Fitzgerald as satirist

'Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!':

Interestingly, in reference to the comparison with Evelyn Waugh in the previous article, a reader in Australia informs me that it was actually suggested to Waugh that he had been greatly influenced by 'The Great Gatsby'. In fact, as Waugh discloses in his memoirs, he had never read the book until long after Fitzgerald's death in 1940 and the completion of his own portrayals of London's Mayfair set in the twenties.

We were considering Fitzgerald's satirical depiction of the Jazz Age's affluent society in the person of Daisy. Let us follow its progress somewhat further: "I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with the bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered 'Listen,' a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour."

Bewitching quality

This is beautiful writing. It anticipates not the Waugh of 'Vile Bodies' but the later more passionate Waugh of 'Brideshead Revisited.' Nor can one help recalling Marvell's 'The Fair Singer': "..while she with her Eyes my heart does bind, She with her Voice might captivate my Mind...all resistance against her is vain, Who has th'advantage of both Eyes and Voice." There seems to be a doubly bewitching quality about Daisy for all that she is a creature of wealth and class. And this is very much the import of the book - the irresistible attraction of the moneyed class. Nick, albeit the supposedly dispassionate observer, is far from oblivious to it while Gatsby is completely yielding.

Much later when the two are alone they discuss Daisy: "'She's got an indiscreet voice,' I remarked. 'It's full of -' I hesitated. 'Her voice is full of money.' he said suddenly. That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell with it, the jingle of it, the cymbal's song of it...High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl...'"

This is an expose of what makes Daisy tick, the supposed secret of her most attractive feature, her voice. Yet it is typical of Fitzgerald's evocative writing that the attraction of her, far from being diminished by this insight seems to grow further. The images of white, gold, palace, cymbals, combine in a metaphoric flash to convey the captivating power of wealth, the veneration it inspires, the aura of royalty with which it endows its possessors.

And this is after all the great theme of the book, the worship of wealth, even the untiring efforts of the unwealthy to acquire it being a form of worship. Here another literary echo makes itself heard, the opening words of Ben Jonson's 'Volpone' where the eponymous miser makes his morning visit to his treasure trove. "Good morning to the day; and next, my gold! Open the shrine, that I may see my saint...Hail the world's soul, and mine!" I still recall MI Kuruvilla bursting into laughter after reading these words to us in one of his Jonson lectures. But it is the relevance of these lines to Fitzgerald's novel that is remarkable.

Following the rendezvous between Daisy and Gatsby at Nick's house all three, at Gatsby's instance walk over to the latter's mansion. Earlier he had told Nick, "'It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.'" When Daisy catches sight of it: "'That huge place there?' she cried pointing. 'Do you like it?' 'I love it, but I don't see how you live there all alone.'" After a grand tour of the the innumerable bedrooms, bathrooms, music rooms and salons they end up in Gatsby's bedroom where "he opened for us two hulking cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high. 'I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.'

Strained sound

"He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many coloured disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher - shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue.

Ecstatic praise

Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. 'They're such beautiful shirts', she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. 'It makes me sad because I've never seen such - such beautiful shirts before.'"

This is where Fitzgerald's satirical art reaches its peak and the connection with Volpone becomes obvious. We are actually caused to be privy to an act of the worship in the innermost shrine of the temple of wealth, Gatsby's cornucopian wardrobe in the depths of his mansion. Daisy's exclamation is one of ecstatic praise of Mammon at this evidence of its powers of purchase and possession. A little later she calls to Gatsby from one of his myriad windows:

"The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west, and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea. ''Look at that,' she whispered, and then after a moment: 'I'd like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around.'" Daisy now sees Gatsby as the high priest of Mammon, one who can outstandingly administer its rites for her and optimize her enjoyment of the bliss of absolute wealth.

She wants him ever at hand in a material paradise where the colours are those associated with riches and childish irresponsibility, gold and pink. That the paradise comprises nothing but foamlike clouds escapes her, but it indicates for us the hollowness at the heart of her happiness.

In the next article we hope to shift the focus to Gatsby himself, in whose characterisation we discover the ultra-satirical elements in Fitzgerald's writing.