The Battle for American Masculinity: Buchanan v. Gatsby

Before Andrew Tate, there was Tom Buchanan. Did Fitzgerald actually favor Tom? America's culture war wrt masculinity has been long. No green light in sight.

Précis

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby¹ has been sold as an indictment of the “American Dream,” a depiction of the devastation wrought by desperate desire and dented dreams. I think this reading has been over-emphasized at the expense of perhaps a more interesting reading concerning American masculinity. I think the text makes evident that Fitzgerald has a deep preoccupation with manhood. The Great Gatsby provides three aesthetic molds of man: Gatsby (a scion of the era of performance and production - a harbinger of disruption), Nick (an observer and arbiter - an effete), and Tom (an inchoate but potent beast). Fitzgerald, although biographically most similar to Nick, is ambivalent about what masculinity should be. I think the extent to which Fitzgerald harbors sympathy for what Tom represents has been underestimated.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins, “I suppose he’s is the best character I’ve done.” Readers might be inclined to assume that Fitzgerald had Gatsby in mind here. You’d be wrong. Instead, Fitzgerald is referring to Tom Buchanan. Yes, that Tom Buchanan, the obscenely wealthy and boorish man-child whose adultery and ruthlessness author Gatsby’s doom.

Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (2013)

In his correspondence with Perkins, Fitzgerald continued his musing on Tom, claiming, a bit extravagantly, that Tom is one of the “three best characters in American fiction in the last twenty years” along with George Hurstwood in Sister Carrie and the brother in Salt.² Excusing Fitzgerald’s conflicted punditry on fictional figures, I have considerable sympathy for his position on Tom. This may puzzle readers of The Great Gatsby. Tom is of course a detestable character. He’s a bully, an adulterer, a racist, an elitist, and a coward. He retreats to his “vast carelessness” destroying his paramour, duping her husband, condemning the Great Gatsby to an undeserved, ignominious end, and saddling Nick with psychological desolation. This portrait is both shockingly visceral and familiar. It is intensified beyond the mundanity of everyday people. But Tom is parts of men we all know pieced together into a mosaic of masculinity - a portrait we (by which I mean the elect) now derogatorily refer to as toxic masculinity.³ Due to my aversion to this freighted yet sophomoric phrase, I’ll try and opt for different terminology over the course of this piece. ⁴

But first, I’d like to do some throat clearing. I harbor a deep skepticism of this archetype or stereotype or meme - whatever we want to call it. To the extent that it connects with real patterns of male (mis)behavior and has been codified in the minds by cultural discourse, I think it should be reckoned with. However, I aim to also do some apologetics for masculinity along the way. In part, I want to do this because I think part of Fitzgerald did too. It is possible that if we learned the proper lessons that Lost Generation artists want us to learn about men, today’s culture may be more at peace with men and sex differences. As with all things, there are tradeoffs involved. Some of the good of masculinity comes packaged with the bad. Especially with respect to Fitzgerald’s other novels like The Beautiful and Damned, it is clear he was torn about being a man. Some of this concerned his social position, but a great deal of it concerned more innate aspects of manhood.

Social theorists and commentators, especially those of the academy and of the movement Left, are especially interested in or perturbed by masculinity. On the Right, masculinity is honored sometimes to the point of fetishization or explicitly at the expense of femininity. Masculinity has been a major white elephant of sorts in quasi-political cultural discourse for awhile now. The phenomenon on the Right appears primarily a reaction to the Left along with a deference to nature and a wish to preserve received notions of sex-associated social scripts. The origins of the Left’s discomfort with men is more ambiguous. From what I can tell, there are a few issues at play. First, there is some visceral fear provoked the social cues emanating from aggressive, reckless, and/or dominant men paired with the reality that the Left is increasingly comprised of women and identified with aspects of femininity. Of course, this is a basic thing as violence or the threat of violence has been an important status strategy deployed by primates, a strategy favored by young men with little to lose and much to gain. Second, the behaviors and preferences of men of “toxic” proclivities are construed as a direct affront to egalitarian social causes, a primary commitment of those identified with the Left. I think “toxic masculinity” is triggering because the associated signaling highlights the reality of male hierarchies. Loud, if not deafening, dominance displays are difficult to ignore. They make plain the highly structured hierarchy and the penalties for defection. In other words, it is hard not to see the differences and their consequences. This even persists as more and more of our social lives are moved online. Isn’t the Incel phenomenon a group ploy of sorts, an end-around attempt on the existing social structures? Are these not low status men bonding via commiseration and plotting to ascend to higher status?

