The Great Gatsby: A Psychological Drama of Dysfunctional Love
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby impresses on the readers normally as a novel on a youth with poor beginnings who is in a headlong pursuit of the American Dream and through it love and social standing. Despite this capacity, however, the work fascinates its readers more by its characters’ intriguing romantic and sexual relationships doomed ultimately by a tragic outgrowth. In this light, therefore, the appeal of the novel seems to ensue not from its mere narrative progression but largely from the dramatization of the psyche of the characters who are engaged in the relationships devoid of genuine emotional attachments—and loyalty at times. This emotional dysfunction in fact seems to be ascribed implicitly to the characters’ inability to survive and outgrow the unresolved conflicts latent in them, thus making way for tragedy to surface. And, it is for this reason why many critical readers—especially those rejoicing at psychoanalytic reading of the novel—view The Great Gatsby as a psychological drama of dysfunctional love.
The Great Gatsby in fact features almost all of its prominent characters, along with the less significant: Myrtle, Jordan and George, in some romantic and sexual relationships in various strengths. Such relationships in psychoanalytic terms are actually believed to be the re-enactment of initial unresolved conflicts that once occurred in the family and were repressed at an early age. These conflicts that operate between id, ego, and superego, remain always unresolved and tend to be checked primarily by defence mechanisms while at other times they arouse anxiety and dredge up the repressed, thus being repressed again on both occasions. The repressed, hence, must be negotiated by ego so they may release themselves in non-destructive behavioural patterns lest they evolve into a crisis.
Seen in this relation, Gatsby and Daisy, the principal characters, do not seem to be living up to this idea of coming to terms with reality. Gatsby has selective memory and maintains denial as he hides about his past and tells Nick that his parents have died and that he came to inherit the great wealth after their decease. These defence mechanisms seem to be working also in his explantion to Nick in which he implies about his relationship he had with Daisy some five years back: “You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me” (Fitzgerald 66; ch. 4). In fact, if he remained lonely, he feared, he would feel the desertion of him by Daisy which he knew he couldn’t bear now. So he distracts himself from the reality and goes about repressing his wounds thus keeping himself amid strgange people though he hardly bothers to mix with. Besides, the fact that he “[buys] that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (76; ch. 4) implies that he has had some fear of abandonment. When his unfaltering and unrelenting pursuit to win back Daisy’s love finally brings them together, Gatsby confidently tells Tom that Daisy had married him only because the former was poor then and argues that Daisy has never loved Tom but him since her marriage. This probably allows both Gatsby and Tom to re-enact their own unresolved sibling rivalry. However, despite all loyalty and perserverence, Daisy’s assurance of returning her love, and seeming elimination of obstacles posed by Tom, Gatsby is still left totally confused while he discovers that “[Daisy] did love [Tom] once—but [she] loved [Gatsby] too” (123; ch. 7). This confusion later deveops into his fear of Daisy’s abandonment but before it grows into some kind of anxiety, Gatsby meets his tragic death.
As for Daisy, her personality seems much influenced by her low-self esteem which is manifest in her ironic distaste of having born a girl child: “‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’” (25; ch.1). This in fact is Daisy’s acknowledgment that she also shares the same fate and probably an implication that her marriage is insecure. Further, her preference for a boy child like Myrtle’s preference for a male dog, and Jordan’s assertive malelike position could also be a manifestation of penis envy latent in them.Though Daisy’s obsession with Tom in her early marital relationship indicates her intimacy with him, this attachment soon unconsciously trasnsforms into her fear of intimacy, which is reflected in her easy acceptance of Tom’s relationship with other women and her own renewed romantic relationship with Gatsby. That she has been living at an emotional distance with her husband may also be observed during Gatsby’s presence where she claims “[her daughter] doesn’t look like her father” and that “[s]he looks like [Daisy]. She’s got [Daisy’s] hair and shape of the face” (110; ch. 7). Daisy’s relationship with Gatsby too is devoid of genuine love as she admits before both Tom and Gatsby that she loves both of them. She actually exploits her relationship with Gatsby to distract herself from her painful and insecure marriage, at the same time protecting the marital bond. Her extramarital attachment with Gatsby is founded on his affluence and pseudo-social standing which soon crumbles as she lets him take the accountability for the mortal accident and “[vanishes] into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing” (138; ch. 8).
