The Great Gatsby: A Queer Approach

Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Alumno: Francisco Yeray Estévez Cabrera

Tutor/a: Eva Rosa Darias Beautell

La Laguna 2016

Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 1

1.

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2

2.

Contextual Framework .................................................................................................................... 4

3.

The gay community in the Jazz Age Era/ First decades of the 20th century .................................... 6

4.

Queer Theory................................................................................................................................. 10

5.

The Great Gatsby– Queer approach.............................................................................................. 12

6.

Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 19

7.

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 20

1

Abstract

The purpose of this final project is to enlighten a possible gay theory underneath the pages of

Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). There is a lot of content that has been

produced about Fitzgerald’s text, but it has not been until relatively recently, when critics

have started to look upon it contemplating the Queer Theory. The theory itself could be

considered a topic “under discussion” by many critics today, because of its relative newness

and the alternative perspective it may offer. Part of that instability is due to the topic itself,

homosexuality, the ultimate taboo for many, and also a new area of study in literature (and in

other many fields) that is becoming increasingly essential to understand many texts. Queer

Theory was born from gay/lesbian studies, a discipline which itself is very new, existing in

any kind of organized form only since about the mid-1980s. Gay/lesbian studies, in turn,

emerged from feminist studies and feminist theory. While gay/lesbian studies focus on

questioning normative sexualities, Queer Theory goes beyond and challenge sexual identities.

A few representatives of Queer Theory can be found in the figures of Judith Butler and Eve

Sedgwick, both inspired by Michel Foucault and his studies of sexualities in the second half

of the twentieth century. Therefore, my goals when working with this topic are to investigate,

first, what branch of literary criticism includes the study of homosexuality and define it, as

well as adapt and work with the critical tools that are used in these types of analysis. It is

necessary to consult the historical context and how homosexuality was perceived or treated at

the time of the publication of Fitzgerald’s novel. My purpose is to read the text from that

different angle so that new interpretations may be possible. In the larger context, I also intent

to achieve greater visibility in addressing queer issues in English literature and gain

comprehension to further application it in other works.

Key-words: The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald, Queer Theory, Sexuality, Homosexuality, the

1920s.

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1. Introduction

One can say a thousand things about The Great Gatsby, as well as about its author, Francis

Scott Fitzgerald. However, among those thousands of things, it is not always the most

interesting that are emphasized, and details may be overlooked in a single reading of the novel

or in a superficial knowledge of the writer. Readers who have familiarity with this story may

know that Jay Gatsby is more than an eccentric millionaire slave of a chimerical love. The

book is a meditation full of symbolism about the United States as a whole in the 1920s, and

particularly on the disintegration of the American Dream in an era of unprecedented

prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald was able to show with the great detail and accuracy

of a person living in his time, many aspects of the United States.

It is a novel in which sexuality is present in many forms: passionate love, lust, adultery...

Sexuality has been a theme in literature since the origins of literature itself. Its function on it

is undoubtedly a reflection of how various cultures view sexuality and what its role is in those

cultures. Sexuality can be as important and prevalent as money, power and time, or it can be

so suppressed as to consider it a taboo. Authors across time have explored the ideas of

sexuality and expressed their own beliefs, often contrary to the culture in which they live, on

its importance, advantages, and disadvantages. Fitzgerald showed a sexual ecosystem in the

novel in the form of infidelity, love triangles, promiscuity and, under the eye of a few

scholars, homosexuality. Nick Carraway is the voice of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and for

a few decades, pundits and scholars asserted he was gay or bisexual, and likely in love with

the wealthy and troubled Jay Gatsby. Definitely, a narration coming from a gay character

could have shaken the attitude of the general public and critics towards hostility during the

Twenties.

It is just needed a brief look at the history of homosexuality to understand why in some cases,

the study of certain works and their theories are obscured or abandoned. Many moralists and

different religious groups believe that this orientation is a sexual deviation and a sin.

Homosexuality has been banned in many countries and cultures, punishing this sexual

orientation itself or some associated practices. This clearly had implications when it comes to

deal with the topic. For a long time, the trend has been homophobia, whether active or silent.

The perception of homosexuality changed greatly between societies and times. In ancient

Greece, for example, it was considered normal for a boy (often during puberty) to be the lover

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of an older man, who was in charge of political, social, scientific and moral education of the

beloved. However, homosexual acts in the 16th century England were punished with death

(Buggery Act 1533). Consequently, it is necessary to work within the framework and context

in which the work of Fitzgerald was developed.

