APEnglish–Los Al

I’d like to conclude with a comment on the unity of chapter 2.  The whole thing breaks up (including the narrative thread) when a drunken Tom decides that if Myrtle won’t obey, he’ll smash her nose in.  It works pretty well.  She definitely doesn’t petulantly chant “Daisy!” anymore.  But it does kind of ruin the festivities, despite that second bottle of whiskey.  Everyone vacates the premises while various people try to stop the bleeding and Myrtle “trying to spread a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ over the tapestry scenes of Versailles” (37).  It is this tapestry of the gardens of Versailles, I will argue, that ties this whole chapter together. 

This tapestry dominates the décor in Myrtle’s apartment: so much so “that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens…” (29); it’s as if the attendees of her little soiree are gallivanting and frolicking through the famous gardens, donning sumptuous clothing, enjoying the fruits (i.e., wine) of the god Pan.  They are, after all, escaping the realities of their lives and engaging in Romantic play. Tom and Myrtle are celebrating their illicit sensual relationship, consistent with courtly romance, hidden from the glowering eyes of their spouses. 

But something is missing, besides the King of France.  First is class: nobody seems to have any.  Gossip magazines litter the floor; the conversation about art is vapid and self-absorbed; Europe (Monte Carlo, which is in France) is demoted to a tourist trap where they steal your money.  The Gardens at Versailles are known for their ordering of nature, their application of rationality to wildness, to bring into relief Nature’s inherent beauty without the ugliness of corruption and sin.  In following picture notice the geometric patterning, the bending of nature to man’s reason:

We can even make out fleurs-de-lis in the grassy circles that surround the circular pond.  Balance and geometry and proportion predominate.  Even the little snippet of building on the right projects the same, basically Greek and Roman, values: the arches work as a synthesis of the lines and circles of the garden floor.  This patterning can only happen with a vigorous application of order to the disordering disposition of Nature. In this next photograph we see the same values structuring our garden experience:

Nature has been corralled and domesticated for man’s delight.

This may strike us as a bit odd, being from the wild west of the New World.  We tend to think of Nature as Yosemite, Yellowstone, as untamed and pristine.  We like to think of a state of nature as essentially innocent, pure.  We are products of a Romantic sensibility which developed in the late 18^th and early 19^th century.  We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that hurricanes and epidemic diseases are also wholly natural calamities that pursue us.  For a Christian king, these calamites are products of original sin, which Reason should let us leave behind in the new Eden of Versailles.

What I would like to focus on is the essentially ordered experience that the Gardens of Versailles offer us.  It is rational, focused, balanced.  It is aristocratic and self-possessed (by this I mean the power of self-control).

Then the tapestry in Myrtle’s apartment can be nothing other than a mocking display of the values and virtues she and her guests betray.  The partiers are idle, petty, gold-digging, gossiping, gauche, and above all selfish.  The ladies swinging in their swing are an idyllic dream that Nick will never realize in such company.  As Nick exits the drunken foolishness we see Myrtle trying to stop the flow of blood and protect the tapestry by positioning a copy of “Town Tattle” to catch any stray drops.  The bloody mess creates a grotesque garden.

This ties us to the beginning of the chapter where Nick describes The Valley of the Ashes as manufacturing “grotesque gardens,” horrid pictures of human suffering.  All advancement comes with a cost.  The cost of a modern, industrial metropolis and the fantastical wealth it can create is balanced by the hopeless despair of the besmirched countryside.  But the people who benefit from this simultaneously disastrous and luxurious dichotomy are ugly and disgusting, contrary to their initial appearances.  To drive the point home, Fitzgerald supplies us with the description of the “Airedale” puppy: 1), it’s not an Airedale if it has white feet; 2) the man selling the puppies is a sad parody of the greatest oil tycoon in history and first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller—imagine old John D. trying to hustle puppies on a New York street corner; and 3) although puppies usually are the center of attention—and require lots of affection—no one cares about the poor doggy while in the apartment: Nick says that its dog biscuit decayed “apathetically” all evening.

No, it’s no Versailles, and it doesn’t even make the disaster of the Valley worth it. A sad emptiness hovers in the air.

Filed under: Summer Reading, The Great Gatsby and