The marginalization of lesbians and gay men

Specifically, I argue that the novel circulates one of the dominant discourses of the period in which it was written: the discourse of the self‑made man, which held that any poor boy in America, if he had the right personal qualities, could rise to the top of the financial world. In addition, I examine the ways in which The Great Gatsby embodies one of the central contradictions of the discourse of the self‑made man: although this discourse claims to open the annals of Ameri‑ can history to all those who have the ambition and perseverance required to “make their mark,” the discourse is permeated by the desire to “escape” history, to transcend the historical realities of time, place, and human limitation.

The discourse of the self‑made man: a new historical reading of The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) was published during one of Amer‑ ica’s greatest periods of economic growth. As the nation expanded its borders and developed its industries between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the stock‑market crash in 1929, many private fortunes were made. Everyone in America knew the success stories of millionaires like John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Philip Armour, and James J. Hill. Even Gatsby’s father, an uneducated and unsuccessful farmer, is aware of these stories. He says of his son, “If he’d of lived he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country” (176; ch. 9). With the exception of J. P. Morgan, the son of a wealthy banker, all of these millionaires were self‑made men: from very humble beginnings they rose to their position at the top of the financial world. And popular belief held that any poor boy in America with the right personal qualities could do the same. Thus, a dominant discourse of the period was the discourse of the self‑made man, which circulated in the “success manuals” of the period; in the self‑improvement speeches and essays composed by the self‑made millionaires of that era; in the Horatio Alger novels; in the McGuffey Readers, which were used throughout the nation to teach young children to read; and in the biographies of famous self‑made men. Fitzgerald’s novel participates in the circulation of this discourse, I think, in at least two significant ways. It reflects the major tenets of the dis‑ course and, I would argue, it embodies one of its central contradictions: the discourse of the self‑made man, while it claims to open the annals of American history to all those who have the ambition and perseverance required to “make their mark,” is permeated by the desire to “escape” history and to transcend the historical realities of time, place, and human limitation. Let’s begin by examining the ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the major tenets of the discourse of the self‑made man. Of course, readers frequently notice

the similarities between Gatsby’s boyhood “schedule”—in which the young man divided his day among physical exercise, the study of electricity, work, sports, the practice of elocution and poise, and the study of needed inventions—and the self‑improvement ideology found in the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, America’s original self‑made man. Obviously, Gatsby hoped, indeed planned, to live the “rags‑to‑riches” life associated with the self‑made millionaires of his day. However, the characterization of Gatsby draws on the self‑improvement tradi‑ tion more thoroughly than some readers today may realize. During the period in which Gatsby lived (1890–1922)—roughly the same his‑ torical period from which the novel emerged, for Fitzgerald was born in 1896 and The Great Gatsby was published in 1925—books that explained how poor boys could rise to heights of great wealth, called “success manuals,” flourished. In Austin Bierbower’s How to Succeed (1900), a representative example of the genre, the following advice is given to the prospective self‑made man: work hard, have a clear purpose, be prepared for opportunity, don’t procrastinate, persevere, keep in good physical condition, and avoid drink. Poor boys have an advantage over rich boys, Bierbower notes, because they are introduced to hard work at a young age and motivated by financial need to apply themselves. In contrast, many wealthy youth, the author points out, avoid hard work and focus instead on insubstantial goals like fashion and etiquette, thereby sometimes failing to increase or even maintain the fortunes they inherited. The virtues extolled in similar publications include, in addition, the importance of saving money and of avoiding such slothful behaviors as smoking, using slang, and keeping bad company. In short, rising young men were advised to avoid any behavior that wasted time, cost money, or was injurious to health or reputation. Making himself useful to his parents was also considered a good way for a young boy to develop the traits of industry and initiative, which would serve him well later in life. And for similar reasons, it was generally accepted that a rural upbringing, preferably on a farm, was superior to a boyhood spent in the city.2 Jay Gatsby fits this profile in a number of ways. He was born to poor “farm people” (104; ch. 6) and spent his youth in rural Minnesota. His boyhood list of “General Resolves,” found in his copy of Hopalong Cassidy just below his Franklinesque daily schedule of activities, reads like a mini‑success manual: No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable] No more smoking or chewing Bath every other day Read one improving book or magazine per week Save $.00 [crossed out] $.00 per week Be better to parents (11–; ch. )

