The Fitzgerald Flapper Essay -- Biography Biographies Essays

The Fitzgerald Flapper Which came first, the flapper or the Fitzgerald flapper? This question may prove as difficult as its proverbial counterpart. But it is a question well worth asking in an effort to examine the flapper, a cultural icon of the 1920s. This new woman heralded an end to the traditional Victorian woman, as well as the relatively new Gibson girl. But where did she come from? And what was Fitzgerald's contribution to the creation of such an icon? Fitzgerald's short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair and novel This Side of Paradise will be used to make such an assessment. Finally, one must ask how the flapper, in turn, contributed to Fitzgerald's career, for the good and the bad. Although the flapper may have guaranteed the success of This Side of Paradise and earned Fitzgerald the position of spokesman for a generation, it may have also stifled the progression of his work and confused critics for years to come. First, it would be helpful to establish a working definition of the flapper, prior to Fitzgerald. Coined in England, the flapper was used to describe a somewhat awkward, fledgling-type girl, in the throws of budding womanhood ("Flappers in the Roaring Twenties"). She is still learning how to move in her body, gangly and thin. Another source puts forth a very different definition of the flapper. This definition, found in "Mrs. Stratton of Oak Knoll" asserts that a flapper is English slang for a society girl who has made her debut and hasn't found a husband ("F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary"). She is an old maid of sorts, gone to seed. The first of these two definitions seems the more likely origin of the Fitzgerald flapper. Prior to World War I, most women in the America still behaved and dr... ...e to adapt to a writer's changing objectives. Works Cited Bruccoli, Matthew J. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Scribner, 1989 Bryer, Jackson. The Critical Reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Bibliographical Study. USA: Archon Books, 1967 Fryer, Sarah Beebe. Fitzgerald's New Women: Harbingers of Change. Ann Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, 1988. Kitch, Carolyn. The Girl on the Magazine Cover. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001 Prigozy, Ruth. The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald. UK and USA: Cambridge University Press, 2002 "Flappers in the Roaring Twenties." www.about.com. http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa022201a.htm "F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary: University of South Carolina." www.sc.edu. January 2002. www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/index.html