This final work will be divided into 4 sections. In the next part the idea is to give a little

overview of the historical context in which Fitzgerald lived and in which the novel is set. The

second part will be focused on explaining how the gay community lived during the first half

of the century, including the twenties and debating why is usually forgotten among people

and scholars. In the third section, I will define more specifically what the Queer Theory is,

and what makes it different from gay/lesbian studies. It is in the fourth and final section that I

will proceed to discuss The Great Gatsby under a queer scope.

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2. Contextual Framework

It is important to look at society in the time frame of Fitzgerald's work, since this was a true

reflection of what was lived at the time.

After World War I the United States entered a period of economic prosperity thanks to the

money they got from the European debt after the years of war. The now largest and richest in

per capita terms US economy was undergoing a phase of expansion following the widespread

diffusion of innovations resulting from the Second Industrial Revolution, both in the

production (cheap and quality steel, electricity self-propelled agricultural and industrial

machinery, etc.) and household consumption (automobile, appliances, telephone, etc.).

Moreover, Europe had a half-destroyed industry, which brought the United States to become

the largest exporter of products. All this made the US economy grew quick, causing a more

than considerable increase in consumption, something similar to what happened during the

last decade that led to the creation of the speculative bubble. Unfortunately, everything

exploded on Thursday, October 24, 1929 kicking off the Great Depression

In 1919 it was born the Prohibition, which prohibits the manufacture, sale and transportation

of alcoholic beverages that led to the creation of a whole black market that was trafficking

with them, whose main representatives were Italians that moved to the big cities of the United

Estates: Al Capone, Salvatore Maranzano, the Gambino, Genoves… (Fitzgerald would use

this issue of tremendous attention in his time as one of the secret aspects of Gatsby)

If there was something iconic from Mr. Gatsby era, that were the flappers. The “flapper”

expression first appeared in Britain and was introduced in the United States by Fitzgerald

himself (he called his wife, Zelda, the first flapper of the United States). Flappers were

usually young and unmarried urban middle class girls who had a job in the changing US

economy, especially as secretaries, telephone operators or sellers in department stores. They

were born during the very beginning of the Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age as Fitzgerald

baptized this time, after the First World War and before the Great Depression.

The birth of flappers could not have been possible without the gestation of a shy sexual

revolution that took place in the twenties. During those moments of exploration of sexuality it

is when it could be perceived a greater presence of gay activity.

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In the early twentieth century the gay community was secretly frequenting underground

places specialized in bringing together the homosexual clientele, as well as socially

segregated clientele (blacks, prostitutes, etc.), in cabarets, bathhouses, dance clubs, jazz clubs

and speakeasies. This same culture allowed the development of codes of conduct, slang and

specific keys on the clothing that permitted the identification of targeted gay or transgender

people. For most Americans these subcultures were mostly invisible as noted by historian

George Chauncey, in this first decades of the twentieth century there was a gay world more

populated and varied that the one in the half-century.

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3. The gay community in the Jazz Age Era/ First decades of the 20th century

The iconic Empire State Building lights up blue, lavender and white at the end of June. The

reason for this riot of colors is due to the anniversary of a historic event for the New York gay

community, and also for the rest of the planet. In June 1969 took place the rebellion of

Stonewall, the first in which actively involved members of the LGBT community defend

against a homophobic attack. Since then, the world would never be the same.

In those years the police raids were an everyday thing. The physical and psychological

violence was validated by the government and society in order to stop the homosexual men

and women; job uncertainty was large since the state dismissed off workers who were

"accused" of homosexuality. Hundreds of gays and lesbians were locked up in mental

institutions, which suffered various treatments seeking to reintegrate into social normalcy.

Electric shocks and even lobotomy -that absurd procedure, in which the brain was sliced,

were popular at the time. The altercation at the Stonewall Inn sharpened the action of a group

that had been gaining awareness of their identity, their need for unity due to the mandatory

exclusion, conviction and the legal abuse they were subjected. The rising tide of protests and

social movements in the late 60's, favored the re-awakening of the homosexual movement.

It was necessary to awaken something that was really always there. However, what happened

before that? One way or another, it is like the gay world started after Stonewall (indeed) but

there was always a gay world out there, which presence (or not) was based on the context in

which it was found. I would like to focus on the early decades of the twentieth century, which

is where the novel I analyze occurred and in which there are a number of interesting things to

say about the gay community.

The industrialization allowed the continuous improvement of the living conditions of the

middle class in the nineteenth century, which produced a profound change in lifestyles. Gay

men were especially benefited as they could easily leave their families to form communities

in which they worked and lived with other men. In the 1890s, New York had its first gay

district: the Bowery. Places like the Columbia Hall, the Manilla Hall, the Little Bucks and

Slide were the preferred spot for male homosexuals meetings. Due to their flamboyant

appearance and fashion, they were often called “fairies”.

