Female Protagonists-Reflecting An Era in Fitzgerald''s Novels

Fitzgerald''s imagination had been nurtured on the realities of the nineteen twenties and his works clearly indicate how through the process of imaginative creativity, these realities became transformed into fine works of fiction. His acute awareness of his times and its effects on his abilities and achievements can be assessed in a more balanced way when we try to examine the delineation of women in his novels. The critique of women in Fitzgerald''s three novels The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night leads us to certain important findings about Fitzgerald''s strengths and weaknesses as an artist. These female protagonists arouse a unique and rewarding interest in his novels and serve to provide a better understanding of various aspects of his works. They constitute an entry point to a largely mysterious territory of Fitzgerald''s novels. His novels certainly have a social realism, but his failure to bring out the rich complexity of a woman''s nature and behaviour deprives his novels of the profundity they might have acquired, had he been able to draw these women as complex human beings.