Gatsby’s physical fitness, a frequently mentioned self‑improvement virtue, is evi‑ dent in Nick’s description of his “balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes . . . with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games” (68; ch. 4). Gatsby’s “elaborate formality of speech,” which gives Nick the impression that he is “picking his words with care” (53; ch. 3), illustrates the self‑improvement virtue of avoiding slang, and we see another behavior recommended by success manuals in Gatsby’s strict avoidance of alcohol, even at his own parties. Unlike Tom Buchanan and Nick Carraway, Gatsby was motivated by the finan‑ cial need to apply himself: he made his fortune during his first three years with Wolfsheim. Even Gatsby’s outstanding war record marked him as a young man certain to get ahead in the world, while Nick’s military experience seems sin‑ gularly undistinguished, and we hear no mention of Tom’s at all. Indeed, the characterization of Tom and Nick exemplify the dictum of the self‑improvement tradition that inherited wealth is a handicap to self‑improvement: Tom does nothing with his life but find more and more extravagant ways to spend his inherited fortune, while Nick, thirty years old and still being supported by his father while he learns the bond business, feels he has no clear direction in life. Finally, George Wilson’s rather pathetic failure to adequately support himself and his wife serves as an implicit warning about the fate of poor men who, unlike Gatsby, lack the fortitude and drive to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” We see the same kind of success ideology at work in the speeches and essays in which many self‑made millionaires revealed the secrets of their success, as Andrew Carnegie often did. In “The Road to Business Success” (1885), for exam‑ ple, Carnegie tells the would‑be self‑made man to aim high, save his money, and avoid liquor. To rise in the business world, Carnegie notes, a young man must be able to think for himself: “There never was a great character who did not sometimes smash the routine regulations and make new ones for himself” (8). In “How to Win Fortune” (1890), Carnegie argues that, given the competitive nature of the business world, it is unwise for the prospective self‑made man to waste precious time acquiring a college education, even if he were able to some‑ how work his way through, because the time he spends in college will put him behind the young man who apprentices himself to a captain of industry at an early age. A “college education,” Carnegie says, “seems almost fatal to [the] suc‑ cess” (91) of the self‑made man. As we saw above, Gatsby believed, even as a teenager, in the importance of sav‑ ing money, and “he formed the habit of letting liquor alone” (107; ch. 6) early in life as well. In contrast to Tom and Nick, who both graduated from Yale, Gatsby refused to waste time attending college: led by an “instinct toward his future glory,” he quit after two weeks at “the small Lutheran college of Saint

Olaf” (105; ch. 6). Perhaps the most interesting similarity between Carnegie’s advice and Gatsby’s behavior, however, is seen in Gatsby’s consistent tendency to aim high and “smash the routine regulations” in order to “make new ones for himself” (Carnegie, “The Road” 8). Gatsby rose quickly in the esteem of Dan Cody, who “repos[ed] more and more trust in [him]” (106; ch. 6), just as he rose quickly to the rank of army major during World War I, just as he rose quickly in the organization of Meyer Wolfsheim. By the time we meet him, Gatsby clearly occupies an executive position, either in Wolfsheim’s organization or in one of his own: he receives phone calls, at all hours and from various parts of the coun‑ try, during which he makes decisions and gives orders to his underlings. And though Carnegie certainly didn’t intend his advice to be taken in quite this way, Gatsby’s disregard for routine regulations is obvious, of course, in his choice of a criminal career: he made his fortune in the management of bootlegging opera‑ tions and the sale of fraudulent bonds. Other texts that circulated the discourse of the self‑made man were the novels of Horatio Alger, which were immensely popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In these tales, the hero is always a poor young boy who is hardworking, honest, neat, self‑reliant, persevering, modest, kind, gener‑ ous, and lucky. Luck, for Alger, included being ready to seize an opportunity when it occurs, which requires both imagination and nerve. In all of Alger’s novels, the hero has obstacles to overcome, including a villain who cheats him in some way; there is a lesser hero in the story who helps him in some way; and there are one or more father figures in the form of successful, benevolent busi‑ nessmen. The hero’s outstanding qualities always end up bringing him some sort of financial success, and the stories thus extol the same virtues of the self‑made man we see in the success manuals. The Great Gatsby shares many important features with the Horatio Alger for‑ mula novel. Jay Gatsby’s well‑groomed appearance and quiet amiability, which is noted several times by Nick, give him much of the same appeal as the Alger hero, even if he doesn’t share the latter’s ethics. More striking, however, is the similarity in structure between Fitzgerald’s novel and those of Alger. Like the Alger hero, Gatsby is of humble origins, willing to work hard to make his way in the world, and had more than enough imagination and nerve at his disposal when opportunity unexpectedly knocked in the form of Dan Cody: It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon . . . but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour. (10; ch. ) After working for Cody for five years and learning the ways of the world, Gatsby is cheated, again like the Alger hero, of his rightful reward: “a legacy of twenty‑five