In the black neighborhood of Harlem, also in New York, which since the end of World War

can claim the title of Capital of Black Culture in the United States, appeared in the 1920s bars

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where two men could be seen dancing and where there were transvestites. During that time,

the so-called Harlem Renaissance offered a very liberal and open environment, conditions that

were used to create a gay atmosphere. Gay and bisexual artists such as Langston Hughes,

Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Alberta

Hunter and Ethel Waters developed a thriving subculture, which was not necessarily visible

from the outside and gathered many gay activities. According to the book Gay Voices in the

Harlem Renaissance (2003) “ The efforts of anti-vice movements in white areas of New York

led to the closure of numerous establishments that offered or tolerated same sex sexual

entertainment; as such places closed down in, for instance, the Tenderloin area, Harlem’s

entertainment and sex industry prospered” (9). For some reason, Harlem was oblivious to the

prosecution of places in which “indecency” took place.

In Manhattan, Greenwich Village also had a gay area in which both male and female

transvestites were involved in masked balls at Webster Hall. Gay and lesbians were also

received in private clubs, such as Polly Holladay. In the early 1930s, Times Square became a

gay district, where gay men lived together peacefully in boarding houses. Flirting area was,

among others, the harbor that had bars where it was possible to find contacts, including

sailors. Also there were other American cities which also had meeting places, as in San

Francisco, where the Black Cat Bar opened in 1933.

Since the late nineteenth century, lesbian women could decide on their own life for the first

time. The creation in the United States of the first colleges for women opened the possibility

for them of studying. Because the decision to study, with the economic independence that this

meant, was often a decision against marriage, many women lived in groups and couples lasted

beyond the end of the studies. In settlement houses, lesbians could live undisturbed, often

throughout their adult lives. How many of the first academic were lesbians is difficult to

assess and it is still debated among scholars. A cultural and social niche was also found in

organizations like the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) or the radical feminist

Heterodoxy club, founded in 1912 in Greenwich Village. A first icon that lesbians could

identify was the writer Willa Cather (1873-1947), who lived 40 years in Greenwich Village

with her partner and whose novels, as many critics could see, had a gay subtext. However,

there were American lesbians that preferred to live abroad. One of the most famous was the

writer Gertrude Stein (the one who baptized the Lost Generation), which lived nearly forty

years in Paris with her companion Alice B. Toklas. Since the late nineteenth century also

lived there the dancer Isadora Duncan, openly bisexual, and poet Natalie Clifford Barney,

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who had a relationship with Renée Vivien. In Rome lived from the mid-nineteenth century

homosexual sculptor Harriet Hosmer and actress Charlotte Cushman, the latter with her

partner Matilda Hays.

Most black Americans and the lower classes had neither the opportunity to emigrate or go

their own way and lived at subsistence level in which, on the one hand, young people could

not go without the support of the family and secondly, families could not survive without the

work of young people. Especially women, also lesbians, that could not afford to remain

childless in such circumstances, since child labor was necessary for survival. In such

circumstances the creation of gay subcultures was virtually impossible and remained a

privilege only available to the wealthy classes.

Gay people could also meet in cities like New York in the thirties and early forties (when

actions against homosexuality hardened), as long as they belonged to the upper classes.

Famous meeting points were the Metropolitan Opera, the Sutton Theater and stylish bars as

the Oak Room at The Plaza hotel and the bar of the Hotel Astor. Similar points were found in

other major cities. Unlike the meeting places for the disadvantaged, some of this upper class

gay meeting points did not receive police pressure. In the thirties and forties, lesbians in New

York were usually at the Howdy Club.

In the book Gay New York, Chauncey discusses why this gay world that was established

before the Second World War has been ignored and forgotten in both popular memory and

professionals of history and literature. He says that there are three main myths about the gay

community before the upraising that may light an answer: the myths of isolation, invisibility

and internalization.

The myth of isolation is based on the fact that the homophobic attitudes keep off the

development of an extensive gay subculture and forced gay people to live lonely lives during

the decades before the gay liberation movement, but contrary to common belief the gay world

before Stonewall was much bigger than is generally realized. Truly, gay people had to take

precautions, because they might end up arrested for violating decency laws. Police, vigilantes

and any kind of authority always tried to marginalize them from society. It is not the case with

many New Yorkers which showed indifference or even curiosity during those pre-war years.

