Fitzgerald's Gender Crisis: A Study Of His Ambivalence Toward Normative Manhood

This paper undertakes to tackle F. Scott Fitzgerald's gender crisis and his ambivalence toward normative manhood, a topic that has been discussed for several decades but continues to arouse keen interests in the Fitzgerald research. Machael Nowlin is a critic who sharply indicates Fitzgerald's ambivalence toward normative manhood: although Fitzgerald claims to be masculine but he is committing emotion in his writing only found in females. Edmund Wilson also investigates Fitzgerald's crisis as a male writer. He concludes that Fitzgerald persists in despising any form of femininity, but unfortunately the writer has a deep identification with it. Stephen Matterson defines the role played by women readers with the prevalence of popular culture at the time Fitzgerald lives in and explores how that may affect the author as a male writer. James Gindin finds the romantic hero in the author's work is always sensitive, intelligent and even vulnerable. He also concludes that these characteristics are also evident in Fitzgerald himself, which put his masculinity in severe danger. However, their researches all lack a detailed analysis and close reading of any specific fiction of Fitzgerald, so their evidences to support his contention are not sufficient enough, and none of them probe into the inner cause of Fitzgerald's gender crisis. This paper fills the lacunas of these critics'discussion and investigate the major causes of Fitzgerald's gender crisis and give a close reading of his crisis and ambivalent attitude reflected in his fiction.This proposed research applies the theory of manhood raised by three historians E. Anthony Rotundo, Mochael Kimmel and Gail Bederman to support the analysis of Fitzgerald's gender crisis and also demonstrate how his ambivalence toward masculinity complicated the author's portrayal of women as well. It will explore the complex historical and modern forces on the forming and changing of gender politics within Fitzgerald's writing and how the combination of these forces creates the writer's gender crisis. Associated with the historical context, it will analyze in details how Fitzgerald's characterization reflects his ambivalence toward manhood. This paper intends to firstly find evidence of the writer's precariousness in masculinity in his two well-known fiction The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night and then to analyze Fitzgerald's crisis in association with the historical context at the time when these two works were written, and give psychoanalysis of his family to find the roots of the author's crisis and ambivalence.