Expatriate American Authors in Paris - Disillusionment with the American Lifestyle as Reflected in Selected Works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald E-Book
Michael Grawe
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- Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2005
Master's Thesis from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1.3 (A), University of Paderborn, language: English, abstract: Paris has traditionally called to the American heart, beginning with the arrival of Benjamin Franklin in 1776 in an effort to win the support of France for the colonies’ War of Independence. Franklin would remain in Paris for nine years, returning to Philadelphia in 1785. Then, in the first great period of American literature before 1860, literary pioneers such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were all to spend time in the French capital. Henry James, toward the close of the nineteenth century, was the first to create the image of a talented literary artist who was ready to foreswear his citizenship. From his adopted home in England he traveled widely through Italy and France, living in Paris for two years. There he became close friends with another literary expatriate, Edith Wharton, who made Paris her permanent home. Between them they gave the term “expatriate” a high literary polish at the turn of the century, and their prestige was undeniable. They were the ‘in’ cosmopolitans, sought out by traveling Americans, commented on in the press, the favored guests of scholars, as well as men and women of affairs. This thesis investigates the mass expatriation of Americans to Paris during the 1920s, and then focuses on selected works by two of the expatriates: Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). The specific emphasis is on disillusionment with the American lifestyle as reflected in these novels. The two books have been chosen because both are prominent examples of the literary criticism that Americans were directing at their homeland from abroad throughout the twenties.
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1. INTRODUCTION 4
Paris has traditionally called to the American heart, beginning with the arrival of Benjamin Franklin in 1776 in an effort to win the support of France for the colonies’ War of Independence. Franklin would remain in Paris for nine years, returning to Philadelphia in 1785. Then, in the first great period of American literature before 1860, literary pioneers such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were all to spend time in the French capital. Henry James, toward the close of the nineteenth century, was the first to create the image of a talented literary artist who was ready to foreswear his citizenship. From his adopted home in England he traveled widely through Italy and France, living in Paris for two years. There he became close friends with another literary expatriate, Edith Wharton, who made Paris her permanent home. Between them they gave the term “expatriate” a high literary polish at the turn of the century, and their prestige was undeniable. They were the ‘in’ cosmopolitans, sought out by traveling Americans, commented on in the press, the favored guests of scholars, as well as men and women of affairs.
This thesis investigates the mass expatriation of Americans to Paris during the 1920s, and then focuses on selected works by two of the expatriates: Ernest Hemingway’sThe Sun Also Rises(1926) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby(1925). The specific emphasis is on disillusionment with the American lifestyle as reflected in these novels. The two books have been chosen because both are prominent examples of the literary criticism that Americans were directing at their homeland from abroad throughout the twenties.
In a first step, necessary historical background regarding the nature of the American lifestyle is provided in chapter two. This information is included in order to facilitate a better understanding of what Hemingway and Fitzgerald were actually disillusioned with. Furthermore, that lifestyle was a primary motivating factor behind the expatriation of many United States citizens. Attention is given to the extraordinary nature of the American migration to Paris in the twenties, as the sheer volume of exiles set it apart from any expatriation movement - before or since - in American history. Moreover, a vast majority of the participants were writers, artists, or intellectuals, a fact which suggests the United States during the 1920s was not a supportive environment for such people. Therefore, this study investigates the socio-political factors, and the disillusionment that resulted from America’s involvement in World War I, which also motivated the exile.
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1. INTRODUCTION 5
After that, the second part of chapter two examines the allure of Paris as a destination. It explains why the expatriates chose to gather in such large numbers in the French capital rather than in other European cities. The focus is on the development of an American literary expatriate community within Paris, detailing the amenities which the city offered, and the permissive environment that led Gertrude Stein to declare: “Paris was where the twentieth century was.”1In addition, this section looks at the changes which occurred in the expatriate community during the 1920s. The chapter concludes with information about some of the important members of the American literary sphere in Paris.
Biographic information on the early lives of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald is provided in chapter three. The purpose of this section is to illustrate the development of each author’s respective personal disillusionment with the American lifestyle, and to recount the events which led them to leave the United States. Moreover, Hemingway and Fitzgerald represent different aspects of the expatriate experience. Hemingway became part of the American literary community in Paris, whereas Fitzgerald initially lived on the French Riviera for a year, and moved to Paris after completingThe Great Gatsby.Despite the authors’ divergent experiences, however, France provided them both with a basis for comparative as well as objective analysis of American life. Accordingly, chapter three examines Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s differing personal lives in France, as well as the effect their residence abroad had on the two novels in question. As the focus of this thesis is onThe Sun Also RisesandThe Great Gatsby,the biographies are restricted to events which occurred before the publication of those two novels.
