Fitzgerald and the New Women in “Babylon Revisited”

Fitzgerald & The New Women in “Babylon Revisited”

Sarah Clark

The roles of women are often overlooked in Fitzgerald scholarship. When the portrayal of women is addressed, it is often in a heavily biographical light, and very superficially at that: Nicole Diver and Zelda Fitzgerald are both heiresses who resent their respective husbands’ success, and at least a dozen Southern belles are loosely based on Zelda (Sylvester 181). Clearly, Fitzgerald is not given much credit on this front. His female characters in “Babylon Revisited” express his long-standing dissatisfaction with both the “New Women” of his generation and their derivatives. None of the women in “Babylon Revisited” are portrayed very positively; Marion Wales is “amoral and vindictive”; Honoria Wales is false and without convictions; Helen Wales is dead after an adulthood of debauchery, and Lorraine Quarrles is still in the midst of her own debauchery (Petry 155). Fitzgerald is said to be “highly critical” of his female characters, “as if he secretly expected more of them at the outset, but put them in a world that allowed them no theater for growth” (Fryer 7). This is, of course, problematic, since Fitzgerald would seem to have created the textual world around them. However, one could argue that women of this period are frequently refused the right to a complete “theater for growth,” trapped between quasi-liberation and quasi-imprisonment. Negating a larger misogyny, all of the female characters in “Babylon Revisited” reflect the different approaches women took, or were forced to take, in light of their new-found freedoms.

Helen Wales is the model of the New Woman. In the midst of the speculation successes of the 1920s, she is a more mature version of the flapper: she drinks, she dances, and she and Charlie share evenings of public disarray. Fitzgerald is often cited as having lauded “old virtues” and “old graces,” much

like Charlie Wales who “wanted to jump back a whole generation” and not have to cope with the new dimensions of society (Davison 199). Naturally, Fitzgerald’s stories would be hostile towards the New Women, and any woman who defies traditional gender roles. Charlie relates the climax of the Wales’ past: he and Helen become engrossed in “a slow quarrel [that lasts] for hours,” which culminates in Helen refusing to go home with him (Fitzgerald 515). Helen defies Charlie’s authority when he “tries to take her home,” and refuses to let him decide when she should leave and under what conditions (Fitzgerald 515). Charlie goes so far as to negate her feelings, referring to her protests, even in retrospect, as “hysterical” (Fitzgerald 515). Helen is locked out in the snow, literally and figuratively. She is unable to maintain a household of her own, and physically and symbolically unable to survive without her husband. Fitzgerald treats Helen’s past as a staunch warning for women who would dare to defy the social norm and venture sovereignty from domestic life. Additionally, one can view this occurrence in a larger sense: the New Women are given freedom, but not enough to counteract its consequences. Meanwhile, Charlie’s daughter Honoria is clearly a proto-flapper. She is not given much of a role in a story that revolves around her custody, so most scholars are forced to extrapolate the boundaries of her character. These analyses of Honoria often focus on her precocious manipulation of the truth, unconscious though they may be. Like Fitzgerald’s other flappers (Marjorie from “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” certainly comes to mind), Honoria is learning to combat what society percieves as her “feminine fallabilities” by catering to them, and playing the little girl who loves her “dads dads dads” (Fitzgerald 506). Instead of “exploit[ing her] sexual attractiveness” in order to “assert her will,” Honoria uses her own Lolita-like assets to assure her veracity in the eyes of others, and acquieces to the wishes of the authority figures around her in order to reduce the friction around her (Fryer 6). It is also worthwhile to consider whether Honoria recognizes that she would have more freedom and more autonomy living with her father than with her staunch aunt.

It would follow that Fitzgerald would portray Honoria without excessive malice, since “being a flapper or vamp in Fitzgerald’s day—with all the preoccupation with beauty, fun, charm, and sexuality that such terms imply—can in actuality be equated with work in the female tradition” (Fryer 9). Honoria also embodies Fitzgerald’s preference for women who provide “unquestioning, self-effacing support” to the men around them (Fryer 5). Honoria leaps into Charlie’s arms, and later tells him that she wants to live with him – the exact scenario he had been waiting for (Fitzgerald 511). Marion, on the other hand, confronts her half-liberties with Victorianera manipulation. In a world where women have more influence than before, Marion faints and criticizes, and generally enlists her histrionics to achieve her goals. This is perfectly natural, since it is often unpalatable to be the forerunner in any trend, and speaking ones mind was quite the trend at the time. Fryer explains the increasingly irrational behavior of women like Marion by suggesting that “Fitzgerald’s female characters…are recipients of mixed messages about their roles and rights in life. They behave selfishly, impulsively, and inconsistently as a direct result of their fundamental uncertainty about their purpose in life” (Fryer 5). It is, of course, ironic that Marion is struggling for control over Honoria, a decision that, by its domestic nature, should be in her jurisdiction. As women are gaining the power to vie with men in extradomestic matters, men like Charlie and Lincoln are beginning to question women’s traditional authority as well. This underscores the idea of Marion as a parody of the traditional Victorian woman, or rather, the Victorian woman displaced in society by the New Women.

Fitzgerald’s depictions of women in the era of the New Women are more social commentary than misogyny. Both Charlie and Lincoln in “Babylon Revisited” have their own faults (alcoholism and sycophantism respectively). It would seem that Fitzgerald is simply unflinching in his disclosure of the world’s ills, even if those ills happen to find root in women more often than men.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Babylon Revisited.” The Story and Its Writer. Editor:

Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2003.

Fryer, Sarah B. Fitzgerald’s New Women. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988.

Petry, Alice H. Fitzgerald’s Craft of Short Fiction. Ann Arbor: UMI Research

Press, 1989.

Sylvester, Barbara. “Whose ‘Babylon Revisited’ Are We Teaching?” F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Perspectives.

Editor: Jackson R. Bryer, Alan Margolies, and Ruth Prigozy. Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 2000.