Now, I also need to acknowledge there is a sociologist named R. W. Connell that has developed a theory of “hegemonic masculinity.” Connell argues that hegemonic masculinity is a social construct that encourages a “pattern of practice” that ensures “men’s dominance over women,” and subordinates alternatives forms of masculinity, such as homosexuality.⁵ In Connell’s view, it is the way in which male hierarchy is instantiated and maintained. The hierarchy isn’t stable of course. Men can ascend or descend depending on whatever is valued in the social ecosystem of interest. Connell’s theory is wrong in so far as it identifies male status games as the cause of patriarchy, but it is right in that it identifies the intensity and stakes of male status games. This theory is quite useful for analysis of The Great Gatsby because Fitzgerald provides reader with a front row seat to a male status game among several men in in 1920s New York.

We are getting ahead ourselves though. Why does Gatsby matter to today’s discourse on sex and gender politics? Why is Fitzgerald seemingly as interested in masculinity as we are today? I think Tom is our skeleton key. I think Fitzgerald recognized this too. Tom is destructive and oppressive, but he’s predictable and understandable. He is a balance of sorts to the whimsy of womanhood. Tom and Daisy together are better than Tom and Daisy apart. Tom’s predicability contrasts with Gatsby and Nick, who are more inscrutable despite their greater palatability. Tom is a work of shrewd characterization. He fits the present paradigm of hegemonic masculinity precisely about a century later. And he is a punching bag for Fitzgerald just like Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan or even Jordan Peterson is a punching bag for today’s sociocultural elite. The difference is Fitzgerald transcended critique. He shows an interest in exploring Tom as a lesser evil to the alternatives. I think Fitzgerald’s choice to kill off one alternative (Gatsby) and leave another paralyzed by a near neurotic breakdown (Nick) speaks volumes on this point. Perhaps this choice was a cynical manifestation of envy on Fitzgerald’s part, but I think there’s more to it. We can beat back ceaselessly against the current of hegemonic man, but this is all we can do.

In the usual uninspired ways, those studying The Great Gatsby have been quick to indict Tom’s character. His aristocratic social status, including near limitless wealth and leisure time, and his degenerate and/or ugly interests are easy fodder for scorn, especially among those who have never felt kinship with the men who dominate social groups. Obviously many of these criticism have merit, but they miss the deeper way that Tom functions in the novel. Tom is Gatsby’s antagonist, and ultimately triumphs over Gatsby quite definitively. The only consolation left to Gatsby partisan’s is the fallout from the battle royale between Tom and Gatsby. Tom and Daisy hastily vacate East Egg, while Nick is left to pick up the pieces. I think a clear and reasonable interpretation of this denouement is that Tom is an unfortunate but socially stable version of masculinity, Gatsby is uncontrollable force whose end served the greater good, and Nick was compelled to bear the burden of the externalities of the male status game. In our time, Gatsbys and Nicks have been enthusiastically embraced, while Toms have been ostracized and marginalized. Nonetheless, whatever tenuous comity existed between the sexes has broken down.⁶

There are traces of my reading in some of the work of scholars and critics who have taken the easy shots at Tom. For instance, Alberto Lena’s “Deceitful Traces of Power: An Analysis of the Decadence of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby” acknowledges the current of ambivalence evident in the portrait of Tom. In delivering a critique of the leisure class (read Tom, Daisy, and Jordan), Lena argues that Fitzgerald’s novel only “represents a criticism of individual attitudes toward wealth rather than of the system itself.” Then, he attributes Fitzgerald’s own ambivalence about the leisure-class with the “identification of power, money, and amorality as the roots of progress and civilization.” Lena is offering up a black pill about the history of human development, a history that heavily implicates male leadership. Lena thinks Fitzgerald sees clearly yet is willing to swallow.