The work Hemingway and Fitzgerald produced in France asserts their respective disillusionment with the American lifestyle, portraying its identifying characteristics and negative consequences. Certainly, both novels indict a society that has lost its ethical bearings, and both comment unfavorably on the socio-political climate in the United States. Furthermore, Hemingway and Fitzgerald each emphasize a moral confusion in which money becomes the principal measurement. Chapter four looks atThe Sun Also Rises,wherein Hemingway focuses on a group of expatriates in Paris and on a trip to Spain. The chapter analyzes the portrayals of disillusionment in the novel: an insular American community in Paris; the loss of values experienced by the postwar generation;
1Gertrude Stein,Paris, France(New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1970), p. 11.
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1. INTRODUCTION 6
the American legislation of morals; capitalism, and a search for values not based on commerce. This section concludes with a look at the images Hemingway provides as a contrast to the American lifestyle. Chapter five moves on to examineThe Great Gatsby,which concerns a wealthy community on Long Island, New York. Fitzgerald’s expressions of disillusionment in the novel are primarily based on money: the destructive effects of wealth and materialism; the corruption and moral disorder in America; as well as the enshrinement of commerce as a new religion. Finally, the chapter examines Fitzgerald’s portrayal of the American Dream as corrupted by materialism. From Europe to America, the two novels examined in this thesis utilize different settings to express the same theme: the authors’ disillusionment with the lifestyle of their homeland, America.
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2.1 The “Lost Generation” of American Expatriates
There have always been varied motives for self-exile, just as many different Americans have gone abroad. Yet Ishbel Ross, in his study of Americans who have left their homeland, notes that “the artists and writers have most consistently fed the expatriate flame,”2leaving behind the limitations of American culture, and seeking an atmosphere of tradition. This “flame” reached its peak with the Americans who went to Europe after World War I, an artistic mass migration which was the largest ever made from the New World.3According toA Handbook to Literature,“expatriate” is a term “applied to those who leave their native lands and reside elsewhere,” further stating that this move is usually voluntary.4Moreover, an expatriate is a person who has withdrawn from residence in or allegiance to his or her native land, who has become disillusioned with that country and seeks a more welcoming environment.
Whereas historically the expatriates had been isolated individuals, the number of gifted writers and artists who settled in Paris during the 1920s created a group effect. Ross states that it was authors such as “Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald” who “shook up the literary world, as both writers and personalities.”5The Americans who went to France after the war became members of what Gertrude Stein described as the “Lost Generation.” The term originated from an incident in the summer of 1925, when Stein’s car was being repaired in a French garage. The garage owner lamented that workers aged between twenty-two and thirty did not learn fast and he was unable to teach them. He said to Stein, “C’est une génération perdue.”6Stein later repeated the remark in conversation with Ernest Hemingway, extending it to include the moral chaos of the then-current generation of expatriates whom Stein felt had no respect for anything.
The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world. Many of the young people had been in the war and had received at least psychic, if not also physical wounds. Members of the generation felt lost
2Ishbel Ross,The Expatriates(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1970), p. 5.
3It was not only the writers who were going to Paris, but also composers, such as George Gershwin and Virgil
Thomson; the pioneering photographer Man Ray; and painters, for example, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant
Wood. See: John Bainbridge,Another Way of Living. A Gallery of Americans Who Chose to Live in Europe
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), p. 7.
4C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon,A Handbook to Literature.6thed. (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1992), p. 186.
5Ross,The Expatriates,p. 234.
6Cited in: Kenneth S. Lynn,Hemingway(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 333.
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in an America which was increasingly devoted to materialism and the cult of the dollar, as opposed to the development of culture and the arts. The United States seemed provincial, emotionally barren, and politically repressive to the writers who were “lost” in that they felt a spiritual alienation from their homeland. Hemingway would later use Stein’s remark as the epigraph toThe Sun Also Rises,a novel which has been credited with giving a “literary expression” to “the general atmosphere of postwar disillusionment.”7
There can be little doubt that World War I had a major impact on the new literary generation which was emerging in America at that time. Many young writers then in college enlisted in one of the ambulance corps attached to a foreign army, those being the organizations which promised to carry them abroad with the least delay. Young and idealistic, proportionately very few of them waited to be drafted, and for many their first real experience of life was on the European battlefields. The staggering number of deaths began to erode the idealistic sentiments of the participants; the soldiers grew to distrust authority as personified by those who had planned and ordered the attacks.8Moreover, this lack of trust was mirrored in the American population. President Woodrow Wilson ran for his second term with the campaign slogan, “He kept us out of the war.”9However, America entered the war only a few months after Wilson’s re-election in 1916. As a result, the prevailing sentiment was one of disillusionment, that the nation had been misled. This, in turn, was reflected in literature. As Mark Schorer has pointed out, disillusionment with the American system is the distinguishing characteristic of postwar American writing.10
After the war ended, the young intellectuals who had been abroad faced a return home which was disenchanting and disorienting due to the rising commercialism and intolerance of postwar America. During the early 1900s American culture was becoming urban instead of rural, with the flow of population towards urban areas being greater than
7Samuel Putnam,Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost & Found Generation(New York: Viking Press,
1947), p. 69.
