Addressing to The Human Values in Sonnets of E.barrett-browning and Great Gatsby by S.fitzgerald

Gatsby vs Barret Browning

The historical, social and cultural contexts of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and F. Scott Fitzgerald play a significant role in the language forms and features, ideas, values, and attitudes communicated in their respective writings. As a result of the contexts, the composers’ perspectives on the concerns of their texts both align with and oppose one another. Through the subversion of the Petrarchan style of sonnet, Barrett-Browning challenges the expectations of women in her era while also expressing her ideas on love, mortality and the influence of the past upon the present. Similarly, Fitzgerald confronts the morals of his time in his novel, The Great Gatsby, while also addressing these human values.

The concepts surrounding love in the sonnets and the novel chiefly address an ideal and pure love. The texts also look at the transcendental and transformative power of love. Barrett-Browning assumes an altered form of the Petrarchan sonnet to defy the ideas of courtly and ideal love –the attitudes towards a woman’s duty in a relationship of her era. In Sonnet 14, it is apparent that Barrett-Browning desires nothing more than pure love “If thou must love me let it be for nought, but for love's sake only".

This is contrasted to Fitzgerald’s environment of the prohibition, consumerism and the disillusionment caused by post-war, all factors that proved to be obstructive to Gatsby’s dream of sharing love with Daisy. Gatsby himself is also corrupted, in particular the means of his obtainment of wealth. This is exemplified in dialogue between Gatsby and Daisy while they are at the Plaza Hotel, the quote says, “Tell him... you never loved him...”

Love’s capability to transcend above the physical is predominantly expressed in Barrett-Browning’s poems; she recognises the spiritual sense of love in a more evocative way than Fitzgerald. Elizabeth’s background is more religious, with Christian language woven throughout her poetry. It is also mentioned that love has a power over the proverbial ‘spirit’ of death in her first sonnet “But there the silver answer rang… not Death, but Love.”

In Gatsby’s world, it is love’s inability to overthrow the physical that brings about both Nick’s and the reader’s feelings of hopelessness. This was caused by the increasing materialism which afforded the belief that love was no longer defined by the passions of the heart, but it was limited by physical features such as social status. We can see this while Gatsby, Tom and Daisy are in an argument, Daisy says, "Oh, you want too much!" – "I love you now – isn't that enough?”

Love can also transform, as elucidated in Elizabeth’s sonnets as she reconstructs the traditional male influence on poetry to implement her own voice as a woman to challenge the constraints of love in the Victorian Era. Over the progression of her writings, we see an illustration of the changes occurring within her as a result of her emerging and shifting emotions. Barrett-Browning refers to “Spring” and “Cuckoo-song” in Sonnet 21, and this symbolic technique suggests a rebirth from her “melancholy years”.

Similarly, Fitzgerald echoes this perspective of love being a powerful force of transformation primarily through the physical metamorphosis that took place within James Gatz to create Jay Gatsby. Love as a transformative catalyst is hardly effective if it is at work within the secular and shallow atmosphere of the 1920s. This is displayed when Fitzgerald communicates that Gatsby’s glorified affection for Daisy is still restrained by the importance of status and wealth. Gatsby reflects back to Nick about Daisy, “her voice is full of money.” The use of a hyperbole here demonstrates Gatsby’s futile effort to transform both himself and Daisy by the power of his love. Having been written in different time periods, these two texts display differing perspectives on the same ideas revolving around love.

In conjunction with these values, mortality is characterized by a number of references within Barrett-Browning’s sonnets. At first she is commenting on her past and the amount of death that highlighted her. Our first glimpse of this is in Sonnet 1, where she describes, “the sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,… those of my own life, who by turns had flung a shadow across me…” Despite this we soon find that death hasn’t quite grasped her, but instead it is love that is able to endure beyond.

Reflecting this, Fitzgerald paints an image of a world depreciating death while valuing opulence and aristocracy. It is in this environment where Gatsby is victim to the egotistic and indulgent attitudes that eventually work against him to his final moments. Nick relates a phone call he had with one of Gatsby’s associates, "Look here—this isn't Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead.” ... A long silence… an exclamation… then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.” This is where the use of a synecdoche, -utilizes sound and visual imagery to provide a picture of both the triviality and the finality of Gatsby’s untimely end.

It can also be said that it was Gatsby’s fear of his own mortality that kept him tied to the past. There are several instances where his death is foreshadowed, the most obvious of which is Nick’s nightmare, "I couldn't sleep all night; … and I tossed half sick between reality and savage frightening dreams… I felt that I had something to tell him, something to warn him about and morning would be too late."

There is a distinct disparity between the two views on morality given in the texts. Barrett-Browning begins her journey plagued by this fear as she enters into an uncertain love, while Gatsby is initially ignorant of his weakness as a human. By the end of both texts, the ideals have changed. Barrett-Browning is no longer weighed down by death, but Gatsby ultimately loses the battle against it.

The past is heavily influential on the lives of Barrett-Browning and Gatsby, and through each text it continues to have an impact. Barrett-Browning offers hints of her grievous past in the first sonnet, she feels as if the early events of her life will obstruct her ability to love. She first muses about Theocritus, but instead sees her past in a mournful light, followed by a comparison between what the Greek love poet had written with her own reflection of her former years, “of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years… the melancholy years…” Barrett Browning uses an ellipsis at the end of the line for effect, and also to indicate that she is still contemplating the time gone by.

Correspondingly, Fitzgerald uses foreshadowing on another occasion to implicate the main motif for the novel in a discussion between Gatsby and Nick, where the former says, "Can't repeat the past?"—"Why of course you can!" Dramatic irony emphasizes the inescapable situation Gatsby is trapped in, while illustrating that Gatsby himself is unaware of how his past will eventually catch up to him. The novel concludes with a symbolic metaphor that focuses on the struggle that humans find in either transcending or recreating the past to attain our dreams, but we still are unable to move beyond the past throughout history, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.”

Contexts surrounding Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and F. Scott Fitzgerald are often mirrored in the way the language forms and features, ideas, values and attitudes are expressed within their texts. Through the comparative research process of preparing this task, I learnt several things. Call me naïve, but I learnt that love can be a lot more complicated than what it should be. These writings also taught me the value of love, but at the same time the destructive or beneficial powers it has. The texts also impacted me in their own different ways. It was The Great Gatsby that affected me the most, as I assume that it was Fitzgerald’s aim to attach the reader to Gatsby right up to the moments before he died. Barret-Browning’s sonnets were also quite the inspiring love story, I hope to find my own Robert Browning someday...