Queer theory developed as a branch of theory between the 1970’s and 1990’s. The fundamental concerns of queer theory include analyzing performance of sexuality and gender, and the notion of homo-sociality. Binary erasure and sexual politics also shaped discussions of queerness in literature, because a primary application of queer theory is challenging an existing theory or school of thought to question its own identity. Prominent among queer theorists is Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009), who enhanced queer theory through her approaches towards queered language and performative homosexuality as a speech-act.
Sedgwick was an anti-essentialist, post-structuralist thinker, who was against the idea that there are set attributes necessary to the function and identity of any group of people. Post-structuralism advocates the complexities of individuals, and the questioning of binary oppositions. The normalized structure of male versus female, hetero versus homo is essentializing, as it attributes specific characteristics exclusive to one group over the other.
The essentializing of gender-specific characteristics constructs binary oppositions and perpetuates an idea of marginalized ‘otherness’. ‘Homo’ then becomes a subset of ‘hetero’, (i.e. ‘Homo’ is other because it is not the norm). Queer theory contradicts the concept of a norm, instead positing a fluidity of identity, which manifests in speech and performance. Sedgwick extends the concept of the binary to speech and silence, suggesting that silence is itself a speech-act, (thus negating the application of a binary). In her book Epistemology of the Closest, Sedgwick quotes Foucault as saying:
There is no binary division to be made between what one
says and what one does not say; we must try to determine
the different ways of not saying such things… There is not
one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the
strategies that underlie and permeate discourses. (3)
By citing Foucault, Sedgwick aligns herself with post-structuralist thought. Sedgwick also opens the door to discussion of the complexities created when speech performance and queered language apply to a (male) homosocial relationship. Male homosocial relationships are often constructed in an erotic triangle, which will be discussed later on in the paper. Sedgwick’s own writing is dense and hard to follow, but her fundamental approach suggests that sensitivity to queer language illuminates the anal-erotic connotations of words, the grammatical and syntactical rhythms or structures of sentences, and potential queer associations of puns, rhymes, and anagrams.
In addition to queered and gendered language, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s brand of queer theory includes exploration of male homosociality, queer performativity, and binary erasure. Sedgwick’s theory speaks to other facets, which are more comprehensible, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. The novel contains specific examples of queered masculinity, gendered language, and homosocial and homosexual desire, mainly from the point of view of the first person peripheral narrator, Nick Carraway.
Through Nick’s descriptions, Jay Gatsby and Jordan Baker exemplify queered masculinity. In Gatsby’s case there is a masculinized physical form with feminine affectations such as precise grooming and fluidity of movement. Nick’s observations of Jordan reveal a woman with a masculine/athletic build who even wears her feminine attire in a masculine way. The baseline of hot-blooded masculinity seems to be Tom Buchannan, the ultra-alpha-male footballer married to Daisy. In contrast to Tom, Gatsby’s affectations and relationships could fall under the vernacular “metro-sexual,” or, simply, queer.
Nick notes of Gatsby that, “His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day”(56). While not necessarily a declaration of homosexuality, when viewed through a queer lens, the comparisons between Nick’s assessments of Tom Buchannan as “sturdy,”(7) and possessing “a great pack of muscle,”(7) and the precision of Gatsby’s appearance, are enough to be suggestive of queerness. Considered by many modern readers as queer himself, Nick’s perception of the other characters becomes a queer lens. Nick does not want the audience to connect to him, but rather to Gatsby, thus intensifying Nick’s aesthetic appreciation of Gatsby’s physical appearance.
Nick also finds the pseudo masculine appearance of Jordan Baker attractive. Jordan’s gender-neutral name and specific carriage makes her immediately captivating. Nick “enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet”(12). A cadet in the 1920’s was almost certainly male, and, having returned from the war, Nick would have been sensitive to military bearing. Because Jordan is a female wearing feminine clothes, her male carriage is a queering of normal, (i.e. Tom Buchannan), masculinity. Nick notices, “she [Jordan] wore her evening-dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes–there was a jauntiness about her movements…”(57). Additionally, Nick realizes that, “Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever shrewd men…because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible”(63). Thus, Jordan’s queer gender performance goes unremarked by most, representative of the idea of queer passing.