Despite the odds, the gay subculture flourished and gathered in hoods like the Bowery,

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Harlem, Times Square and Greenwich Village, hence, demystifies the idea of isolation. Many

people embrace the idea of grouping with homosexual partners, while others just pass through

ephemerally, but the thing is, that the fact of being grouped provided a sense of togetherness,

a bonding that will even help them in their work, to find romances, long-lasting friendships or

to find the support that they couldn’t find outside.

The myth of invisibility it is based on the fact that the gay scene was invisible and extremely

untraceable even for other gay people. However, the gay presence before the war was much

more visible than it was after it. Many gay men had distinct codes in order to be noted (red

ties, hair bleached), they went to speakeasies, salons and bars, they appeared in the

newspapers and even starred some spectacles (pansy craze, drag balls, movies). The most

visible ones were the drag queens parades and the entire effeminate and flamboyant

homosexual that participate on it.

The myth of internalization is the one that states that many homosexuals were internalizing

the anti-homosexual attitude that society gave to them, so they can felt different and alien

from everybody. Certainly, many hid their true self because of that while many others, on the

other hand, celebrated that difference even if that meant being arrested or worse.

Another thing worth remarking is the fact that, during the twenties more specifically, people

was not bound to be label so much. . Overall, about homosexuals and bisexuals in the early

twentieth century there was less pressure to be defined in terms of their sexual orientation and

defined as homosexual, and therefore had more freedom to move between different

environments. , the binary homosexual/heterosexual was not the only one that was governing

the perception of sexuality. Various and different kinds of same-sex contacts coexisted,

quoting Christa Schwarz: “ gay-identified men lesbian-identified women; men and women

who explored the realm of sexuality and in the process also experimented in a homosexual

context but did not identify as gay or lesbian; men and women who engaged in both hetero –

and homosexual relationships without viewing these in the context of homo/heterosexuality;

and men an woman who represented “inverts” and displayed gender inversion […] which

could also extend to cross-dressing.” (Schwarz, 12)

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4. Queer Theory

After the fight for liberation of lesbian, gay and transgender people during the seventies in

Western countries, members of these groups came to light with a certain degree of freedom

and gradually conquered rights. In the eighties, the ravages of AIDS were used by a

conservative reaction against lesbians and homosexuals, particularly strong reaction in the

American and British companies. The queer movement can be interpreted as the response to

the attacks on lesbians, gays, transsexuals and transvestites. It is a social phenomenon, a

political stance and a theoretical reflection that brings together members of many different

groups.

The appearance of the queer studies owes its birth not only these fights for rights, but also

thanks to the studies that began to be held in universities and the growing interest shown by

figures like Michel Foucault

But what brought the use of the word queer, a homophobic word per excellence, to be the

main word consort of the collective?

Queer is an answer. It was used as an insult against those who were relegated to the margins

of the dominant sexuality but has been recovered by those receiving this insult. Thus, they

have become the ones in producing the discourse on sexuality (sexual minorities have always

been the object studied, the "other"). Now they are, as Paul B. Preciado says, "the subject of

enunciation." (Parole the Queer 2009)

The term was first coined by the gender theorist Teresa de Lauretis in a special edition of the

feminist journal Differences titled Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, published in

1991. Since the beginning, queer theory tried to demolish the conception that a person’s

identity is stable or fixed at birth. One of the most important values of the term is that is not

fixed, but in constant evolution, like people. And that is also one of the ideas in which

everyone using queer theory agrees: identity is not an essence but a continuum. And what

does this mean? It is not easy to explain, neither to limit its extent. Taking a look at a

paragraph from Queer Theory: An Introduction:

While there is no critical consensus on the definitional limits of queer – indeterminacy being one of its widely

promoted charms- its general outlines are frequently sketched and debated. Broadly speaking, queer describes

those gestures or analytical models which dramatise incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between

chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire. Resisting that model of stability- which claims that heterosexuality

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as its origin, when it is more properly its effect – queer focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire.

Institutionally, queer has been associated most prominently with lesbian and gay subjects, but its analytic

framework also includes such topics as cross – dressing, hermaphroditism, gender ambiguity and gender-

corrective surgery. Whether as transvestite performance or academic deconstruction, queer locates and exploits

the incoherencies in those three terms which stabilize heterosexuality. Demonstrating the impossibility of any

“natural” sexuality, it calls into question even such apparently unproblematic terms as ‘man’ and ‘woman’.