Now, I do think it is important to catalog and understand the nature of Fitzgerald’s scorn for Tom. Nick’s descriptions of Tom’s physique, personality, and behavior is a good start. Tom has a “a supercilious manner,” “arrogant eyes” that “established dominance over his face,” and “a cruel body” that Nick reprovingly remarks is “capable of enormous leverage.” Nick’s tone here wavers between envy, fear, and loathing. Nick continues in this vein sharing that he “felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.” It is hard as a modern reader not to digest this as jock bashing. Plus, there is an acknowledgment that Tom’s deportment is either incidentally or purposefully emasculating. Nick ruminates that when Tom says, “Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” the unspoken corollary is, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” Nick’s deadpan but obviously critical appraisal of Tom conveys Fitzgerald obvious contempt for brute. However, in this sardonic profile there is a subtle concession: Tom’s power is real and in some ways legitimate.

There is of course other pieces of textual evidence that can be put forth to demonstrate just how much scorn Fitzgerald harbored for hegemonic masculinity. Numerous examples crop up throughout the novel: adultery, hypocrisy, bigotry, stupidity, brutality, etc. There are two episodes of note that are tangential to the novels main thrust. I think these do some of the heavy lifting in Tom characterization, especially in preparing us for the novel’s concluding action. Shortly after Tom’s introduction, we’re treated to a lunch party scene. Tom goes on a bit of a racist rant. He brings up Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rise of the Colored Empire in an attempt to provide intellectual social commentary. The cribbed commentary is boilerplate Great Replacement anxiety, i.e. the white race “will be utterly submerged” if they fail to check the burgeoning populations of pigmented races. Fitzgerald signals obvious derision in two ways. First, Tom has committed a Tony Soprano tier malapropism in naming the author, calling him Goddard. Second, Daisy winks at Nick and ironically quips “[w]e’ve got to beat them down” and “Tom is getting very profound” in response.

The second episode follows a series of scenes wherein Nick is introduced to Tom’s mistress Myrtle and impressed into an impromptu party at Myrtle’s sister’s apartment. Nick is a fairly reluctant participant in the whole affair.⁷ He is only there because Tom has insisted. It is quite interesting that Tom has purposely and brazenly dragged Nick along to witness to his adultery. It is telling. It is possible that Tom hopes to bond with Nick via shared debauchery, but I think we should read Tom’s action as shrewder than that. I think it doubles as a display of dominance.⁸ Tom is putting his latest male acquaintance in his proper place, perhaps offering him some scraps from the table too, if he plays along. Daisy is an actual relation of Nick yet Tom is completely comfortable disclosing his infidelity. In fact, we know Tom is intent to do so. Fitzgerald makes this clear in Nick’s narration. Nick observes that Tom’s “determination to have [his] company bordered on violence.” Tom takes “hold of [Nick’s] elbow” and forces him from the train to go to Myrtle’s husband’s garage in the valley of ashes. And embedded in Tom’s display is part of how he maintains his top spot, violence. During the illicit rendezvous, Tom suddenly breaks Myrtle’s nose simply because she was insolent enough to repeatedly mention Daisy.

Fitzgerald is eager to make it hard for us to sympathize with Tom. He is almost entirely devoid of redeeming qualities. However, any reader familiar with Fitzgerald knows that he’s often hardest on himself and is loathe to deal in caricatures. Fitzgerald is an artist not a moralist nor polemicist. Tom exists not just as an object of ridicule and scorn but as a phenomenon of intense interest. In the critical moments of the novel, Tom established qualities return and they save him. Gatsby is a true threat to Tom. Yet our hero Gatsby is caught wrong-footed trying to unseat the alpha. Tom is steps ahead. By the time Gatsby makes his move, Tom has already made “a small investigation” into Gatsby’s past, unearthing his corrupt connections (“one of that bunch that hangs around Meyer Wolfsheim”) and fabricated backstory (e.g. Oxford man). And despite the hypocrisy of the tactic, he also leverages family obligation and reactionary sentiment against Gatsby. Regarding Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy, Tom remarks “nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.” Tom, as the hegemonic man, is inevitably successful in his contest with Gatsby, diminishing Gatsby in Daisy’s eyes. After Tom’s counter against Gatsby, it is plain to Daisy that Tom is the superior choice.