Helpful to the passing queer, but uncomfortably heteronormative, is the gendered language Nick uses when distinguishing between people throughout the novel. Simultaneously gendered and classist, Nick labels the partygoers as “men and girls,”(43) whereas when he refers to the lower class mistress, Myrtle, as a “woman…[who] carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can”(27). Overlapping with feminist theory, the misogynist language provides insights into the sexualization of females in the novel. Flighty flappers become girls, reducing their impact to childlike seriousness. By calling them girls, the men are better able to discount the words and actions of their female companions.
When Nick speaks of his table companions he says, “We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter”(52). There are no children at Gatsby’s party, but Nick deems it appropriate to label a female he doesn’t know as a “little girl”(52). By de-sexualizing her, Nick puts himself and the other men in a position of power over the females. Thus, Myrtle’s power as a woman is complex, because though she is of a lower social class, she has sexual power over Tom. Myrtle’s distinction as a woman is suggestive of an earthiness and feminine allure the party girls do not possess.
The challenge of identifying gendered and queered language is that much of it is subjective. Sedgwick rips words apart, examining phonemes and syntax in a way that requires a greater linguistic background. What remains constant in Sedgwick’s work is the feeling of original approaches. Some postulations about line enjambment, and language which resonates as anal-erotic, are extraordinarily challenging. The first step, however, asks that readers become simply sensitive to suggestive word choice with possible homoerotic undertones. Part of the complexity of queered language is that both what is said and what is suggested is significant. Speaking specifically of ‘closeted-ness,’ but applicable to the concept of that which is unsaid, Sedgwick writes:
“Closeted-ness” itself is a performance initiated as such by
the speech act of silence – not a particular silence, but a
silence that accrues particularity by fits and starts, in relation
to the discourse that surrounds and differentially constitutes it.
The speech acts that coming out, in turn, can comprise are as
strangely specific… (Epistemology, 3)
The focal point of the quote is that “silence accrues particularly by fits and starts, in relation to the discourse that surrounds [it]”(3). In the context of exploring queered language in Gatsby, the suggestions created by the omission of words are as important as the language provided.
Nick, as the narrator, has a tendency to create queer nuances when describing his surroundings. Alone in New York City, rather maudlin about seeing couples together, Nick observes, “…the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theater district, I felt a sinking in my heart”(65). Leaving no queer stone unturned, how necessary are the words “dark lanes,” and “deep with throbbing”(65)? The dark lanes are suggestive of an anal passage, and there is a limited selection of things that typically “throb”(65). The description that the lanes are packed “five deep”(65) only enhances the queer suggestiveness of male on male anal penetration. Cars, (even taxis) are often paralleled to male genitalia and carry the weight of rampant sexualization. Nick’s descriptions of scenes with cars are laden with queerly suggestive language. Though Nick does not say that he seeks a homosexual encounter, his homoerotic descriptions of typically male machinery crowd the silence that surrounds his observations.
Out of context, Nick’s praise of, “It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length…”(71) seems unlikely to be anything but a description of an erection he finds captivating. However, the passage is a description of Gatsby’s car. The fact that it is Gatsby’s car Nick sexualizes in his description should not go unremarked. Nick’s observations and assessments of Gatsby drive the novel to its titular head. Words like “cream,” “swollen,” and “monstrous length,”(71) all possess sexual connotations. The strong curves and lines of a car represent virility and masculine domination over that which others perceive as feminine, (cars being typically referred to as ‘she’s’). Queerness in males is often threatening to the queer-phobic because of perceived effeminate qualities in men. The damaging essentializing of male and female qualities creates a tension around vehicles, because both the male and female aspects of the car are sexualized.
Additionally, Gatsby’s affected speech patterns could be interpreted as a form of passing, thus queering an additional aspect of Gatsby. Nick notes that Gatsby’s company smile promises the recipient that Gatsby understands them without revealing anything of Gatsby himself. Once Gatsby drops the smile, however, Nick realizes:
Precisely at that point it vanished— and I was looking at an
elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose
elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some
time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression
that he was picking his words with care. (54)
Through a queer lens, Gatsby’s tendency to police his speech-acts could signify a hyper-awareness of what it takes to be perceived a certain way. While Gatsby may just be trying to pass as old money, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Nick reads Gatsby’s performance as an affect attempting to pass as elite masculinity, while covering a repressed identity that may very well be queer. Many of the interactions between the two men possess an inexplicit undercurrent of queerness.
