"The Beautiful and Damned"

[Sami]

I finished reading this a couple of weeks ago and was hoping others had some thoughts about it, particularly how the title expresses the main message of the book.

The lives of Anthony and Gloria seem at first glance to be really beautiful. Their wealth provides them with freedom, but at the same time this leads to dissatisfaction and restlessness. They’re never able to stick with anything (Anthony cannot hold down a job, their friends come and go etc.) and, despite their privileged lives, they often experience boredom.

So, my question would be this: Is Fitzgerald trying to show how beauty leads to nihilism (a word that crops up several times in the book), because it condemns, or “damns” people to shallowness? Does a life based on beauty make it impossible to firmly believe in anything?

I felt that Gloria, much more than her husband Anthony seemed to realize this point. She understands that she’ll be loved only as long as she remains beautiful and that beauty requires youth. Of course this puts her in an impossible situation since the march of time cannot be stopped. She becomes obsessed with aging, and cannot cope with the idea of having a child because she, herself, realizes that her own value is in her child-like quality; at one point she buys a child’s doll for herself.

Does anyone else have any thoughts about this book and/or do any of these issues appear in other Fitzgerald novels?

[Lesley]

I'm pretty much a Fitzgerald devotee to be honest, but The Beautiful and Damned was my least favourite of his novels (no easy thing for such a fan of his to admit I can tell you).

Have you read any of Fitzgerald's other works, for existence his short stories? If you haven't, you might want to read The Lees of Happiness, as I feel that in many ways this is a companion story to The Beautiful and Damned.

Anthony is atypical of the man who becomes spiritually dessicated because he is part of what Gertrude Stein called 'the lost generation'. The post-war generation who knew where their roots were, but couldn't see their way forwards through the 'verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways' (that quote is from the Keats epigram that Fitzgerald uses for Tender is the Night) of post-war American society.

Instead, people immersed themselves in the hedonism of the flapper-era, aiming to lose themselves because they could not see a way forwards. And yes, I think you are largely right about Gloria, she is more self aware than Anthony. Anthony has an idea or a concept of himself as a certain kind of person, and when he ceases to be that person he has an internalised image of, he begins to crumble (much like Dick Diver in Tender is the Night, it's all part of the 'dying fall' motif).

As for the concept of beauty leading to nihilism, I think Fitzgerald was more purist than that, and would have gone along with Keats' assertion that 'beauty is truth, truth beauty'. I don't think Fitzgerald would have allayed beauty with corruption in a direct way, but I can certainly see where you are coming from: the compulsion to possess something beautiful could be viewed in terms of acquisitiveness, like Myrtle in The Great Gatsby. She wants to possess beautiful things because there is a total lack of beauty in her real life, so she accepts the immorality of an affair (which leads to her death) and therefore is indeed damned for her shallowness. There's a scene where she is holding a party in the little apartment which her rich lover has rented for her, and the narrator comments that 'with the influence of the dress her personality had undergone a change', showing that Myrtle's adopted beauty is false and insincere, and therefore to be frowned upon by the reader.

As for the question of youth, Fitzgerald references child-like beauty in all of his novels. When Nicole leaves Dick in Tender is the Night for a new man, she is said to be 'all new like a baby'. (There's a lovely Freudian slat to be argued on that one, but I must stop now and get back to writing my Fitzgerald dissertation - which was the real reason for locating this site an hour ago! Ooops!)

[Sami]

Lesley, thanks for this really reply (which, unfortunately, I’ve only just noticed today).

Have you read any of Fitzgerald's other works, for existence his short stories? If you haven't, you might want to read The Lees of Happiness, as I feel that in many ways this is a companion story to The Beautiful and Damned.

No, I haven’t read “The Lees of Happiness” but I’ll have a look for it. The only other Fitzgerald I’ve read was The Great Gatsby way back when I was doing an English Lit A level at school.

I don't think Fitzgerald would have allayed beauty with corruption in a direct way, but I can certainly see where you are coming from: the compulsion to possess something beautiful could be viewed in terms of acquisitiveness...

I found this part of your post really intriguing. Is it that Fitzgerald sees beauty as the standard by which things are deemed to be true? In which case isn’t this always impermanent? Given that the child-like beauty his characters admire is bound to fade with time, does this mean that truth also becomes a shifting standard? We might wish to acquire it, but will always be trying to grasp something transient? I’m not sure I quite understand what you mean by Fitzgerald being “purist”, and I’m afraid I don’t know anything about Keats and his idea that “beauty is truth, truth beauty”.

...showing that Myrtle's adopted beauty is false and insincere, and therefore to be frowned upon by the reader.

Okay, so is Fitzgerald agreeing with the reader here and suggesting that adopted beauty is false whereas “real” beauty is true? This makes his view quite harsh. A beautiful life, (in the sense of a rich privileged existence, not only in the sense of physical beauty), cannot be gained through effort or merit. I suppose, although my memory is a bit cloudy, in a way this is also a main point of “Gatsby”.

The point in “The Beautiful and Damned” where Gloria dyes her hair because its natural beauty has faded could be seen as her crossing over into this category of adopted, artificial beauty. That would make sense insofar as it’s also the point in the story where she and Anthony have really sunk to their low point in terms of lacking beauty in their lives.

Anyway, I’m suspect you’re probably long gone by now and are busy with your dissertation – best of luck – I’m sure it’ll be a success. Thanks again for the really interesting reply!!