The Ambivalent Representation of the 1920s American New Women, the Flappers in The Great Gatsby
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This paper aims to explore the ambivalence in the representation of the flappers in The Great Gatsby focusing on Nick Carraway’s unreliability as the narrator and the gap it causes in his narration. The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, in which the 1920s new women called flappers seem to be negatively represented on the surface. The main reason for this is that all of them are judged by the male narrator in a negative way about their morality. However, the text includes some gap or space where they can be interpreted differently from the narrator’s point of view. In other words, given Nick’s unreliability, except for the characters’ external behaviors and remarks, his judgement of them could be just his specific view or interpretation as a male character himself. From this point of view, the three main flapper characters, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle can be more objectively evaluated in the social context in women’s view, not just as “a rotten crowd” as Nick judged. Fitzgerald, a keen observer of the 1920s, contributed to spreading the image of the flappers to the public through all his novels revealing ambivalent attitude towards them. Even though it seems that Fitzgerald had more negative ideas about the flappers while writing The Great Gatsby, he still reveals his ambivalent attitude in representing them through the subtle narrative device, showing the possibility and limitations of the 1920s flappers as an emblem of women’s liberation.
Abstract
This paper aims to explore the ambivalence in the representation of the flappers in The Great Gatsby focusing on Nick Carraway’s unreliability as the narrator and the gap it causes in his narration. The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, in which the 1920s new women called flappers seem to be negatively represented on the surface. The main reason for this is that all of them are judged by the male narrator in a negative way about their morality. However, the text includes some gap or space where they can be interpreted differently from the narrator’s point of view. In other words, given Nick’s unreliability, except for the characters’ external behaviors and remarks, his judgement of them could be just his specific view or interpretation as a male character himself. From this point of view, the three main flapper characters, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle can be more objectively evaluated in the social context in women’s view, not just as “a rotten crowd” as Nick judged. Fitzgerald, a keen observer of the 1920s, contributed to spreading the image of the flappers to the public through all his novels revealing ambivalent attitude towards them. Even though it seems that Fitzgerald had more negative ideas about the flappers while writing The Great Gatsby, he still reveals his ambivalent attitude in representing them through the subtle narrative device, showing the possibility and limitations of the 1920s flappers as an emblem of women’s liberation.
참고문헌 (19)
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