The relationship between the two men, (as told to readers by Nick), seems to toe the constructed lines between male homosocial desire and male homosexual desire. Nick is not blind to Gatsby’s handsomeness, and carefully takes note of who is, and is not, allowed to touch Gatsby. Nick is also sure that the reader knows that a large part of Gatsby’s past is defined by relationships with men. As Daisy becomes a part of Gatsby’s life again, the dynamics between the three characters create a homosocial, gendered triangle.
Prior to the triangle, however, Nick illuminates a distinct separation between Gatsby and other females. At the first Gatsby party he attends, Nick observes:
…girls were putting their heads on men’s shoulders in a
puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward
playfully into men’s arms, even into groups, knowing
that some one would arrest their falls— but no one swooned
backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s
shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s
head for one link. (56-57)
Nick’s uncommon interest in who is touching Gatsby is telling in and of itself, but the details may also suggest that Gatsby is uncomfortable with women and needs a degree of separation from casual feminine touch.
With that in mind, Gatsby’s use of a familiar phrase and touch with Nick is a performance as well, though one Gatsby is willing enough to do. At the end of the first party Gatsby says, “Don’t give it another thought, old sport”(60), and Nick comments to the reader and himself that, “The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder”(60). Gatsby’s affectations of speech and manner are all performative, suggesting that he has something to hide, though his male/male performance seems more natural than his male/female interactions.
Gatsby’s homosocial comfort may be a result of his history of male/male bonds. When Nick recounts Gatsby’s history the audience sees that:
…It is a narrative that highlights Gatsby’s important
relationships with men, including yachtsman Dan Cody;
gangster Meyer Wolfsheim; Gatsby’s West Egg “boarder,”
Klipspringer (quotation marks in original); and Henry C.
Gatz, Gatsby’s father… (Froehlich, 83)
Potentially innocuous, the list could be read as a fleeting glimpse of background to Gatsby’s life. However, the list is exclusively male, and consists of characters of varying ages and pedigrees. The fact that “boarder”(83) is in quotes opens the door to a host of potential queer connotations. What is so suggestive about a male living with Gatsby that makes it necessary to label the relationship as boarder, but then undermine that by putting it in quotes? Within the list there is no female presence to serve as a hetro-alibi for Gatsby’s interests. The addition of Daisy, however, puts Nick in competition for Gatsby’s social, if not sexual, attentions.
A male homosocial triangle needs the presence of a woman who may engage sexually with one or both men, in order to deflect the possibility that the two men are sleeping together. In her book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Sedgwick says:
–the radically disrupted continuum, in our society, between
sexual and nonsexual male bonds, as against the relatively
smooth and palpable continuum of female Homosocial
desire–might be expected to alter the structure of erotic
triangles in ways that depended on gender… (23)
When Daisy and Gatsby are getting too intimate, Nick is added to the mix. When conversation with Nick turns towards Gatsby, Daisy changes the subject. Daisy and Nick act as mediators for one another’s relationship with Gatsby. The competition between Nick and Daisy creates a diversion, distracting readers from an evaluation of Nick’s language and attitudes when Gatsby is involved. Daisy serves as a red-herring, encouraging the audience to read only a heterosexual relationship with a third-wheel male friend. The distraction of hetero-normativity is exactly what queer theory challenges when reading a text.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s linguistic approach to queer theory is much more complex and specific to grammar and syntax than we've really explored here, but the fundamental facets of queer theory are much more accessible. Often it doesn’t occur to cisgender-heterosexual readers that a text deserves evaluation through a queer lens. For novices to queer theory, evaluation of queered and gendered language, performative acts and speech, and the questioning of homosocial relationships are comprehensive ways to approach texts. Awareness of binaries and a sensitivity to queer themes develop with experience, so re-examining familiar books like The Great Gatsby can start budding theorists off on familiar ground. Though Sedgwick’s niche is difficult to understand, the foundations of queer theory are relatively ‘user-friendly’. Application of queer theory to The Great Gatsby demonstrates one avenue out of myriad approaches to re-discovering classic literature.
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Gatsby has given literature students good essay fodder for ages. I've read and written essays, or been in discussions about: the death of the American Dream, classism, The Valley of Ashes/Dr. Eckleburg's eyes, the motif of how the weather seems to match the narrative tone...etc. What Gatsby essay topics have you experienced? What conversational approach do you enjoy the most?
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-C