All the sad young women: A feminist, new economic analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's debutante-flappers.

摘要

Though many of F. Scott Fitzgerald's commercial short stories written during the 1920s seemed destined to remain forgotten, panned by critics and even the author himself, new critical theories reveal their merit as part of women's history and cultural history and enhance understanding of Fitzgerald's evolving views of his female characters. Seen through a Feminist-New Economic lens, the debutante-flapper heroines of the 1920s short stories are not self-centered destroyers of men and male dreams but courageous, rationally-maximizing women, adaptable and willing to seek happiness within socio-economically bred cultural confines. The period's economic boom gave rise to a paradoxical situation in which leisure-class women held the highest external (social) value among American women as symbols of the American Dream, yet ironically some of these women found that their internal (personal) worth was zero. This conflict between women's external value and internal worth affected how Fitzgerald's heroines defined themselves and pursued courtship and marriage goals. Though society may insist they remain manipulable symbols of the male American Dream, Fitzgerald's debutante-flappers refuse to live as vacuous shining ornaments in the crown of male achievement. These women maintain internal values, insisting that their marriages be based on love and intellectual stimulation rather than solely on socio-economic advantage. Resolve in making internal value equal to external value allows his debutante-flappers to transcend leisure-class confines.; In this study I present historical and economic details to support how the debutante-flapper's situation paralleled the apparent versus the real economic situation of the era. I also discuss the way America's economic situation created cultural changes that affected the marriage market. In chapter three, I analyze ten representative 1920s short stories. In chapter four, analyses of the five stories comprising Fitzgerald's Josephine cycle underscore the progress Fitzgerald made in portraying his concept of the ideal woman over the course of a decade, showing how the hedonistic excesses of the 1920s gave way to responsibility, modesty, and morality. Overall, this study shows how Fitzgerald's debutante-flappers daringly insist on the integration of their external and internal value, masculine and feminine selves, to become the most highly valued and valuable selves possible.