Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, who is one of his patients. The story mirrors events in the lives of the author and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald as Dick starts his descent into alcoholism and Nicole struggles with mental illness.
Fitzgerald began the novel in 1925 after the publication of his third novel The Great Gatsby. During the protracted writing process, the mental health of his wife rapidly deteriorated, and she required extended hospitalization due to her suicidal and homicidal tendencies. After her hospitalization in Baltimore, Maryland, the author rented the La Paix estate in the suburb of Towson to be close to his wife, and he continued working on the manuscript.
While working on the book, Fitzgerald was beset with financial difficulties and drank heavily. He kept afloat by borrowing money from both his editor Max Perkins and his agent Harold Ober, as well as writing short stories for commercial magazines.
Fitzgerald completed the work in fall 1933, and Scribner’s Magazine serialized the novel in four installments between January and April 1934 before its publication on April 12, 1934. Although artist Edward Shenton illustrated the serialization, he did not design the book’s jacket. The jacket was by an unknown artist, and Fitzgerald disliked it. The title is taken from the poem “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats.
Two versions of the novel are in print. The first version, published in 1934, uses flashbacks; the second, revised version, prepared by Fitzgerald’s friend and critic Malcolm Cowley on the basis of notes for a revision left by Fitzgerald, is ordered chronologically and was first published posthumously in 1948. Critics have suggested that Cowley’s revision was undertaken due to negative reviews of the temporal structure of the first version of the book.
Fitzgerald considered the novel to be his masterwork. Although it received a tepid response upon release, it has grown in acclaim over the years and is now regarded as among Fitzgerald’s best works. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the novel 28th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Plot summary
Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who rent a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a coterie of American expatriates. Rosemary Hoyt, a 17-year-old actress, and her mother are staying at a nearby resort. Rosemary becomes infatuated with Dick and becomes close to Nicole.
Rosemary senses something is wrong with the couple, and her suspicions are confirmed when another guest at a party, Violet McKisco, reports witnessing Nicole’s nervous breakdown in a bathroom.
Tommy Barban, another guest, comes to the defense of Nicole and insists that Violet is lying. Angered by this accusation, Violet’s husband Albert duels Barban on the beach, but both men miss their shots. Following these events, Dick, Nicole, Rosemary, and others depart the French Riviera.
Soon after, Rosemary is now a constant companion of both Dick and Nicole in Paris. She attempts to seduce Dick in her hotel room, but he rebuffs her advances, although he admits that he loves her.
Much later, a black man named Jules Peterson is found murdered in Rosemary’s bed at the hotel, a potential scandal which could destroy Rosemary’s career. Dick moves the blood-soaked body out of the room to cover up any implied sexual relationship between Rosemary and Peterson.
A flashback occurs in the narrative. In Spring 1917, Dick Diver—a promising young doctor—visits psychopathologist Franz Gregorovius in Zurich, Switzerland. While visiting Franz, he meets a patient named Nicole Warren, a wealthy young woman whose sexual abuse by her father has led to mental neuroses.
Over a period of time they exchange letters. With the permission of Franz who believes that Dick’s friendship benefits Nicole’s well-being, they start seeing each other. As Nicole’s treatment progresses, she becomes infatuated with Dick who, in turn, develops Florence Nightingale syndrome. He determines to marry Nicole in order to provide her with lasting emotional stability.
Dick is offered a partnership in a Swiss psychiatric clinic by Franz, and Nicole uses her finances to pay for the enterprise. After his father’s death, Dick travels to America for the burial and then journeys to Rome in hopes of seeing Rosemary. They start a brief affair which ends abruptly and painfully.
A heartbroken Dick is involved in an altercation with the Italian police and is physically beaten. Nicole’s sister helps him to get out of jail. After this public humiliation, his incipient alcoholism increases. When his alcoholism threatens his medical practice, Dick’s ownership share of the clinic is purchased by American investors following Franz’s suggestion.
Dick and Nicole’s marriage disintegrates as he pines for Rosemary who has become a successful Hollywood star. Nicole distances herself from Dick as his self-confidence and friendliness turn into sarcasm and rudeness towards everyone. His constant unhappiness over what he could have been fuels his alcoholism, and Dick becomes embarrassing in social and familial situations. A lonely Nicole enters into an affair with Tommy Barban. She later divorces Dick and marries her lover.
