The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald - Carol Wershoven (essay date 1993)
Carol Wershoven (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: Wershoven, Carol. “Insatiable Girls.” In Child Brides and Intruders, pp. 92-9. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993.
[In the following essay, Wershoven notes that Daisy Buchanan is a prototypical “child bride” whose “purchase” is required by a society of commodity.]
Undine Spragg [in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country] is only one in a series of girls whose appetite mirrors a nation's desire. In four novels that followed The Custom of the Country—The Great Gatsby, [Wharton's] Twilight Sleep [and Ellen Glasgow's], The Sheltered Life and In This Our Life—versions of the insatiable girl appear, and so, too, does a recognizable pattern. The desiring/desired girl stands at the center of a vortex. Around her swirl instances of failed marriages, blocked communications, social disorder and decay. Like The...
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