Although not abandoning an analysis of homosexuality, queer studies are more inclusive than

gay and lesbian studies, analyzing, discussing, and debating sexual topics that are considered

queer – that is, odd, abnormal, or peculiar. Similar to feminist social constructivists, queer

theorists posit that our identities and our sexuality are not fixed; rather, they are unstable. No

set of prerequisites exists that defines our human nature or our sexuality. From queer theory's

point of view, it is pointless to discuss what it means to be male or female because our sexual

identities are all different, each being socially constructed. (Bressler 227)

Queer theory in particular has been involved in the so called culture wars in academia, as such

postmodern concepts as gender ambivalence, ambiguity, and multiplicity of identities have

replaced the more clearly defined sexual values of earlier generation (Guerin 239). Due to the

very abstract content of the theory, critics have been very hard on it. Many disagree with its

social constructivism position and don’t think that the sexual identity can be fluid and that its

basis is too theoretical. Others says that it only tries to give notoriety and elitism to a minority

(LGBTQIA)

However, for the upcoming analysis of The Great Gatsby, I will focus more on the part of

queer theory that seeks and tries to rediscover any trace of possible homosexual context that

could be studied and which escapes the heteronormativity that apparently covers it all, when

actually a homosocial and homosexual context was and could be viable.

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5. The Great Gatsby– Queer approach

Many queer theorists assert that a lot of apparently heterosexual narrative texts are likely to be

analyzed from a queer scope. The Great Gatsby is going to be the subject of study. I myself

noticed while reading the book (during the second time, however) that there was something

behind, subtly suggested; and that is a sexually ambiguity present in the novel.

While reading the book Critical Theory Today: An User- Friendly Guide (2003) her author

Lois Tyson asks herself this:

If personal information about writers’ heterosexual lives is relevant to our appreciation of

their work, why is personal information about writers’ non straight lives often excluded from

the realm of pertinent historical data? If the experience of gender and/or racial discrimination

is an important factor in writers’ lives, then why isn’t it important to know about the

oppression suffered by gay, lesbian, and other no straight writers? Clearly, in many of our

college classrooms today, homosexuality is still considered an uncomfortable topic of

discussion. (Tyson, 318).

Anyone who has ever been curious about Fitzgerald's life may know that he was slightly

linked to some founded suspicions about his sexuality. He dealt with homosexuality directly

in Tender is the Night (1934) but he was uncomfortable to be labeled as homosexual.

Nevertheless, his own wife Zelda accused him of being in a relationship with Hemingway.

Both writers had a close relationship since they met in a bar (of course) in Paris, after the

publication of The Great Gatsby. In the book Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of

a Literary Friendship (1999) For the biographer, one of the most famous stories of the couple,

narrated by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, it never happened. Ernest Hemingway told that

Fitzgerald came to him when his wife, Zelda, told him that his penis was too small.

Hemingway (the scene was set in a Parisian restaurant) then accompanied his friend to the

service and there, after comparing, told him not to worry, it was no big deal. Then the two

together would have gone to the Louvre, where they would spend the afternoon measuring

sizes of Greek statues. (Donaldson, Chapter 5)

For Donaldson, this story is invented. The author of Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald tiptoes about

the possible erotic substance of the relationship between the two writers. Fitzgerald's sexuality

was not ambiguous but debatable. For a time, the writer defined himself as "half feminine"(he

once dressed as a showgirl, in another occasion he bantered with the possibility of being gay)

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but his penchant for women was always strong. His last companion, journalist Sheila Graham,

wrote a book about him in which devoted several paragraphs to his qualities as a lover.

Around Hemingway-which his mother dressed him as a girl for years- roamed the rumors that

after his exaltation of male values, a strong repressed homosexuality was locked. Ava

Gardner even hinted that delicately in her memoirs. Arguably the homophobic attitude of

Fitzgerald began shortly after starting his relationship with Hemingway.

Turning now to the novel itself, we should be aware of certain aspects to be taken into

account when assessing this queer look at Fitzgerald's novel and that is the gathering of some

textual evidence that supports the view in this topic. Using the criteria that Tyson exposes

seemed quite valid, regarding the fact that “nor can a small number of such cues support a

lesbian, gay, or queer reading. But a preponderance of these cues, especially if coupled with

other kinds of textual or biographical evidence, can strengthen a lesbian, gay, or queer

interpretation even of an apparently heterosexual text” (Tyson, 339)

The following are the patterns used by Tyson in order to find a gay subtext:

-Homosocial bonding : One or more relationships whose emotional ties are very strong

between two people of the same sex, that is likely to fall in the homoeroticism

-Gay or lesbian “signs”: We can find two types. The first would be features mostly

imposed by heterosexism e.g.: the sissy, pansy/ butch. The second type will include

all the coded signs used by the gay and lesbian subculture as well. The very own

“gay” word, could have been used by Gertrude Stein as a “in group” sign, that was

unaware for heterosexual readers. However, as Tyson remarks, it should be analyzed

carefully when something was used as gay sign or not because, depending of the

situation and context, that may have been put there in purpose, or even unconsciously.

