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March 01, 2006
A Different Kind of Freedom
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"I supposed there'd be a curious crowd around there all day...searching for dark spots and some garrulous man telling over and over what had happened until it became less and less real to him and he could tell it no longer and Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten."
The 1920s represent freedom for women far more than any other era in history (except maybe the 1960s, and if I wanted to get political I'd argue that women's lib does NOT represent freedom for women, but my purpose is not to get political, unfortunately.) Most American women may have found their freedom in the 1920s, but not all of them. Myrtle Wilson, trapped in a loveless marriage to a broken-down mechanic, is a symbol of all those women for whom the new political freedom of the 1920s did not necessarily equal personal freedom.
We've discussed in my History of the 1920s class how the world opened up for women in the 1920s. Dr. Spurlock's (very excellent; shameless plug) book, New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture chronicles how in the 1920s, new opportunities came available to women in every possible arena. By 1920 women made up nearly half - 47.3%, to be exact - of all U.S. college students. For the first time significant numbers of women experienced periods of freedom before settling down to married life - a short spell in which they lived with neither parents nor husband, but lived and worked on their own. This had long been customary for young men, but by the 1920s young women were taking advantage of this opportunity for independence as well. Furthermore, the sexual revolution of the 1920s is not just a myth: Dr. Spurlock's book chronicles how during the 1920s women were the first time able to be frank about their sexual urges and to express said sexual urges without the enormous social backlash experienced by "loose women" of earlier generations.
Somehow, all this freedom missed Myrtle Wilson. Trapped in marriage to George Wilson, in love with another man who used her as a toy, thee was no possibility that the narrow, dingy life that she lived. Hold that thought - there was one possibility. On the night when George Wilson tries to control her past what she could stand - on the night when he tells her they're leaving Long Island, and by extension her lover, Myrtle Wilson truly rebels against her life for the first and last time. Getting hit by a car is Myrtle's "tragic achievement." Dying like someone's cocker spaniel in the middle of the road is Myrtle's "tragic achievement." The night she died is the first time we have ever seen Myrtle assert her independence. In death, she is free as she never could be in life.
It is interesting to compare this to Kate Chopin's short turn-of-the-century novel The Awakening. The novel's protagonist, whose name I've forgotten in the 2.5 years since I read it, is a wealthy New Orleans housewife with everything she could desire...except emotional and sexual fulfillment, except a sense of self and of autonomy. Unable to cope with her inability to feel free, she walks into a bayou and drowns herself. Her freedom, like Myrtle's, can come only in death. They're on opposite ends of the socioeconomic ladder, but both are trapped by the worlds they live in and can find freedom only in death.
Posted by MeganRitter at March 1, 2006 01:24 PM