The Beautiful and Damned is a 1922 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in New York City, the novel’s plot follows a young artist Anthony Patch and his flapper wife Gloria Gilbert who become «wrecked on the shoals of dissipation» while excessively partying at the dawn of the hedonistic Jazz Age. As Fitzgerald’s second novel, the work focuses upon the swinish behavior and glittering excesses of the American social elite in the heyday of New York’s café society.
Fitzgerald modeled the characters of Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Gilbert on his newlywed spouse Zelda Fitzgerald. The novel draws circumstantially upon the early years of Fitzgeralds’ tempestuous marriage following the unexpected success of the author’s first novel, This Side of Paradise. At the time of their wedding in 1920, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda loved each other, and the early years of their marriage in New York City were more akin to a friendship.
Having reflected upon the criticisms of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald sought to improve upon the form and construction of his prose in The Beautiful and Damned and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether. Consequently, he revised his second novel based on editorial suggestions from his friend Edmund Wilson and his editor Max Perkins. When reviewing the manuscript, Perkins commended the conspicuous evolution of Fitzgerald’s literary craftsmanship.
Metropolitan Magazine serialized the manuscript in late 1921, and Charles Scribner’s Sons published the book in March 1922. Scribner’s prepared an initial print run of 20,000 copies. It sold well enough to warrant additional print runs reaching 50,000 copies. Despite the considerable sales, many critics consider the work to be among Fitzgerald’s weaker novels. During the final decade of his life, Fitzgerald remarked upon the novel’s lack of quality in a letter to his wife: «I wish The Beautiful and Damned had been a maturely written book because it was all true. We ruined ourselves—I have never honestly thought that we ruined each other.»
Plot summary
In 1913, Anthony Patch is a twenty-five year old Harvard University alumnus recently having returned from Rome and now residing in New York City. He is the presumptive heir to his dying grandfather’s vast fortune. Through his friend Richard «Dick» Caramel, Anthony meets Gloria Gilbert, a beautiful flapper and «jazz baby» who is Dick’s cousin. Anthony begins courting her. The couple fall madly in love, with Gloria ecstatically exclaiming: «Mother says that two souls are sometimes created together—and in love before they’re born.» After a whirlwind courtship, Anthony and Gloria decide to marry.
For the first three years of their married life together, Anthony and Gloria vow to adhere to «the magnificent attitude of not giving a damn… for what they chose to do and what consequences it brought. Not to be sorry, not to lose one cry of regret, to live according to a clear code of honor toward each other, and to seek the moment’s happiness as fervently and persistently as possible.» Gloria and Anthony’s marital bliss soon evaporates, especially when they are each pitted against the other’s selfish attitudes. Once the couple’s infatuation with each other fades, they begin to see their differences do more harm than good, as well as leaving each other with unfulfilled hopes. Over time, the disappointed couple become hedonistic and cynical libertines.
When Anthony’s grandfather learns of Anthony’s dissipation, he disinherits him. During World War I, Anthony briefly serves in the American Expeditionary Forces while Gloria remains home alone until his return. While in army training, Anthony has an extramarital liaison with Dot Raycroft, a lower-class Southern woman. After the Allied Powers sign an armistice with Imperial Germany in November 1918, Anthony returns to New York City and reunites with Gloria. When the struggle over the grandfather’s inheritance finally concludes, Anthony wins his inheritance. However, he has now become a hopeless alcoholic, and his wife has lost her beauty. The couple are now wealthy but morally and physically ruined.
At the end, Anthony Patch—echoing his grandfather—describes his inherited wealth as a consequence of his character rather than mere circumstance: «Only a few months before people had been urging him to give in, to submit to mediocrity… But he had known that he was justified in his way of life—and he had stuck it out staunchly… ‘I showed them… It was a hard fight, but I didn’t give up and I came through!»
Major characters
Anthony Patch – a Harvard alumnus and incorrigible loafer who is an heir to his grandfather’s large fortune. He is unambitious, and therefore unmotivated to work even as he pursues various careers. He is enthralled by Gloria Gilbert’s beauty and falls in love with her immediately. He is drafted into the United States Army, but the war ends before he is sent overseas. Throughout the novel he compensates for a lack of vocation with parties and ingravescent alcoholism. His expectations of future wealth make him powerless to act in the present, leaving him with empty relationships in the end.
Gloria Gilbert – a beautiful flapper and «jazz baby» from Kansas City whom Anthony marries. She contributes to his decline through her extravagant spending. Self-absorbed, her personality revolves around her beauty and a belief that this quality makes her more important than everyone else. The character was loosely based on Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda. Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his daughter Scottie delineating the differences between Gloria and Zelda: «Gloria was a much more trivial and vulgar person than your mother. I can’t really say there was any resemblance except in the beauty and certain terms of expression she used, and also I naturally used many circumstantial events of our early married life. However the emphases were entirely different. We had a much better time than Anthony and Gloria had».
Richard «Dick» Caramel – an aspiring author who is one of Anthony’s best friends and also Gloria’s cousin. He is the one who brings Anthony and Gloria together. During the course of the book he publishes his novel The Demon Lover and basks in his notoriety for a good amount of time after publication.
Joseph Bloeckman – a Jewish film producer who is in love with Gloria and hopes she will leave Anthony for him. Gloria and Bloeckman had a budding relationship when Gloria met Anthony. He continues to be friends with Gloria, giving Anthony some suspicion of an extramarital affair.
Dorothy «Dot» Raycroft – a lower-class Southern woman with whom Anthony has an affair during his army training. She is a lost soul looking for someone to share her life with. She falls in love with Anthony despite learning that he is married, causes problems between Gloria and Anthony, and spurs Anthony’s decline in mental health.
Writing and production
Following the success of his debut novel This Side of Paradise in March 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. His new fame enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and his increased financial prospects persuaded his fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him as Fitzgerald could now pay for her accustomed lifestyle. Although they were re-engaged, Fitzgerald’s feelings for Zelda were at an all-time low, and he remarked to a friend, «I wouldn’t care if she died, but I couldn’t stand to have anybody else marry her.» Despite mutual reservations, they married in a simple ceremony on April 3, 1920, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York. At the time of their wedding, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other, and the early years of their stormy marriage in New York City were more akin to a friendship.
Living in luxury at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, the newlywed couple became national celebrities, as much for their wild behavior as for the success of Fitzgerald’s novel. At the Biltmore, Scott did handstands in the lobby, while Zelda slid down the hotel banisters. After several weeks, the hotel asked them to leave for disturbing other guests. The couple relocated two blocks to the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street where they spent half-an-hour spinning in the revolving door. Fitzgerald likened their juvenile behavior in New York City to two «small children in a great bright unexplored barn.» Writer Dorothy Parker first encountered the couple riding on the roof of a taxi. «They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun», Parker recalled, «their youth was striking. Everyone wanted to meet him.»
Fitzgerald’s ephemeral happiness mirrored the societal giddiness of the Jazz Age, a term which he popularized in his essays and stories. He described the era as racing «along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money.» In Fitzgerald’s eyes, the era represented a morally permissive time when Americans became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and obsessed with self-gratification. During this hedonistic era, alcohol increasingly fueled the Fitzgeralds’ social life, and the couple consumed gin-and-fruit concoctions at every outing. Publicly, their alcohol intake meant little more than napping at parties, but privately it led to bitter quarrels. As their quarrels worsened, the couple accused each other of marital infidelities. They remarked to friends that their marriage would not last much longer.
In August 1920 while in Westport, Connecticut, Fitzgerald began work on his second novel. The novel had several working titles such as The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy and The Flight of the Rocket. On August 12, Fitzgerald described the plot of the novel to Charles Scribner as focusing upon the life of an artist who lacks creative inspiration and who, after marrying a beautiful woman, is «wrecked on the shoals of dissipation». The writing of the novel was interrupted as his wife Zelda wished to return to the Deep
