"The Bridal Party" | |
---|---|
Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
Country | United States |
Language | English language |
Publication | |
Published in | Saturday Evening Post |
Publication type | newspaper |
Publication date | 1930 |
The Bridal Party is a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and featured in the Saturday Evening Post on August 9, 1930. The story is based on Ludlow Fowler's brother, Powell Fowler, May 1930 Paris wedding. It is Fitzgerald's first story dealing with the stock market crash and celebrates the end of the period when wealthy Americans colonized Paris. [1]
This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.(January 2018) |
The story begins in Normandy, sometime around May. The main character, Mike Curly, is introduced, along with the news that his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Dandy, whom he dated for two years, is engaged and will be getting married in Paris. It explains that the two broke up because of Michael's lack of money. He was devastated and could not let go, evident by his insecurity and the fact that he carried around photographs of her. He also stayed away from other girls, that she would do the same with men. One day outside of a shop, he encounters Caroline and her fiancé, Hamilton Rutherford. Rutherford invites Michael to a string of events, including his bachelor dinner, a party, and tea. As they talk, his feelings for her resurge. As they parted ways, Michael feels he will never be happy again. At his hotel, the concierge delivers a telegram, which states that his grandfather died and that he would be inheriting a quarter of a million dollars. Because of his newly found fortune he seemingly out of nowhere inherited a sum of confidence, so he decides he will try to win Caroline back.
When he attends one of the parties, he meets Hamilton's father, and as more people arrive, he feels increasingly inadequate. When he finds Caroline, he is reluctant to tell her about his inheritance. They eventually dance together, and she explains how she is over him and that he should do the same. She says she feels sorry for him, and that she needs someone like Hamilton to make all the decisions. Gathering enough nerve, Michael writes to Hamilton to confront him about his intentions and asks him to meet in the bar of a hotel. Michael arrives and overhears Hamilton talking to another man about how easy it is to control a woman, and that you cannot stand for any nonsense—adding, that there hardly any men who possess their wives anymore and that he is going to be one of them. Michael becomes outraged and questions his out-of-date attitude. Hamilton strikes back, saying that Michael is too soft. Eventually, Hamilton says goodbye and leaves.
Michael rolls up at the next party with new clothing. A woman, Marjorie Collins, shows up and demands to speak to Hamilton, threatening to cause a scene. Michael avoids the drama and goes to see Caroline at her hotel. They argue about how Hamilton treats her, and Michael eventually confesses his love for her. He tries to explain to her he has money now that his love for her is true and that he can't survive without her. Caroline does not seem to care and she notices he has new, expensive clothes. At this point, Michael tells her about his inheritance. "I have the money, my grandfather left me about a quarter of a million dollars." quoted Michael. "How perfectly well! I can't tell you how glad I am... you were always a person who ought to have money." quoted Caroline.
Hamilton returns from the party and explains that the woman who tried to blackmail him gave him a secret code to a telegram. As he opens a telegram, he discovers that all of his fortunes are gone, because he had stuck with a mistake for too long. At the point when Caroline could decide to stay with Hamilton or leave him for a newly rich Michael, she surprisingly chooses Hamilton. Michael attends the ceremony, and he learns from an acquaintance, George Packman, that a man had offered Hamilton a substantial salaried job right before the wedding. As the reception carries on, Michael realizes that he has not thought of Caroline for hours and that he was cured from his inability to move on. He is no longer bitter, and the story concludes with him wondering which bridesmaid he has made a date with for that night.
The Jazz Age represented a break with tradition, due to the feeling of disconnect created by modernity. It was the "decade of prosperity, excess and abandon, which began after the end of World War I and ended with the 1929 stock market crash." [2] Fitzgerald was included in the Lost Generation, a group of U.S. writers who grew up during the war and created their literary reputations in the 1920s. They were "lost" because in the postwar world, the values that were passed on to them seemed irrelevant. They possessed a spiritual alienation from a country that appeared to be "provincial, materialistic and emotionally barren." [3] As James L. West, Penn State Fitzgerald scholar, said, "He [Fitzgerald] saw with considerable accuracy, the excesses and gaudiness of American society in the modern era—but he saw the great willingness of the heart that's also deeply American." [4]
One life event relatable to "The Bridal Party" occurred when his then-fiancée, Zelda Sayre, broke off their engagement because of Fitzgerald's poor economic status. [5] After his novel This Side of Paradise was published, it provided him with almost instant success, and a week later he married Zelda. Around 1930, he was drinking "heavily when Powell Fowler was married in Paris—there was a round of parties from which he never sobered up." [6] Like his life at that time, The Bridal Party focuses on themes such as the Great Depression, and whether one should marry for love or money. Although this was one of the earliest examples of biographical correlations found in Fitzgerald's work, his novels This Side of Paradise, Tender is the night , and many others contain more similarities to his life—particularly the tumultuous relationship he had with his schizophrenic wife Zelda.
