Head and Shoulders (short story)

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"Head and Shoulders"
Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald
SatEve22120.jpg
The story as it appeared in the February 21, 1920 issue of the Saturday Evening Post
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Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Short story
Publication
Published in Saturday Evening Post
Publication type Periodical
Publisher Curtis Publishing Company
Media typePrint (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publication dateFebruary 21, 1920 [1]

"Head and Shoulders" is a short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. [1] Written in November 1919, [2] it was Fitzgerald's first story to be published in the Saturday Evening Post , with the help of his new literary agent, Harold Ober. [3] The Post paid $400 for the story. [4] The story appeared in the February 21, 1920 issue and was illustrated by Charles D. Mitchell. [1] It later appeared in his short story collection Flappers and Philosophers . [5]

Contents

The story follows a young prodigy at Princeton who falls for a spirited dancer in spite of himself. The same year it was adapted into a silent film The Chorus Girl's Romance starring Viola Dana as Marcia Meadows and Gareth Hughes as Horace Tarbox. [6] [2]

Plot summary

Horace Tarbox is a young and prospective intellectual, completely absorbed in his studies. Marcia shows up at his door one day (the "rap" alluded to in the story's ending) and takes to showing Horace another side of life. It quickly snowballs into an improbable pairing between a philosopher and an actress.

Marcia talks Horace into watching her in the Varsity Show, and he finds emotions and appreciation for a beautiful woman. She returns the affection, being drawn to their connection as "infant prodigies", as she calls them. The story concludes as a role reversal of the two characters, for the better or for the worse, as Horace becomes a successful entertainer using gymnastics and Marcia becomes a successful writer.

The title comes from Marcia's idea that she represents the shoulders as a "chorus girl" known for shaking her shoulders during her dance routine in order to support the couple, and Horace as the head for all the ideas and thinking. Towards the end of the story, this dynamic reverses: Horace's athletic shoulders financially supporting Marcia's writing, as she becomes the supposed "head" or thinker in the family, as an acclaimed writer.

Critical analysis

The central tension in Head and Shoulders revolves around the opposition between cerebral achievement and visceral experience. Horace Tarbox, a seventeen-year-old Yale graduate student, embodies pure intellectualism taken to an almost absurd extreme. [7] His name suggests containment, a mind boxed in by academic pursuits, with easy chairs named after philosophers David Hume and George Berkeley representing the comfort of abstract thought divorced from direct engagement. [8]

Marcia Meadows serves as Horace's antithesis, representing embodied experience and "the adventures of life, the passion of art and a steaming sexuality." Her surname evokes openness and natural growth, contrasting sharply with Horace's confined existence. [9]

The story operates on multiple levels of irony, particularly regarding gender expectations and social hierarchies. The title initially positions Horace as intellectual leader (head) and Marcia as physical supporter (shoulders), but the narrative systematically undermines these assumptions through dramatic reversal. [10] Marcia's prophetic comment that "the shoulders'll have to keep shaking a little longer until the old head gets started" proves unexpectedly accurate.

Horace's transformation from rigid intellectualism through romantic awakening to existential displacement demonstrates how genuine passion disrupts established patterns of being. When he struggles to think "with the idea of Marcia in his head," Fitzgerald captures emotional awakening's disorienting effect on purely cerebral existence. [11]

While Marcia initially appears as the archetypal free spirit awakening the repressed intellectual, Fitzgerald's characterization proves more sophisticated. Her evolution from vaudeville performer to acclaimed author with "Sandra Pepys, Syncopated" reveals intellectual capacity that neither she nor others initially recognize. [12] Her literary success—derived from Horace's recommendation of Samuel Pepys's diary—demonstrates her ability to synthesize high and popular culture in ways that elude pure academics.

The devastating conclusion delivers complete role reversal: Horace becomes a performer of "trick gymnastics," literally using his body for entertainment, while Marcia achieves literary acclaim. [13] The "complete absurdity" of Anton Laurier paying homage to Marcia while she cannot pronounce his name underscores Fitzgerald's skepticism about how authentic merit is recognized in modern society.

Literary Technique and Cultural Significance

Fitzgerald employs dramatic irony throughout, allowing readers to perceive the gap between characters' expectations and outcomes. The gymnasium where Horace eventually performs becomes a space where intellectual and physical prowess merge, suggesting the artificial nature of mind-body dualism. [14] The title metaphor extends beyond simple role reversal to suggest interdependence—the tragedy lies not in the characters' exchange of roles but in their inability to maintain both aspects simultaneously.