(In The Great Gatsby the word gay may possibly have double meaning.)

-Same sex “doubles”: A sign that can certainly fall in the abstract, which consists of a

pair of characters of the same sex who dress the same, move the same or act the same.

Serve as a mirror image and may share a relationship or not.

-Transgressive sexuality: A text that shows a transgressive sexuality, which mostly

questions heterosexual monogamy, can be analyzed under the thought about other

types of sexuality beyond the heterosexual. This theme set a perfect stage for queer

interpretation.

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Following this features we can start with the analysis itself. I will give a short summary of the

story in order to catch up quickly with the novel:

Nick begins his narrative with a dinner in East Egg at the home of his cousin Daisy Buchanan

and her husband Tom, with whom Nick graduated from Yale. A Midwesterner working on

Wall Street, Nick has taken a home in the less prestigious summer destination, West Egg

(home of some of the nouveau riche), where his neighbor Jay Gatsby, hosts extravagant

parties. At the Buchanan home, Nick meets Daisy’s girlhood friend, golf champion Jordan

Baker, with whom he carries on an amiable involvement throughout most of the novel.

Sometime later, as Tom and Nick are driving into New York, they pick up Myrtle Wilson,

who turns out to be Tom's mistress. Following one of Gatsby’s parties, Jordan reveals to Nick

that Daisy and Gatsby were engaged before the war, and together she and Nick mediate a

renewal of that courtship.

Over the next few weeks, Gatsby and Daisy continue seeing each other, their feelings for each

other returning and deepening. At one point, Daisy makes those feelings clear to Tom who,

despite being shocked by what he has learned, insists that he, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan

do as Daisy has asked and go to New York. While there, Tom confronts Gatsby, who insists

that Daisy never loved him. Daisy, however, says that she did, upsetting Gatsby. The high

level of emotion becomes so uncomfortable that Tom insists that it's time to return home, and

that Daisy ride with Gatsby in Gatsby's car: the car that, as Nick's narration reveals is

involved in the hit-and-run death of Myrtle Wilson. The very own Wilson, after traced the car

(with the help of Tom) went Gatsby’s home and killed him; he shoots himself afterwards.

During the funeral, only his father, Henry C. Gatz, came for the grieving.

Even though in the past, some are the voices who care enough to show the queer or

homosexual subtext of the novel (Keath Fraser, Edward Wasiolek) at the end, critics and

readers always end up directing their attention to the main heterosexual love triangle; as

Maggie Froehlich describes “Southern belle/flapper Daisy Buchanan caught between two

lovers; Tom, husband and father of her child; and her first love Gatsby – renders Nick’s

sexuality irrelevant”

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It could be irrelevant, if not because we can draw some conclusions by analyzing parts of

Nick’s discourse (or lack thereof).

Without a doubt, I believe that we should begin to analyze the theory considering a particular

scene located at the end of Chapter 2, but before, some context is demanded. Tom Myrtle and

Nick went to a party in New York. In that party, Nick met the McKee’s; the wife was “shrill,

languid, handsome and horrible” and claims to be proud that his husband is at the artistic

game (a photographer); he was a ‘pale, feminine man’ that had a ‘white spot of dry lather on

his cheekbone’ which later that evening Nick will remove from his cheek when McKee was

asleep. Later at night, after the incident between Tom and Myrtle, McKee decided to go,

leaving his wife helping Myrtle:

"...McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed.

'Come to lunch some day,' he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

'Where?'

'Anywhere.'

'Keep your hands off the lever,' snapped the elevator boy.

'I beg your pardon,' said Mr.

McKee with dignity. 'I didn't know I was touching it.'

'All right,' I agreed. 'I'll be glad to.'

...I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great

portfolio in his hands.

'Beauty and the Beast...Lonliness...Old Grocery Horse...Brook'n Bridge.'

Then I was lying half-asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the Morning Tribune,

and waiting for the four o'clock train."

Fitzgerald's use of ellipses in this scene is powerfully suggestive of the omission of something

that Nick does not feel comfortable relating openly and directly, and given the circumstances,

a sexual encounter between the two men is a highly plausible suggestion.

