The Beautiful and Damned

The second of Fitzgerald’s novels, the novel is Fitzgerald in his full romanticism, riding off the breakout success of This Side of Paradise. The story surrounds Anthony Patch, the Harvard-educated, patrician grandson of a wealthy moralist, and his wife Gloria Gilbert, the beautiful aesthete and prodigal socialite. Set in the 1910s, the story explores themes such as the perversions of wealth and the ephemerality of desire and beauty. The novel is similar to The Great Gatsby and shares some themes, but the biggest difference is the novel’s insistence on irony and inversions: of the undesirable suitor Bloeckman becoming ever more desirable, of the “successful” Dick Caramel retrogressing from his prior success, and finally of Anthony’s surprising outcome after all he’s gone through. Fitzgerald sardonically but suavely satirizes life, and as readers we can only laugh.

The idea that struck me most was Gloria’s view on beauty. Everyone shares the universal, irrational want to preserve beauty for eternity: we look at roses for their full bloom and not for their decrepit wilting, and most newlyweds naively but firmly believe their love will last forever. Yet, Gloria admits “there’s no beauty without poignancy and there’s no poignancy without the feeling that it’s going, men, names, books, houses – bound for dust – mortal –“. As someone whose entire life and vain happiness depends on her beauty, Gloria’s admission at once foretells her own future and accepts it. In a broader sense, the poignancy that begets beauty is a reason for people’s love for tragedy – the art form of displaying ideals then mercilessly smashing them for all to see is timelessly poignant and beautiful.