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Book 1, Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tender Is the Night, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Excess, Destruction, and the Failed American Dream
Gender, Mental Illness, and Psychiatry
The Pursuit of Youth and Innocence
Racism and Otherness
Summary
Analysis
At a restaurant in Paris, Dick, Abe, Mary, Rosemary, and two musicians make a game of observing men at different tables, watching to see how frequently they fidget and fiddle. Dick declares confidently that he is the only American man to possess true “repose.” Both the game and the company delight Rosemary, who has been with the Divers in Paris for two days.
Dick is the perfect picture of masculinity. He is calm, polished, and utterly charming. For Dick and his party, this “repose” is more European than American, and Dick shows off arrogantly that he is able to possess and finesse this foreign characteristic. Here Fitzgerald demonstrates how American expatriates often romanticized Europe, believing it to be classier and more elegant than their home country.
Themes
Nicole arrives wearing a “sky-blue suit like a stray segment of the weather outside.” The three women at the table—Mary, Rosemary, and Nicole—symbolize different faces of American life. Nicole “was the granddaughter of a self-made American capitalist,” Mary was the daughter of a working-class tradesman and “a descendent of President Tyler,” and Rosemary was a Hollywood actress from “the middle of the middle class.” Although the women are very different, their shared ability to live happily “in a man’s world” offers them a common ground.
Fitzgerald portrays how the economic boom in America after World War I made possible a sort of smudging and blurring of the class divides that had defined America more strictly before the war. Class boundaries no longer apply to the three women at lunch—Nicole, Mary, and Rosemary—who have become wealthy respectively through business, marriage, and Hollywood celebrity. Fitzgerald also highlights how, despite their wealth, none of these women possess any real power in the world, but that they are able to exist happily within the patriarchal structure due to the comfortable lifestyle that money affords them.
Themes
While in a phone booth at the back of the restaurant, Rosemary overhears Dick and Nicole talking in hushed voices. Rosemary doesn’t understand what Dick means when he says, “I want you terribly—let’s go to the hotel now,” but the tone of his voice leaves Rosemary “breathless.”
Despite her innocent naivety, Rosemary feels a strong desire for Dick when she hears him trying to seduce Nicole. Rosemary’s sexual awakening has begun, and she is determined, more than ever, to have her way with Dick.
Themes
Rosemary sees Nicole in a new light while shopping with her after lunch; she is beautiful, elusive, and impulsive. Nicole buys a large number of items, spending her money with ease, feeding the capitalist machine with her near endless frenzy of consumption.
In many ways, Nicole symbolizes American capitalism: she is the granddaughter of a capitalist and therefore benefits from the exploitation that helped make him rich. Shopping is a pastime for Nicole, and she passes her days buying mass-produced products that she doesn’t need, reflecting the broader Western trend of consumption during this time.
Themes
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