If we bear in mind the patterns that were listed before, we have a lot of gay signs: McKee’s

feminine aspect, the masculine (“handsome”) quality of his wife, Nick’s attention to the spot

of lather on McKee’s face(in other words, Nick’s fastidious attention to McKee’s grooming),

Nick’s “following” him out of the room, the lunch invitation, the phallic symbol of the lever,

Nick’s following McKee into his bedroom, McKee’s sitting in bed attired only in his

underwear, and Nick’s remembering nothing else until he wakes up at four o’clock in the

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morning on the floor of the train station. As Tyson stated this is a homoerotic subtext that no

queer critic would miss (345).

Besides, looking closely to Nick, there are tons of gay signs. He turned 30 years old (“a

decade of loneliness, a thinning list of young men to know…”), never been married or

engaged, and his stories with women never got to culminate or settle. Nick is telling the reader

that he has absolutely no plans on marrying a woman when he accepts the idea that the next

ten years of his life will be spent alone. Also, Nick tells the reader that he prefers having only

single males as friends, which raises concerns about his heterosexuality. Nick knows and

accepts that he is trapped for the next ten years between his plan to not marry because of the

fact that he is not sexually attracted to women and his inability to act on his homosexual

inclinations toward men; however, the purpose of keeping a "thinning” list of single men to

know shows that perhaps he is still desperately searching for a suitable partner. He returned

from the First World War, where many soldiers discovered their sexual identity and many hid

it because of fear. Important fact is that he moved to New York of the 1920s, a place where

transgressive sexuality was at its best (the infidelity of Tom/Myrtle plus the one

Daisy/Gatsby), and also, a place where a “silent and forgotten” gay community established:

“by the 1920s gay people had created three distinct gay neighborhood enclaves, Greenwich

Village, Harlem, and Times Square, each with a different class and ethnic character, gay

cultural style, and public reputation” (Gay New York, Chauncey). His way of speaking and

describing Gatsby is full of homoerotism: "I must have felt pretty weird by that time because

I could think of nothing except the luminosity of [Gatsby's] pink suit under the moon”

(TGG,150). He remarks his feminine features, his gorgeous appearance and limitless

romanticism, which compensate any shady business (bootlegging)

In Chapter 7 we can situate Nick in another scene with homosexual implications, while he

was at the train:

The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a

while into her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers, lapsed despairingly

into deep heat with a desolate cry. Her pocket-book slapped to the floor. ‘Oh, my!’ she gasped. I picked it up

with a weary bend and handed it back to her, holding it at arm’s length and by the extreme tip of the corners to

indicate that I had no designs upon it—but every one near by, including the woman, suspected me just the same.

‘Hot!’ said the conductor to familiar faces. ‘Some weather! Hot! Hot! Hot! Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is

it…?’My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. That anyone should care in this

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heat whose flushed lips he kissed, whose head made damp the pajama pocket over his heart! (TGG, 120-

121)

First Nick returns the purse with a “weary bend” and indicating that he “had no designs upon

it”. Because of the concern about prostitution in the Victorian period, the female genitalia

were connected metaphorically with “purse”. Then he fantasizes with the possibility of

kissing the driver because, with all that heat, why should anyone care whose flushed lips kiss?

Following the textual cues given by Tyson, the same sex doubles make an appearance in the

form of the “twin yellow girls” in Chapter 3. They dress the same, talk alike, and they seem to

go without any man. But I would like to go further in the same sex doubles theory. Reading

Wasiolek in “The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby” I could be able to connect something he

quoted from a fellow colleague, Patricia Pacey Thornton, into the same sex doubles. She calls

Nick and Jordan "androgynous twins." They "cannot properly be called opposite sex since

they seem to have equally divided between them masculine and feminine genes. They are, in

fact, androgynous twins, and their attraction-repulsion results from their shared and divided

natures" (Wasiolek, 16)

Nick has features considered feminine: his ability to listen to others, his providing food and

nourishment to Daisy and Gatsby, his human warmth…

Jordan Baker, analogously, is a golf player (male dominant sport by that time) and is always

described in masculine terms: “She was a slender, small-breasted girl with an erect carriage

which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet”

(TGG, 15), she has a “hard, jaunty body” (TGG, 63) even though she usually dress in very

feminine way, her “mannish” side beats her female side. Or at least, this is we perceive

through Nick’s eyes.

