jars against the hard materialism manifested in his adversary, Tom Buchanan.  In his arrogance and self-assurance, Buchanan reflects the confidence of a class secure in its identity and power. Basically, he is a man of his time.  In comparison, Gatsby’s naivety and idealism mark him as a man of the past. On another level, in his raw enthusiasm, Gatsby projects the optimism of the frontier, a time when the nation began to forge its destiny from a sense of its own newly emerging Romanticism.  In his devotion to the tenets of romantic idealism, Gatsby is no match for the pragmatic realism of the world in which he must do battle to win his prize.  Paradoxically, in defeat, Gatsby emerges as the true winner, a man whose innate individualism and allegiance to an ideal allow him to transcend the mundane, linking him to the romantic vision of the archetypal heroes of American culture.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.  The Great Gatsby.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Lathbury, Roger.  Gale Study Guides to Great Literature: Literary Masterpieces Volume 1: The Great Gatsby. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group, 2000.

Lehan, Richard.  Twayne’s Masterwork Studies: The Great Gatsby:  “The Limits of Wonder.”  New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.

Lewis, Roger.  “Money, Love, and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby.”  New Essays on The Great Gatsby.  Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli.  New York: Cambridge UP, 1985.

Morgan, Elizabeth.  “Gatsby in the Garden: Courtly Love and Irony.”  College Literature.  11.2 (1984): 163-177.

Way, Brian.  “The Great Gatsby.”  Modern Critical Interpretations: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.