The narrative voice maintains ironic distance that prevents the story from becoming pure satire or sentimental romance. Fitzgerald's third-person limited perspective shifts between characters while preserving comedic undertones that highlight the absurdity of rigid social categories. [15]

Head and Shoulders captures post-World War I cultural tensions, particularly the clash between traditional intellectual values and emerging popular culture. Marcia's vaudeville background represents democratic popular entertainment, while Horace's academic world embodies exclusive high culture. [16] The story critiques how capitalism transforms both intellectual and artistic pursuits into commodities, reducing human potential to marketable skills. [17]

The pattern of mismatched lovers anticipates central relationships in Fitzgerald's major works. Like Jay Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, the Horace-Marcia romance involves characters from different social spheres whose attraction proves both inevitable and problematic. The theme of career sacrifice for love, appearing here in embryonic form, receives devastating treatment in Tender Is the Night, where Dick Diver's professional decline exceeds Horace's academic abandonment. [18]

The story's biographical resonance with Fitzgerald's experience—his anxiety to prove earning potential to Zelda Sayre, his movement from literary to popular publications—adds significance as both artistic creation and economic necessity, embodying the very tensions it explores between authentic expression and commercial success. [19]

Works cited

  • Bruccoli, Matthew J. (2002) [1981]. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.). Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN   978-1-57003-455-8 – via Internet Archive.
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott (February 21, 1920). "Head and Shoulders". The Saturday Evening Post . Vol. 192, no. 34. Philadelphia: The Curtis Publishing Company. pp. 16–17, 81–82, 85–86. Retrieved December 29, 2021– via HathiTrust.
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1998) [1989]. Bruccoli, Matthew J. (ed.). The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald . New York: Scribner's. ISBN   0-684-84250-5 – via Internet Archive.
  • Milford, Nancy (1970). Zelda: A Biography . New York: Harper & Row. LCCN   66-20742 – via Internet Archive.
  • Mizener, Arthur (1951) [1949]. The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald . Boston, Massachusetts: Riverside Press – via Internet Archive.
  • Tate, Mary Jo (1998) [1997]. F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work . New York: Facts On File. ISBN   0-8160-3150-9 – via Internet Archive.
  • Turnbull, Andrew (1962) [1954]. Scott Fitzgerald . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. LCCN   62-9315 – via Internet Archive.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Fitzgerald 1920.
  2. 1 2 Tate 1998, p. 111.
  3. ↑ Fitzgerald 1998, p. 23.
  4. ↑ Tate 1998, p. 63.
  5. ↑ Fitzgerald 1998, p. 23; Turnbull 1962, p. 340.
  6. ↑ Mizener 1951, p. 330.
  7. ↑ Bruccoli, Matthew J. (2002) [1981]. Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.). Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 437, 468–469. ISBN   978-1-57003-455-8 – via Internet Archive.
  8. ↑ Porter, Bernard H. "The First Publications of F. Scott Fitzgerald." Twentieth Century Literature 5, no. 4 (1960): 176–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/440850.
  9. ↑ Donaldson, Scott. "Scott Fitzgerald's Romance with the South." The Southern Literary Journal 5, no. 2 (1973): 3–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20077458.
  10. ↑ Drowne, Kathleen, Kirk Curnutt, and Ruth Prigozy. "Brief Reviews." The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 5 (2006): 182–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41583121.
  11. ↑ Meyers, Jeffrey (10 June 1994). Scott Fitzgerald. Macmillan. ISBN   978-0333599358.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  12. ↑ Shideler, James H. "'Flappers and Philosophers,' and Farmers: Rural-Urban Tensions of the Twenties." Agricultural History 47, no. 4 (1973): 283–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3741594.
  13. ↑ Comins, Barbara. "'Outrageous Trap': Envy and Jealousy in Wharton's 'Roman Fever' and Fitzgerald's 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair.'" Edith Wharton Review 17, no. 1 (2001): 9–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43512918.
  14. ↑ Milford, Nancy (1970). Zelda: A Biography . New York: Harper & Row. p. 380. LCCN   66-20742 – via Internet Archive.
  15. ↑ Porter, Bernard H. "The First Publications of F. Scott Fitzgerald." Twentieth Century Literature 5, no. 4 (1960): 176–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/440850.
  16. ↑ Donaldson, Scott. "Scott Fitzgerald's Romance with the South." The Southern Literary Journal 5, no. 2 (1973): 3–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20077458.
  17. ↑ Drowne, Kathleen, Kirk Curnutt, and Ruth Prigozy. "Brief Reviews." The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 5 (2006): 182–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41583121.
  18. ↑ Shideler, James H. "'Flappers and Philosophers,' and Farmers: Rural-Urban Tensions of the Twenties." Agricultural History 47, no. 4 (1973): 283–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3741594.
  19. ↑ Comins, Barbara. "'Outrageous Trap': Envy and Jealousy in Wharton's 'Roman Fever' and Fitzgerald's 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair.'" Edith Wharton Review 17, no. 1 (2001): 9–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43512918.
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