This makes Jordan also a character full of lesbian signs. Indeed, she is also labeled as a

lesbian by Maggie Froehlich, in her essay “Jordan Baker, Gender Dissent, and Homosexual

Passing in the Great Gatsby”:

“Aside from her relationship with Nick, all of Jordan’s relationships and interactions are with

women, and it is in women – Daisy, the girls at Gatsby’s parties – that she takes an active

interest; Jordan is, at least, a woman-oriented and woman-identified woman. Tom disapproves

of Daisy’s and Jordan’s intimate friendship. As a professional athlete, Jordan is a

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transgressive figure, the phallic golf club liberating her from a patriarchal capitalist economy

that is the subject of Nick as a bonds man.” (Froehlich, 91).

This is how we can determine that the couple Jordan/Nick is basically two queer characters

that act as doubles and under their both “shared and divide nature”.

We mention before that the New York of the 20s was also an example of transgressive

sexuality, and The Great Gatsby is an example of it. The novel portrays the adultery of Tom

with Myrtle, as well the extra-marital affair that Daisy have with Gatsby after reconnecting

with him again. However, we can find more beyond the main characters. Just by taking a

quick glimpse at the ambience in the many parties that took place in the book, Nick realized

that anything can happen in New York: “Most of the remaining women were now having

fights with men said to be their husbands […] One of the men was talking with curious

intensity to a young actress his wife was […] broke down entirely and resorted to flank

attacks” (TGG, 52). Interestingly, when Gatsby and Nick met at that same party, the attractive

host with “tanned skin attractively tight on his face” asked him if he would like to go in the

morning to try out his new acquisition, a hydroplane. Jordan, smiling, asked Nick if he was

“having a gay time now”. Gay was a code word. Gay people could use it to identify

themselves to other gays without revealing their identity to those not in the wise, for not

everyone knew that it implied a specifically sexual preference. His early use as a code word is

unknown. It was originally used to describe things pleasurable, but its usage by the “flaming

faggots” dated the start mostly in the 1920s. (Chauncey, Introduction)

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6. Conclusions

From the beginning of this humble analysis, the main idea was to support with evidence, the

fact that make a queer analysis of The Great Gatsby, would not be far-fetched. There are

numerous and varied analysis of one of the most important novels of the past century in

American literature. However, the one made from a queer perspective it always remains

forgotten and without enough credit, exactly like that big gay world that was there in the first

steps of the twentieth century, years in which F. S. Fitzgerald wrote this story. Determine or

discuss the sexual orientation of Fitzgerald would be futile at this point (even leaving aside

the common tattle of his persona with Hemingway), but it cannot be denied that he always

showed a certain degree of interest and attention for those people he called "fairies". So taking

into account the data relating to the real presence of the gay community in those years it is not

unreasonable at all to think that the novel may contain a gay subtext, whether his author was

consciously about it or not. However, Fitzgerald was part of the modernist tendency of the

time and The Great Gatsby, as well as many of his work, was full of deep symbolism and

subtleties. This could reinforce the theory of introducing a gay narrator, hidden enough that it

did not present problems when publishing what would be his masterpiece, in a time when gay

people were viewed with curiosity, but also with a lot of rejection. This leads me to say that,

without a doubt, queer studies are necessary nowadays when it comes to analyze literature

because it shows and expose what escapes the rule. Leaving aside how abstract some of its

theories can be, I grasp the central (at least under my own criteria) aim of it: no matter if man,

woman, straight or gay; we are, above all, people.

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7. Bibliography

Bressler, C. E. (2003). Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall: Chapter 12

Chauncey, G. (1994). Gay New York: Gender, Urban culture, and the Makings of the Gay

Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books: Introduction

Donaldson, S. (2001). Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship.

Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.

Fitzgerald, F. S., & Tanner, T. (2000). The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin.

Froehlich, Maggie G. (2010) Jordan Baker, Gender Dissent, and Homosexual Passing in The

Great Gatsby.

The Space Between

VI:1

(2010):

81-103.

Monmouth

University.Web.<http://www.monmouth.edu/the_space_between/articles/MaggieFroehlick20

10.pdf>.

Guerin, W. L. (1966). A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Harper

& Row: 239

Jagose, A. (1996). Queer Theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press: 3-

10

McGarry, M., & Wasserman, F. (1998). Becoming Visible: An illustrated History of Lesbian

and Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Penguin Studio: 51-65

Preciado P.B. (2009). "Queer": History of a word [Web log post]. Retrieved January 25, 2016,

from http://paroledequeer.blogspot.com.es/2015/04/queerhistory-of-word-by-paul-b-

preciado.html

Schwarz, A. B. (2003). Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press: 9-12.

Tyson, L. (1999). Critical Theory Today: A User-friendly Guide. New York: Garland Pub:

317-353

Wasiolek, E.(1992) The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby. The International Fiction Review.

Web. < https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/IFR/article/download/14120/15202.> (PDF)

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