Major characters
Richard “Dick” Diver – a promising young psychiatrist and Yale alumnus who marries his patient Nicole Diver and becomes an alcoholic.
Nicole Diver (née Warren) – an affluent mental patient who was the victim of incest and who marries Dick Diver. Based on Zelda Fitzgerald.
Rosemary Hoyt – an eighteen-year-old Hollywood actress who falls in love with Dick Diver. Based on teenage starlet Lois Moran.
Tommy Barban – a Franco-American soldier-of-fortune with whom Nicole Diver has an affair. Based on French aviator Edouard Jozan, and on Italian-American pianist composer Mario Braggiotti.
Franz Gregorovious – a Swiss psychopathologist at Dohmler’s clinic who introduces a young Dick Diver to Nicole Warren, his patient.
Beth “Baby” Warren – an unmarried spinster who is Nicole’s older sibling and who disapproves of her marriage to Dick Diver.
Abe North – an alcoholic composer who is later murdered in a New York speakeasy. Based on Ring Lardner and Charles MacArthur.
Mary North – the spirited wife of Abe North who divorces him, remarries, and becomes the wealthy Countess of Minghetti.
Albert McKisco – an American novelist who wins a duel against Tommy Barban. Based on novelist Robert McAlmon.
Violet McKisco – the gossipy spouse of Albert McKisco who discovers Nicole’s insanity and attempts to malign her reputation.
Jules Peterson – a black man from Scandinavia who helps Abe North and is later found dead in Rosemary Hoyt’s hotel suite.
Background and composition
Sojourn in Europe
While abroad in Europe, F. Scott Fitzgerald began writing his fourth novel almost three weeks after the publication of The Great Gatsby in April 1925. He planned to tell the story of Francis Melarkey, a young Hollywood technician visiting the French Riviera with his domineering mother.
Francis falls in with a circle of charming American expatriates, emotionally disintegrates, and kills his mother. Fitzgerald’s tentative titles for the novel were “World’s Fair,” “Our Type” and “The Boy Who Killed His Mother.” The characters of the charming American expatriates were based on Fitzgerald’s acquaintances Gerald and Sara Murphy and were named Seth and Dinah Piper. Francis was intended to fall in love with Dinah, an event that would precipitate his disintegration.
Fitzgerald wrote five drafts of this earlier version of the novel in 1925 and 1926, but he was unable to finish it. Nearly all of what he wrote made it into the finished work in altered form. Francis’s arrival on the Riviera with his mother, and his introduction to the world of the Pipers, was transposed into Rosemary Hoyt’s arrival with her mother, and her introduction to the world of Dick and Nicole Diver. Characters created in this early version survived into the final novel, particularly Abe and Mary North (originally Grant) and the McKiscos.
Several incidents such as Rosemary’s arrival and early scenes on the beach, her visit to the Riviera movie studio, and the dinner party at the Divers’ villa all appeared in this original version, but with Francis in the role of the wide-eyed outsider that would later be filled by Rosemary. Also, the sequence in which a drunken Dick is beaten by police in Rome was written in this first version as well and was based on a real incident that happened to Fitzgerald in Rome in 1924.
Return to America
After a certain point, Fitzgerald became stymied with the novel. He, Zelda, and their daughter Scottie returned to the United States in December 1926 after several years in Europe. Film producer John W. Considine Jr. invited Fitzgerald to Hollywood during its golden age to write a flapper comedy for United Artists. He agreed and moved into a studio-owned bungalow with Zelda in January 1927. In Hollywood, the Fitzgeralds attended parties where they danced the black bottom and mingled with film stars.
While attending a lavish party at the Pickfair estate, Fitzgerald met 17-year-old Lois Moran, a starlet who had gained widespread fame for her role in Stella Dallas (1925). Desperate for intellectual conversation, Moran and Fitzgerald discussed literature and philosophy for hours while sitting on a staircase.
Fitzgerald was 31 years old and past his prime, but the smitten Moran regarded him as a sophisticated, handsome, and gifted writer. Consequently, she pursued a relationship with him. The starlet became a muse for the author, and he wrote her into a short story called “Magnetism”, in which a young Hollywood film starlet causes a married writer to waver in his sexual devotion to his wife. Fitzgerald later rewrote Rosemary Hoyt—one of the central characters in Tender is the Night—to mirror Moran.
Jealous of Fitzgerald’s relationship with Moran, an