Tom, unlike Daisy, seems to have had various extramarital affairs, most recently being with Myrtle, a married woman. To look at it from Oedipal dynamics, he seems to have been replaying his unresolved Oedipal attachments with these women who he may characterize as bad-girls and therefore keep a temporary relation with so he may forget the woes of his own marital life. Here on the one hand, Tom, through ego which is symbolically embodied by the women, tries to gratify his urges of the repressed while, on the other, by keeping off his matrimonial bond, he shows his fear of intimacy and represses painful past experiences further deep. However, when he realizes that his wife, Daisy, is involved in an extramarital affair with Gatsby and that Myrtle too is leaving for West with her husband, he has fear of abandonment. All defence mechanisms seem to be breaking as his anxiety grows bigger and bigger with the fear that “[his] wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, [are] slipping precipitately from his control” (116; ch. 7). This anxiety later prompts him to send George to kill Gatsby and negotiate reconciliation with his wife.
Myrlte is another character besides Gatsby who dies a miserable death due to her inabilty to negotiate between id and superego through ego. In other words, Myrtle is an embodiment of id, with all her libidnal desires and other instincts, who, jealous of Jordan whom she assumes to be Tom’s wife riding the car along with Nick, breaks her way through his husband’s barricade, superego, and gets herself killed. She has never liked her husband since marriage and therefore is involved in the extramarital affair with Tom, of whom her sister Catherine says: “ Neither of [Tom and Myrtle] can stand the person they’re married to” (38; ch. 2). For Myrtle, the affair serves as a comforting distraction from her hateful marriage, promises financial security, and if wedded, gives a superior social status. On the contrary, George’s loyalty to his wife is not returned and his attempt for emotional intimacy is not reciprocated either. It is for this reason he fears Myrtle might abandon him and thus locks her in an upstairs room. Yet while she really escapes and meets her death, he is traumatized and thereby driven with thanatos (death drive) to kill Gatsby and himself.
Another romantic relationship relatively insignificant and restrained in the novel is that of between Nick and Jordan, which does not surface so clearly like that of many other characters. Nick could particulary be characterized as fond of women as we see him walking up Fifth Avenue fantasizing about them. His concealed but well-measured intention to obtain their romantic attachments and other fantasies explain why he seeks a relation with Jordan. Further, while Jordan says teasingly that she hates careless people and therefore likes Nick for his cautious nature, it does not take long for him to announce to himself his love for Jordan: “…, and for a moment I thought I loved her…, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of the tangle back home” (60; ch. 3). This declaration reveals to us that Nick is not in a consistent romantic relationship with anybody. He goes about breaking relationships, like he has broken the two former romantic bonds, once they become stronger and come into others’ knwoledge—a very sure sign of fear of intimacy. There is also a manifestation of denial and avoidance in his treatment with women as he shifts his relation from one to another and goes about discounting the past separation. In this light, his breaking up with Jordan is no surprise though he blames it on Jordan for the scorn he has for her living with people like Tom and Daisy: “…I’d had enough of all of them for one day and suddenly that included Jordan too” (132; ch. 7).
Jordan’s personality as hinted earlier gives us a masculine impression, who Nick describes as a “balancing girl” whose “self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from [him]” (17-18; ch. 1). Her male-like projection of personality could be a manifestation of penis envy which she attempts resolving by living in a malelike fashion. She seems mostly occupied with her sports, fellow sportspeople, and some social interactions, all of which keep herself from building any intimate relationship. Her later so-called romantic feelings for Nick too are kept at an emotional distance, which helps one assume that she fears intimacy. Her distance as such from any serious romantic relationships could also be attributed to her attempt for avoidance with which she represses her painful past experience further. Despite some brief moments of her intimacy with Nick, she feels painfully abandoned at last while she is discarded on the telephone and is provoked to say: “[She] [doesn’t] give a damn about [Nick] now but it was a new experience for [her] and [she] felt a little dizzy for a while” (163; ch. 9). This, sure, makes her experience the world of reality in which she is made to relive her past painful abandonment through active reversal.
Hence, almost all romantic bonds in the novel, even Tom and Daisy’s, either manifest a hollow emotional attachment or have worn out miserably since the characters fail to relive the painful experience of the unconscious, break down all defence mechanisms to release the repressed, and exploit the scopes of gratification offered by ego, the world of reality. The unresolved conflicts in the characters’ psyche in the novel, in this sense, therefore, bespeak the work’s consideration as a psychological drama of dysfunctional love.
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