8See: Malcolm Cowley,A Second Flowering: Works and Days of the Lost Generation(New York: Viking
Press, 1973), pp. 4-12. An expatriate author, Cowley was himself an ambulance driver for France during the
conflict. He explains that the incredibly high death toll began to change the moral atmosphere of the war (p.
5) because the incessant battles in which so many soldiers died had not had decisive outcomes but had
instead “subsided in exhaustion” (p. 4).
9Cited in Dalton Gross and Maryjean Gross,Understanding ‘The Great Gatsby’: A Student Case Book to
Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents(Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 7.
10See: Mark Schorer,Sinclair Lewis: An American Life(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 246.
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that to the West. Whole cities were thrust rapidly from a quiet provincialism into the midst of the machine era. Consequently, they were without those cultural traditions and institutions which a more slowly developing community accumulates. The focus on commerce and materialism hindered the creation of a community with roots, while urban life, and the rapidity of social change had an averse effect on individuality. The middle class existence was becoming secure, unexciting, and bland.
The 1920s were the age when a production ethic, that of saving in order to accumulate capital for new enterprises, gave way to a consumption ethic which was needed to provide markets for the new commodities being produced. People were being exhorted to spend, spend, spend, and to believe that they could achieve success in their lives merely by seizing upon the opportunities to make money that society was offering. America was entering a period of unprecedented economic prosperity known as the Boom, the Roaring Twenties, or what F. Scott Fitzgerald named the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald, who began as the spokesman for that age and became its symbol, said of the 1920s:
America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history and there was going to be plenty to
tell about it. […] All the stories that came into my head had a touch of disaster in them - the
lovely young creatures in my novels went to ruin, the diamond mountains of my short stories
blew up […].11
Indeed, many authors did go on to “tell about it,” expressing their distaste for and rejection of the commercial ethic which America had embraced. Ernest Hemingway’sThe Sun Also Risesis, in part, a biting portrayal of the American obsession with money, as is F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby.A sense of alienation from the overtly capitalistic nation that America had become was a contributing factor in the mass exodus of writers and artists.
In the United States publishing, like finance and the theater, was becoming centralized, and regional traditions were dying out as areas were transformed into a great unified market for new products. Writers complained that the whole of American culture was becoming false, and that hypocrisy had come to pervade the entire system, with businessmen talking about service when they meant profits. The same social mechanism that fed and clothed the body was neglecting the emotions, closing off the paths toward
11F. Scott Fitzgerald,The Crack-Up, With Other Uncollected Pieces, Note-Books and Unpublished Letters,
ed. Edmund Wilson (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 87.
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creativeness and self-expression. John Aldridge notes that, to the young writers, it seemed “life in America was tawdry, cheap, colorless, and given over to the exclusive worship of wealth and machinery […];” that to do one’s “best work in such a society was impossible.”12The puritan-industrial culture of America was hostile to the literary artist, therefore many began searching for a new home.
Several intellectuals went to Greenwich Village in New York City, which was then the center of alternative culture in America. However, it was no longer the “Bohemian”13refuge it had once been. By 1920 the word itself had become fashionable. People gave bohemian parties, patronized bohemian antique shops and bookstores, and with new businesses opening to take advantage of this trend Greenwich Village began to seem like an imitation of itself. In a very diluted version the Village existence was becoming the lifestyle of the American middle class. As a result, the writers and artists began to look further afield, searching for a place where they would be free to choose their own lifestyles, and express their own opinions. Undoubtedly, the sociological factors were to some extent influential in driving the intellectuals into exile. An article in the ParisTribunestated:
[…] many an American who feels outraged at living under a government which treats its
subjects like a set of naughty children, who shall be told what to drink, to read, to wear, and to
see at the theatre, prefers to go into exile.14
The political climate in the United States was changing and the 1920s saw the rise of a regressive new Puritanism, of which Prohibition15was only one sign. U. S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, in an effort to stop what he perceived to be a communist
12John W. Aldridge,After the Lost Generation: A Critical Study of the Writers of Two Wars(New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1951), p. 12.
13The use of the term “Bohemian” to describe an unconventional lifestyle stems from Henri Mürger’s book
Scènes de la vie de Bohème,a romanticized portrayal of the lives of artists and writers in the Latin Quarter of
Paris. Published in the 1840s it became a bestseller and was later sentimentalized in Puccini’s opera
La Bohème.The popularity of the bohemian image also owes much to George du Maurier’s runaway success,
Trilby(1894), also set in the Latin Quarter. See: Humphrey Carpenter,Geniuses Together: American Writers
in Paris in the 1920s(London: Unwin Hyman, 1987), pp. 10-14.
14Alex Small, “Thirst for Booze and for Liberty Sends Americans Abroad,” ParisTribune,20 Sept. 1929; here
reprinted in Hugh Ford,The Left Bank Revisited: Selections From theParisTribune; 1917-1934(University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972), p. 51.
15The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified by Congress 16 January, 1919, stated that
“the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the
exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage
