Fitzgerald, F. Scott | Robert L. Gale (essay date spring 1997)
Robert L. Gale (essay date spring 1997)
SOURCE: Gale, Robert L. “Fitzgerald's ‘A Snobbish Story’.” The Explicator 55, no. 3 (spring 1997): 154.
[In the following essay, Gale identifies the source for Josephine Perry's nickname in “A Snobbish Story,”]
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's “A Snobbish Story” (1930), the Chicago Tribune reporter John Boynton Bailey, who is also a would-be socialist playwright, derisively labels as “Miss Potterfield-Swiftcormick” the heroine Josephine Perry, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy Chicago businessman.
This name satirically combines the names of Chicago merchant-capitalist Potter Palmer (1826-1902) and perhaps his wife, the art collector Mrs. Potter Palmer (née Bertha Honoré), Chicago merchant-philanthropist Marshall Field (1852-1906), Chicago meat-packing capitalist Gustavus Franklin Swift (1839-1903) and his five meat-packing sons, and Chicago journalist-politician and...
[The entire page is 179 words long]
Navigate