Growing up during the Great Depression and between world wars, Fitzgerald provides a romantic and economic parallel in "The Bridal Party". Michael Curly's statement, "I don't want to live—I used to dream about our home, our children," accurately reflects the mindset of American people during and after the stock market crash of 1929. [7] For those who lost their homes, life savings and notions of the American dream, it was hard to find a way out of their predicament. The turning point for the protagonist in this story can be seen as the sunlit door from which his newlywed ex-girlfriend exits, "forward to the future." [8]
"The Bridal Party" is Fitzgerald's first story that touches on the dramatic effects of such a devastating event as the stock market crash. Though other themes are evident throughout the story, such as the effects of wealth on society, and excessive parties set in the Roaring Twenties, the relationship between Mr. Curly and his ex, Caroline can easily be compared to the stock market crash. The news of her engagement delivers a sudden grim reality to Michael, much like the Great Depression itself. It is assumed that Michael and his ex-girlfriend had a great relationship before their separation, but the reader finds that he "lost her slowly, tragically, uselessly, because he had no money." [9] This must have been how stock traders on Wall Street felt as they watched the value of stocks decline and tried to sell them in a panic on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. [10] When he discovers that she is going to marry another, richer, man he pessimistically thought, "I will never be happy at all anymore." [11] It is obvious that he is overreacting to horrible news and does not know what to think about the situation. Even Michael's view of Caroline's appearance as "strained and tired—shadows under her eyes" is reminiscent of Dorothea Lange's documentary photographs from the Great Depression. [12] Her subjects, like those seen in Migrant Mother, are abandoned and desperate with little hope in their faces. Caroline later says that she feels sorry for the way they were, but she was over him, and he should move on as well. [13] His depression was intensified by feelings of inadequacy, due to a lack of money. Seeing his ex with another man only made his misery worse. His situation is similar to that of Americans during that time because neither had experienced such widespread economic failure. [10]
As pompous and misogynistic as her fiancé was, he rightfully says, "Your affair was founded on sorrow, it seems to me that a marriage ought to be based on hope." [14] Perhaps the same hope that people needed during the thirties to recover from the Great Depression. Luckily, Franklin D. Roosevelt's plans for a New Deal and the economic resurgence provided by World War II pulled the country out of its rut. After Michael "floats in an abyss of helplessness", he finally gains the ability to let go. A simple change in his attitude causes the "bitterness to melt out of him," and he is finally able to move on. Though Michael is initially heartbroken, his "New Deal" is finding inner peace by realizing how happy the two are and that he would not be able to have a good future by dwelling on the negative past. While this story possesses significant ties to the stock market crash and the Great Depression, it is relevant today because of the current concerns about recession.
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire with an obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
Zelda Fitzgerald was an American novelist, painter, and socialite. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, to a wealthy Southern family, she became locally famous for her beauty and high spirits. In 1920, she married writer F. Scott Fitzgerald after the popular success of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. The novel catapulted the young couple into the public eye, and she became known in the national press as the first American flapper. Because of their wild antics and incessant partying, she and her husband became regarded in the newspapers as the enfants terribles of the Jazz Age. Alleged infidelity and bitter recriminations soon undermined their marriage. After Zelda traveled abroad to Europe, her mental health deteriorated, and she had suicidal and homicidal tendencies, which required psychiatric care. Her doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia, although later posthumous diagnoses posit bipolar disorder.
Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald was an American writer and journalist and the only child of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. She matriculated from Vassar College and worked for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and other publications. She became a prominent member of the Democratic Party.
