摘 要

《夜色温柔》是美国爵士时代著名作家菲茨杰拉德的长篇小说，通过描写患上精神病的富家女尼科尔与年轻医生迪克恋爱，结婚，但逐渐在婚后丈夫的堕落下觉醒自我意识，进而反抗的过程，展现了美国爵士时代女性在爱情，经济，社会地位等方面的发展斗争。本文以小说中三位主要女性人物的性格特点，心理活动和语言，行为作为研究对象，探讨《夜色温柔》中所反映的爵士时代女性的意识觉醒和解放。

本文对波伏娃的女性主义理论中的他者概念，女性气质以及女性解放方式进行阐述，从而对主要女性人物的性格特点，心理、语言、行为进行分析。本文所侧重的，是从女性的角度去分析人物，力图使其摆脱男性角度理解下而产生的污名化。

本文包含五个部分。第一部分，导论介绍小说作者及研究状况；第二部分，详尽介绍波伏娃在《第二性》中所阐述的女性主义理论，具体包括他者的概念，被定义的女性气质和女性的解放之路等；第三部分，进行具体的人物性格特点、心理活动、语言和行为分析，主要是结合女性主义理论分析其与传统男权社会下女性的不同；第四部分，说明三位女性人物与爵士时代女性发展的联系；最后，本文得出人物均不同程度具有新女性特点这一结论。

关键词：女性主义；新女性；反男权；对比研究

Abstract

Tender Is the Night, written by American Jazz age writer, F. S. Fitzgerald, describes the life of the rich girl Nicole suffering from mental illness, who married with young doctor Dick and was raised self-consciousness and began her resistance due to husband’s degradation, thus showing the struggle and development of women in Jazz Age women in love, economy, social status, etc. The paper focuses discussion on the female figures’ personalities, psychological activities, discourse, and behaviors, thus analyzing female awareness and liberation in the Jazz Age.

This paper expounds on the concept of the other, femininity, and ways of female liberation in Beauvoir's feminist theory, which supports the analysis of the personality, psychology, discourse, and behavior of the three female characters. The focus of this paper is to analyze the characters from the perspective of women, hence enabling them to get rid of the stigma caused by the understanding from the perspective of men.

This paper consists of four parts: the introduction, three chapters as the body paragraphs, and the conclusion. In the introduction, the author and the researches on this novel will be introduced. In the first chapter, a detailed statement of the feminist theory of Beauvoir in The Second Sex, including the conception of “the Other”, the determined womanliness, and the ways of women's liberation. In the second chapter, specific personalities, psychological activities, discourse, and behaviors are analyzed, mainly combining with feminist theories to analyze the differences between them and women in the traditional patriarchal society. in the third chapter, the connection between three female characters and women’s development in the Jazz Age is explained. Finally, this paper concludes that the female characters analyzed all have the characteristics of a new woman in different degrees.

Key Words: Feminism; New Woman; Anti-Patriarchy; Contrastive Study

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction to F. S. Fitzgerald and Tender Is the Night 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

2 Feminism: Feminist Theory of Simone de Beauvoir 4

2.1 Otherness and Absolute Otherness 4

2.2 Predetermined and Labelled Womanliness 5

2.3 Liberation Ways of Female 6

3 A Feminist Perspective Analysis of the Three Female Characters in Tender Is the Night 9

3.1 Nicole Diver—from “Living in Itself” to “Living for Herself” 9

3.2 Rosemary Hoyt—Needn’t to Be A Woman with Womanliness 11

3.3 Baby Warren—Pioneer in the Road of Female Liberation 13

4 Progress of Females in Jazz Age 15

5 Conclusion 17

References 18

Acknowledgements 19

Feminist Perspective: On the Female Characters of Tender Is the Night by F. S. Fitzgerald

1 Introduction

1.1 Introduction to F. S. Fitzgerald and Tender Is the Night

Born in St. Paul. Minnesota in 1896 and raised in New York, Francis Scott Fitzgerald learned southern manners from his father and received upper-middle-class upbringing from his doting mother, which arose his desire for the upper class to some extent. His formative years in Buffalo already presented his keen interest in literature. In 1913, Fitzgerald enrolled at Princeton University, where he became friends with future critics and writers and practiced writing in several clubs. Falling love with rich socialite Zelda Sayre, he published This Side of Paradise to enhance his financial situation. After their marriage, Fitzgerald and his wife went to Europe, where his writing was influenced by the modernist writers and artists of the “Lost Generation” expatriate community. The publication of his second novel propelled him into the New York City elite and triggered his story writing for magazines to maintain his lifestyle. Financial pressure as upper class, a failed marriage, and Zelda’s schizophrenia prompted Fitzgerald to complete his final novel, Tender Is the Night (Esteve amp; Huertas: 2018).

Fitzgerald, best known for his novels describing the flamboyance and vanity of the Jazz Age, is wildly regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. His most famous novel is The Great Gatsby, which is highly praised and labelled as the “Great American Novel”. However, Fitzgerald considered Tender Is the Night, his last completed novel, to be his greatest work. Although it received a tepid response upon publication, it has grown in compliment over the years and is broadly regarded as one of Fitzgerald's best books. His works also have inspired many writers including T. S. Eliot. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda were regarded as the prince and princess of their generation.

Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel accomplished by F. S. Fitzgerald, which was first published in 1934, and its title is taken from the poem “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats. In 1998, this novel was ranked 28th on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Although the background is set in Europe, this novel mainly depicts the figures and their life in the American Jazz Age. Nicole Warren is a rich girl who gets schizophrenia due to the sexual abuse by her father. During the treatment, Nicole met Dick Diver, a promising young doctor and psychiatrist, and exchanged letters with each other for a period, which is thought to benefit Nicole’s wellbeing. As her treatment makes progress, Nicole becomes fascinated with Dick, who in turn develops Florence Nightingale syndrome, and they get married, though strongly objected by Nicole’s sister, Baby Warren, who suspects that Dick marries out of a financial promotion. Nevertheless, Nicole pays for the enterprise of the psychiatric clinic for Dick, he still starts an affair with the young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, gradually gives up practicing medicine and becomes increasingly alcoholic. With Dick’s degradation, Nicole, on the other hand, progresses emotional stability and is aware of her independence and personal desire. Eventually, she divorces Dick, who loses his position both in social and familial, and marries Tommy Barban, one of her suitors.

1.2 Literature Review

Compared with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night receives less attention since its revelation. However, in recent years increasing researchers notice the richness and diversity of the topics in this novel. For scholars overseas, this point is fully proved. In the paper "Things aren't arranged so that this could be as you want" Jules Peterson and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Playing in the Dark" in Tender Is the Night by Messenger, C., seemingly unimportant figure Jules Peterson, an “Afro-European” and his death are discussed from the perspective of racialism (Messenger, 2019). Besides, paper "The world only exists through your apprehension" World War I in This Side of Paradise and Tender Is the Night created by Rennie, D. discusses the representation of World War I in Tender Is the Night, and compares it with Fitzgerald’s another novel to show Tender’s matureness and the influences upon human (Rennie, 2016). Also, scholars overseas pay some attention to the male figures in Tender Is the Night. For example, in Stepping out in bathers: Displaying masculinities in F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Willa Cather, author Heaton, S. gives masculinity the great significance and makes the comparison between several male characters in different novels, thus taking their implication into discussion (Heaton, 2015). Nonetheless, papers about Tender overseas are much less than in domestic.

On the other hand, domestic scholars mainly focus on the decadence of the hero Dick Diver, and the disillusionment of the American dream. For instance, the thesis “On the Collapse of American Dream in Tender Is the Night” written by Hu Rong in 2005 discusses hero Diver Dick’s spiritual and moral disintegration and connects the collapse of his dream with the historical background of the American dream (Hu, 2005). The analysis of females, however, rarely serves the feminism but as the foil for male. Some scholars have tended to figure out the unconventional female characters of Tender Is the Night, but usually as the temptation accounting for the male’s degeneration (Chen, 2011). Namely, in the paper “Disillusionment of American Dream” of Zhao Feng published in 2010, the degradation of Dick is partly attributed to the seduction of Nicole’s beauty and the power of Nicole’s sister, Baby Warren (Zhao, 2010). Moreover, in these studies, female characters of this novel are stigmatized, while hero Dick is interpreted as the innocent and even as a grand devotee. For instance, in the paper “On Biblical Archetype of Dick Diver in Tender Is the Night” written by Zhang Dan, Dick is compared with Adam and Jesus, suggesting his great love and sacrifice. Meanwhile, heroine Nicole is equated with Eve for her temptation which “leads” to Dick’s degradation (Zhang, 2016). Whether in domestic or overseas, female characters and their positive and revolutionary effects are ignored, or even distorted. In fact, the multi-dimension and richness of female characters in this novel, the antinomy between the resistance against absolute Other identity and deeply-rooted impact of male chauvinism in the same figure deserve more attention and profound discussion. Therefore, it is necessary for this research to analyze the main female characters from the feminist perspective, instead of male chauvinism, and also to consult the feminism theory of Simone de Beauvoir.

2 Feminism: Feminist Theory of Simone de Beauvoir

2.1 Otherness and Absolute Otherness

Inspired by the analysis of self-consciousness development of Hegel, Beauvoir gives out the conception of “the Other”. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir (2015) explains it as:

On the contrary, they become clear if, following Hegel, a fundamental hostility to any other consciousness is found in consciousness itself; the subject posits itself only in opposition; it asserts itself as the essential and sets up the other as inessential, as the object. (p. 27)

There is a hostile attitude between “the subject” and “the other”, “the essential” and “the inessential”, referring to the theory of Hegel. The two parties aware the threat such hostile attitude brings, thus regarding each other as “the other”. Beauvoir argues that the application of Hegel's master-slave dialectics can account for this essential-and-inessential relationship between man and woman. In his dialectics, the master represents freedom, controlling the slave by making use of his position; the slave, with little freedom, obeys the command of the master and depends on the power of the master. As time goes by, the dominant master enjoys the fruition of the slave, and meanwhile relies on it; therefore, he begins to lose freedom. Oppressed slave, aware of his situation, strives to overthrow master’s rule and finally achieves liberation through labor (Jin, 2018). According to the master-slave dialectics, the absolute dominant position and authority of males are procured by neglecting females and regarding them as the Other. As for women, they succumb to the absolute privilege of men on the one hand, but because of the female's own physiological and psychological features, on the other hand, they also dominate men, who need women to establish their dominance and to bear offspring.