The Great Gatsby And Barrett Browning's Poetry

Gatsby Essay

Does the treatment of individual desire in The Great Gatsby and Barrett Browning’s poetry reveal similarities or reinforce the texts’ distinctive qualities?

The pursuit of happiness is a universal concern that is closely intertwined with the ideologies of ideal love, social ethics and morals. This is evident in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry, “Sonnets from the Portuguese” written in 1850 and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby” written in 1925 where both authors utilise language forms, structural features and characterisation to portray opposing views on the pursuit of happiness. Browning explores the notion of ideal courtly love between the persona and her to be husband, Robert Browning. Browning was not concerned

Fitzgerald himself was married to a woman named Zelda Sayre oh whom demanded wealth and possessions which led to the couple falling in serious debt leading to Fitzgerald's alcoholism and his wife’s mental issues. Fitzgerald attempts to illustrate to the audience how the superficial love portrayed is the widespread norm such as the metaphor, “Men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars”. The persona is demonstrating that the people going to Gatsby’s party have become obsessed with materialism that they have become degraded into insects and this is how they pursue happiness. In the novel, Gatsby uses the metaphor, “Her voice is full of money”, to illustrate how Daisy’s reason for marriage is to gain wealth and become more upper class by marrying someone who has “old money”. This is also reinforced through, “They’re such beautiful shirts… I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.” Fitzgerald uses an allusion to compare Gatsby to the money that Daisy lost and by extension the ideal happiness that she does not