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Book 1, Chapter 15
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
Rosemary wakes feeling ashamed but is consoled as things return to normal when she accompanies Nicole for some dress fittings. Rosemary admires “Nicole for her beauty and her wisdom” but is jealous of her. This jealousy stems largely from her mother’s hurtful remark that Nicole is “a great beauty,” where Rosemary is not. While in a taxi together, the two women realize that they had both lived on the same, dingy street in Paris as children—Rue de Saints-Pères.
While Rosemary is a famous actress and an American sweetheart figure, Nicole is a classical beauty. Fitzgerald therefore contrasts their differing types of femininity; where Rosemary represents the modern glamour of Hollywood, Nicole symbolizes old-world European elegance. Their childhood experiences of Paris, however, unite the two women together. In addition, in English, the street name Rue de Saints-Pères translates to Holy Fathers Street. This is significant since, throughout the story, father figures play an important role in shaping the reader’s understanding of both Nicole and Rosemary.
Themes
They meet the others and Rosemary’s eyes find Dick’s. She is “wildly happy” when realizing that “he was beginning to fall in love with her.” Even though she hardly glances at Dick again, she feels confident that he is falling for her.
Once more, Fitzgerald reveals the illusory nature of Rosemary’s innocence when describing how she carefully controls her behavior in order to seduce Dick.
Themes
An American man named Collis Clay, who Rosemary had held hands with last year, joins them to go to the cinema to watch Rosemary’s latest film, Daddy’s Girl. In it, Rosemary is “so young and innocent.” Rosemary sits between Collis and Dick as they watch. Dick winces “for all the psychologists” at the “father complex” present in the plot line. After the film is over, Rosemary announces to the group that she’s arranged for Dick to take a screen test. Dick is offended by the suggestion, believing film acting to be an unmanly pursuit.
Daddy’s Girl is seemingly about a sweet, innocent young girl who loses her father during the course of the narrative. Dick’s reaction—to wince—at the story’s resolution suggests that it contains some reference to a Freudian or psychoanalytical understanding of the Electra complex, whereby young girls become subconsciously sexually attracted to their fathers. By making this a theme in the hit Hollywood movie, Fitzgerald draws attention to a societal obsession with youth and innocence, as well as a tendency to sexualize young girls.
Themes
In the taxi with Dick and Collis, Rosemary explains that she had planned to send Dick’s screen test to Hollywood, hoping that he would be able to join her in a lead role. Collis tries to flatter Rosemary, but she is desperate for him to leave her and Dick alone. Dick gives the taxi driver an address and they stop outside an unfamiliar building. Dick warns her that she “won’t like these people,” and Rosemary imagines them to be dull, drunk, or distasteful, unfashionable types. She is completely unprepared for what is about to unfold.
Rosemary’s plan for Dick to join her in Hollywood reveals her hopeful naivety and immaturity. Collis and Dick are both suitors to Rosemary, and Collis—being young and single—would be a much more appropriate match. Ultimately though, Rosemary chooses Dick. Fitzgerald creates tension at the end of this chapter with the suggestion that Rosemary is about to witness something shocking or distasteful in the building they’re about to visit, perhaps shattering the very innocence to which Dick is drawn.
Themes
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Dick tells Franz that he needs to go away on a trip without Nicole and asks him to “keep the peace” while he attends a psychiatry conference in Munich. Dick has no intention of actually attending the congress but heads for Germany the following week.
Dick feels drained by recent events with Nicole and needs some respite. There is a chance that Dick will be able to recover some of his former self with some space from Nicole. Although Franz is very understanding of the matter, Dick feels the need to lie about the congress to his business partner.
Themes
On the flight, Dick realizes how tired he feels after the recent dramas in his family. He dreams of European landscapes and the girls he might find there. Dick’s mind has been shaped partly by the “tawdry souvenirs of his boyhood” but still maintains “the low painful fire of intelligence.”
The narrator suggests that below the shallow illusion of Dick’s promise and prestige, he has very simple desires and pleasures. He soon forgets his family, for example, when imagining the various women he’ll be able to conquer across Europe.
Themes
