Parental Power In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night

Tender Is the Night has resulted in widely varying critical interpretation of the characterizations and relationships developed in the novel. So far, the majority of existing criticism focus mostly on Dick and his relationship with his wife Nicole. Very little attention is paid to Rosemary Hoyt, let alone the influence of her mother Mrs Speers to hbr. With regard to the parental power within the three pairs of parent and child, namely, Mrs Speers to Rosemary, Mr Warren to Nicole and Mr Diver to Dick, and their entangled relationship, as far as the author of the present thesis investigates and finds, there is no abademic study at all.This thesis, therefore, attempts to reveal parental power in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night by concentrating on Rosemary, Nicole and Dick for their personality development and the subsequent effects on their life. Besides introduction and conclusion, there are three chapters that compose the main body of the thesis.Chapter one focuses on the masculinization of Rosemary by her mother Mrs Speers. Approaching from attachment theory, the first section displays Rosemary’s strong attachment to her mother and then analyzes the causes of it mainly based on their own experiences along with the social and historical background. Under such a strong attachment, Rosemary is brought up with the idea of work. Her gradual masculinization by her mother is manifested from two aspects, that is, her theatrical career and her love relationship with Dick, which are revealed respectively in section two and three.The emphasis of chapter two lies in the disastrous effects on Nicole that arise from her father Mr Warren’s sexual abuse of her. Naturally, the first section embarks on the explanation and the analysis of the incestuous relationship between Mr Warren and Nicole, during which Freud’s theory about incest is employed. In addition to sexual abuse, this thesis discovers the importance of Nicole’s economic parasitism on her father in section two of this chapter. The last section demonstrates Nicole’s consequent incompetence in love from her attitude to her friend, her husband and her children, thus to finally prove her state of being a child emotionally and economically.Chapter three turns to investigating the life development of Dick, a gentleman idealized by his father Mr Diver. His idealism is incarnated in his dual motives of marrying Nicole, his countertransference by Nicole and even his process of decline, which are presented respectively in the first three sections of this chapter. The last section views Dick as a biographical figure of Fitzgerald through detecting Fitzgerald’s family background and growing up environment, and his relationship with his wife Zelda, hoping to disclose Fitzgerald’s intention of writing and thus better the understanding of the novel.