Matthew Joseph Bruccoli was an American professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He was an expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald; his biography of Fitzgerald, published in 1981, was considered the standard biography for decades. He also wrote about other writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and John O'Hara, and was editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Save Me the Waltz is a 1932 novel by American writer Zelda Fitzgerald. It is a semi-autobiographical account of her life in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era and her marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel recounts the lives of Jazz Age hedonists Alabama Beggs and her husband David Knight, thinly-disguised alter-egos of their real-life counterparts. An aging Alabama aspires to become a prima ballerina, but an infected blister from her pointe shoe leads to blood poisoning, forever ending her dreams of fame.
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in March 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with flappers. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition. Fitzgerald, who took inspiration for the title from a line in Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, spent years revising the novel before Scribner's accepted it for publication.
Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, who is one of his patients. The story mirrors events in the lives of the author and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald as Dick starts his descent into alcoholism and Nicole struggles with mental illness.
The Beautiful and Damned is a 1922 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in New York City, the novel's plot follows a young artist Anthony Patch and his flapper wife Gloria Gilbert who become "wrecked on the shoals of dissipation" while excessively partying at the dawn of the hedonistic Jazz Age. As Fitzgerald's second novel, the work focuses upon the swinish behavior and glittering excesses of the American social elite in the heyday of New York's café society.
"Head and Shoulders" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his first story to be published in the Saturday Evening Post, with the help of Fitzgerald's agent, Harold Ober. The story appeared in the February 21, 1920 issue and was illustrated by Charles D. Mitchell. It later appeared in his short story collection Flappers and Philosophers.
Jay Gatsby is the titular fictional character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire who lives in a luxurious mansion on Long Island where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States. Fitzgerald based many details about the fictional character on Max Gerlach, a mysterious neighbor and World War I veteran whom the author met in New York during the raucous Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Gerlach threw lavish parties, never wore the same shirt twice, used the phrase "old sport", claimed to be educated at Oxford University, and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser.
"Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in Metropolitan magazine in December 1922 and later collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926. The plot concerns the attempts by a young man to win the affections of an upper-class woman. The story, frequently anthologized, is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest works "for poignantly portraying the loss of youthful illusions."
The Great Gatsby is a 2000 British-American historical romantic drama television film, based on the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was directed by Robert Markowitz, written by John J. McLaughlin, and stars Toby Stephens in the title role of Jay Gatsby, Mira Sorvino as Daisy Buchanan, Paul Rudd as Nick Carraway, Martin Donovan as Tom Buchanan, Francie Swift as Jordan Baker, Heather Goldenhersh as Myrtle Wilson, and Matt Malloy as Klipspringer. The film aired on March 29, 2000 in the United Kingdom on BBC, and on January 14, 2001 in the United States on A&E.
"The Ice Palace" is a modernist short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in The Saturday Evening Post on May 22, 1920. It is one of eight short stories originally published in Fitzgerald's first collection, Flappers and Philosophers, and is also included in the collection Babylon Revisited and Other Stories.
Daisy Fay Buchanan is a fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a wealthy socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who resides in the fashionable town of East Egg on Long Island during the Jazz Age. She is narrator Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of polo player Tom Buchanan, with whom she has a daughter. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with Jay Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel's central conflicts. She was described by Fitzgerald as a "golden girl".
Nick Carraway is a fictional character and narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a Yale University alumnus from the American Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg on Long Island, near New York City. He is a bond salesman and the neighbor of enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. He facilitates a sexual affair between Gatsby and Nick's second cousin, once removed, Daisy Buchanan which becomes one of the novel's central conflicts. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. After witnessing the callous indifference and insouciant hedonism of the idle rich during the riotous Jazz Age, he ultimately chooses to leave the eastern United States forever and returns to the Midwest.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Ginevra King Pirie was an American socialite and heiress. As one of the self-proclaimed "Big Four" debutantes of Chicago during World War I, King inspired many characters in the novels and short stories of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald; in particular, the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. A 16-year-old King met an 18-year-old Fitzgerald at a sledding party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and they shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917.
"First Blood" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in the April 5, 1930 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, illustrated by Harry Russell Ballinger. It was later included in his 1935 short story collection Taps at Reveille.
"Babylon Revisited" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written in 1930 and first published on February 21, 1931 in the Saturday Evening Post and free inside The Telegraph, the following Saturday.
Max von Gerlach was a German-born American bootlegger and an acquaintance of American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. After serving as an officer in the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, Gerlach became a gentleman bootlegger who operated speakeasies on behalf of gambler Arnold Rothstein in New York City.