Before concluding, it is worth dwelling on why Tom is the superior choice both in Daisy and Fitzgerald’s eyes. American audiences are suckers for Romanticism, and Fitzgerald has played that to his advantage. He loads the dice in favor of Gatsby: the extravagant parties, undeniable charisma, and incredible dedication to Daisy. It makes us think we should be rooting for Gatsby. The hints of Gatsby’s darker side are just that… hints. Gatsby’s one moment of disassembly, his outburst at Tom when Tom confront him about his pursuit of Daisy, is his undoing in Daisy eyes. Yet readers can hardly reverse themselves on Gatsby as easily. Today’s readers especially simply read this as justified indignation of Gatsby’s part and tend to condemn Daisy as a false dream. However, I think Fitzgerald is also nervous about what unleashing a force like Gatsby on society would be like. Although solicitous toward loved ones, this new man is freed of social obligation, position, and stricture to pursue any goal with amoral and obsessive fervor. Is this not more dangerous than Tom? We certainly can’t hand things to Nick. He is too paralyzed to act, failing even to effectively aid his friend Gatsby.

Gatsby’s made an impressive attempt to ascend the male hierarchy, but the threat of the attempt was too destabilizing. Nick caught between these two modes is reluctant to endorse either and thus is left with the status quo. Tom’s power is so prodigious he not only keeps Daisy from Gatsby and kills Gatsby without dirtying his hands, but also essentially cops to the murder to Nick. Nick even stomachs this treachery, thinking “I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.” Nick surprisingly muted reaction can be read as his melancholic acceptance of the inexorability hegemonic masculinity. Nick has every reason to undermine Tom but never puts up a fight. In this we see Fitzgerald acknowledging the utility of the male dominance hierarchy. Order, not matter how flawed, has been restored and is ensured by Tom. The is an ugly competence to the brute. The world would be unstable with Gatsby. This is the world we’ve chosen. Is it time to heed Fitzgerald’s bleak warning?

Amusing Westworld Comment on Fitzgerald and Masculinity (skip to 1:25 of the scene if you don’t want to watch the whole thing):

1. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, New York: Scribner. 2004. Print

2. Lena, Alberto. “Deceitful Traces of Power: An Analysis of the Decadence of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.” Canadian Review of American Studies 28 (1998): 19-41. University of Toronto Press. Web. 21 Sept. 2013.

3. To say only that Tom utterly epitomizes a contemporary mode of American masculinity is more than a bit ahistorical. 1920s Long Island, New York appears to have understood this type of man though maybe with some temporally specific idiosyncrasies – the hereditary millionaire and inveterate philanderer whose hulking physical and social stature always makes itself known and compels obeisance. Nonetheless, the point remains that, there seems to be a special hatred for whoever ascends male hierarchies and that to a degree ascending those hierarchies either requires or encourages certain less than honorable behaviors. Nonetheless, someone must.

4. I will mostly use the term hegemonic masculinity. My usage here will be in a rough way equivalent to the usage coined by transgender sociologist and gender theorist R. W. Connell. Per Wikipedia, “Hegemonic masculinity is defined as a practice that legitimizes men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of the common male population and women, and other marginalized ways of being a man.” In this usage, it’s a, if not the, pillar of patriarchy. Tom can obviously be read as an instantiation of this concept. In my view, particular iterations of male gender expression have little to do with patriarchy. Patriarchy is simply a description of human social structure. So again, I am using “hegemonic masculinity” to refer to a particular but shared conception of aggressive, dominant, and eminent men. I accept that there will be those that attach a political valence to this version of masculinity, but I am more interested in how these ideas operate in rhetoric, especially in literature, and how to reconcile innate proclivities with ethical and aesthetic preferences. In fact, this piece is mostly interested in the idea that Fitzgerald is perhaps ambivalent about the shifting expectations of what constitutes the dominant man of his day.

5. Connell, R. W. and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19 (2005): 829-859. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2013. 

6. There are any number of things that can be marshaled as evidence for this point: sex-based political polarization, the sex recession, dating app/hook up culture, declining marriage rates, increasing single motherhood, and declining fertility.

7. Of course this can probably be said of all the things Nick experiences in the novel.

8. Gatsby does something quite similar and somehow less subtle to Nick. This parallel episode is captured quite well in the 2013 film adaptation by Baz Luhrmann. Part of it can be seen here.