New York City becomes the novel's central symbol of American life, wealth, and culture. It is also the nexus of the Jazz Age as it attracts socialites, artists, and musicians. Fitzgerald uses tactile, visual, and auditory imagery to emphasize the city's importance to the story. For instance, Chapter 2 begins with a description of the fall in New York:
Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing [...] a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony’s mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness [...] there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city’s shoes [...]
This passage resembles a blazon, a French poetic technique in which an object of love (usually a woman) is described from head to foot in terms of individual physical features. It begins with a tactile description of crisp fall air "folding" down from the skies upon the city. Then the narrator launches into a list of "layers" of society that proceeds from top to bottom, in order of the most to least eligible bachelorettes at Anthony's disposal. Finally, and most strikingly, the narrator refers to the city's "shoes"—the working-class girls—an epithet that seems insulting and reflects the way that Anthony categorizes women. Regardless of whether this passage is intentionally structured after a blazon, it uses tactile and visual imagery to provide a sweeping glimpse of how the city feels and looks in the fall from its skies to its so-called "shoes."
By contrast, Gloria and Anthony's trip in Chapter 4 reveals the comparative disappointment of Washington:
On their way East they stopped two days in Washington, strolling about with some hostility in its atmosphere of harsh repellent light, of distance without freedom, of pomp without splendor—it seemed a pasty-pale and self-conscious city.
The "freedom" and "splendor" of New York make Gloria and Anthony feel superior to the people in Washington. Color imagery—especially the phrase "pasty-pale"— creates a sense of their disgust. Despite seemingly endless travels, both characters maintain a high opinion of New York. Anthony in particular remains attached to the city; he insists on keeping up his apartment even when he buys a house in the country. The apartment becomes a great financial burden, but Anthony's desire to maintain appearances outweighs the more logical choice of selling it. Throughout the story, visual imagery of the city helps romanticize its attractions in order to explain Anthony's love for New York.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote some of the most famous party scenes in American literature. In The Beautiful and Damned, he uses opulent visual imagery to convey the extravagance of high-society New York parties. In Chapter 3, Gloria invites everyone to a party to drink and dance:
Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers.
Here, the narrator provides a sweeping glimpse of the party room at the Biltmore. He describes the effect of champagne upon the partygoers with a catalog of who drank (and who did not). Most of the party scenes focus on the features and actions of people. The emphasis on physical appearance and social interaction underscores the characters' superficial preoccupations.
By contrast, when Gloria leaves the party in search of gum-drops, the focus shifts toward tactile and olfactory imagery:
The night was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left [...]
This moment occurs directly after the party scene and helps the characters (and reader) gain clarity about its truly "stiff" social atmosphere. Natural imagery evokes the emergence of spring, the feeling of warmer weather, and the (imagined) smell of flowers. A new emphasis on the temperature, smell, and feeling reflects Gloria's childlike fixation on immediate sensory experience. She often demands very specific food items because she is so sensitive to tastes, smells, and textures. Anthony makes it his mission to satisfy her, so they leave the party. The juxtaposition of the party scene and the street scene makes the party seem uncomfortable and stressful, despite the drinking and dancing. Different kinds of imagery evoke what is most important in these two moments; in the first one, visual imagery takes precedence, and in the second, tactile and olfactory imagery evoke Gloria's sensitivities. In both cases, imagery brings the story to life and helps the reader understand the characters' sensuous sensibilities.
New York City becomes the novel's central symbol of American life, wealth, and culture. It is also the nexus of the Jazz Age as it attracts socialites, artists, and musicians. Fitzgerald uses tactile, visual, and auditory imagery to emphasize the city's importance to the story. For instance, Chapter 2 begins with a description of the fall in New York:
Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing [...] a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony’s mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness [...] there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city’s shoes [...]
This passage resembles a blazon, a French poetic technique in which an object of love (usually a woman) is described from head to foot in terms of individual physical features. It begins with a tactile description of crisp fall air "folding" down from the skies upon the city. Then the narrator launches into a list of "layers" of society that proceeds from top to bottom, in order of the most to least eligible bachelorettes at Anthony's disposal. Finally, and most strikingly, the narrator refers to the city's "shoes"—the working-class girls—an epithet that seems insulting and reflects the way that Anthony categorizes women. Regardless of whether this passage is intentionally structured after a blazon, it uses tactile and visual imagery to provide a sweeping glimpse of how the city feels and looks in the fall from its skies to its so-called "shoes."
By contrast, Gloria and Anthony's trip in Chapter 4 reveals the comparative disappointment of Washington:
On their way East they stopped two days in Washington, strolling about with some hostility in its atmosphere of harsh repellent light, of distance without freedom, of pomp without splendor—it seemed a pasty-pale and self-conscious city.
The "freedom" and "splendor" of New York make Gloria and Anthony feel superior to the people in Washington. Color imagery—especially the phrase "pasty-pale"— creates a sense of their disgust. Despite seemingly endless travels, both characters maintain a high opinion of New York. Anthony in particular remains attached to the city; he insists on keeping up his apartment even when he buys a house in the country. The apartment becomes a great financial burden, but Anthony's desire to maintain appearances outweighs the more logical choice of selling it. Throughout the story, visual imagery of the city helps romanticize its attractions in order to explain Anthony's love for New York.
Fitzgerald uses visual imagery to romanticize the trips that Anthony and Gloria take just before they run out of money. In Chapter 5, Anthony and Gloria spend the spring in California and the summer in Marietta. The following description of their travels brims with luxurious visual imagery:
Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to Coronado, from Coronado to Santa Barbara, with no purpose more apparent than Gloria’s desire to dance by different music or catch some infinitesimal variant among the changing colors of the sea. Out of the Pacific there rose to greet them savage rocklands and equally barbaric hostelries built that at tea-time one might drowse into a languid wicker bazaar glorified by the polo costumes of Southhampton and Lake Forest and Newport and Palm Beach.
This passage creates a rainbow of aesthetic experiences. The couple spends the spring and summer hopping from party to party. Gloria carelessly follows her whims, and Anthony complies to such a degree that their sole purpose becomes to hear a new kind of music or to observe the "changing colors of the sea." The phrase "golden enervating spring" evokes the opulence of the social gatherings that the couple continues to chase.
Later in the chapter, though, the narrator explains that because they had "danced and splashed through a lavish spring," they had spent far too much money. After pages of gorgeous imagery, the realization of financial hardship seems unreal. Indeed, the beauty of the spring and summer (as well as their privileged upbringing) briefly hides the fact that Gloria and Anthony are lazy. Their rapid movement from place to place has no productive value; it rather drains them of time, money, and energy. Imagery helps romanticize their travels and also helps the reader understand their fatal attraction to the beautiful things they refuse to earn.
