“Her Voice is Full of Money”: Mechanical Reproduction and a Metaphysics of Substance in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

ABSTRACT

Much has been written on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but critics have largely ignored how 1920s consumer culture contributes to the novel’s philosophical themes. Viewing the novel through Marxist literary critic Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, this article argues that 1920s consumer society—and the popularisation of mechanically reproduced consumer goods—deconstructs the metaphysical underpinnings of upperclass privilege modelled by Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby strives to imitate an aristocratic identity but is eventually found out by Tom, who exposes Gatsby’s social performance as an inauthentic forgery. But, as Benjamin argues, mechanical reproduction results in a diminished aura, the originary ontology that authorises a metaphysics of substance and, with it, a social order governed by the logic of authenticity. So, while the American aristocracy is successful in its condemnation of Gatsby’s inauthentic social performance, the novel deconstructs a metaphysics of substance and thereby critiques the ontological authority of the ruling class. Gatsby may have been born into the working class but his upper-class simulation, like all simulations, is no more or less authentic than those of the American aristocracy.

Notes

1 Fitzgerald, 120.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 97.

4 Aristotle, Politics, 8. This line refers to Aristotle’s idea of natural slavery, the belief that some people are slaves by nature—that is, ontologically—while others are slaves by convention or law. A similar belief system, I argue, structures the class divisions in Fitzgerald’s novel, for Gatsby is an upper-class citizen by wealth, but he is not able to legitimize himself as an upper-class citizen by nature, as I will show.

5 Person, 254.

6 Weinstein, 26–7.

7 Aristotle, “On Interpretation,” 1.

8 Fitzgerald, 127.

9 Ibid., 48.

10 Canterbery, 142–3.

11 Historically, the term aristocracy refers to a form of government ruled by its best citizens, a superior class of people distinguished by birth and financial inheritance to be leaders of the state. Beyond this technical usage, however, “the term is popularly extended,” according to the OED, “to include all those who by birth or fortune occupy a position distinctly above the rest of the community,” not simply those who occupy government positions. Conforming to this popular usage, I employ the term throughout my article to refer specifically to lineages of “old money” in the American upper class. The term is especially useful in this context because it implies the notion of good breeding, which marks, for Tom, Daisy, and other inheritors of this aristocratic legacy, their ontological superiority to both lower- and middle-class citizens. Although the aristocracy, in this more general sense of the term, does not play a direct role in the U.S. government, their great wealth and social standing no doubt afford them certain political privileges. Daisy kills Myrtle Wilson with impunity, and Nick sadly observes that she and Tom “retreated back into their money” (179). It is partly for this reason that economist E. Ray Canterbery remarks on the novel’s aristocratic themes, which, he argues, accurately reflect social elements of the U.S. economy.

12 Fitzgerald, 98.

13 Ibid., 98, 99.

14 Derrida, 11.

15 Fitzgerald, 17.

16 Roberts, 666.

17 Rambaud, 100–1, quoted in Roberts, 666.

18 Benjamin, “The Work of Art,” 220.

19 Ibid., 221.

20 Ibid., 221.

21 Ibid., 223.

22 Fitzgerald, 12.

23 Ibid., 20.

24 Ibid., 12–13.

25 Ibid., 12.

26 Ibid., 69.

27 Ibid., 130.

28 Ibid., 130.

29 Ibid., 101.

30 Ibid., 72.

31 Kirby, 158.

32 Ibid., 158.

33 Fitzgerald, 5, 91.

34 Ibid., 2.

35 Benjamin, “The Work of Art,” 220.

36 Ibid.

37 Deleuze, 257.

38 Baudrillard, 1732, 1733.

39 Benjamin, “The Work of Art,” 231.

40 Fitzgerald, 161.

41 Ibid., 13.

42 Ibid., 27.

43 Ibid., 27.

44 Ibid., 27.

45 Ibid., 27.

46 Ibid., 34, 35.

47 Ibid., 27, 28.

48 Ibid., 28, 29.

49 Ibid., 6, 29.

50 Ibid., 8, 30, 8, 30–1.

51 Ibid., 30.

52 Ibid., 31.

53 Ibid., 31.

54 Ibid., 32.

55 Ibid., 36.

56 Ibid., 8.

57 Ibid., 36.

58 Ibid., 33.

59 Ibid., 90.

60 Ibid., 91.

61 Ibid., 92.

62 Ibid., 92.

63 Ibid., 92.

64 Ibid., 92.

65 Ibid., 65.

66 Ibid., 65.

67 Ibid., 65.

68 Ibid., 65, 66, 64.

69 Ibid., 67.

70 Ibid., 67.

71 Ibid., 91.

72 Ibid., 45.

73 Ibid., 45–6.

74 Goldsmith, 463.

75 Fitzgerald, 23.

76 Ibid.

77 Randall, 56.

78 North, 160.

79 Fitzgerald, 130, 121, 122.

80 Ibid., 122, 121, 127, 46.

81 Ibid., 133.

82 Ibid., 148.

83 Ibid., 133.

84 Ibid., 160.

85 Baudrillard, 1736.

86 Fitzgerald, 179.

87 Ibid., 178.

88 Ibid., 2.