In Chapter 1, the narrator begins " A Flash-Back in Paradise" with a description of Beauty personified:
Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself.
In this passage, Fitzgerald shifts briefly into a dramatic format. The main character of this scene is a reincarnation of Beauty, who happens to be personified as a Jazz Age girl. She sits in contemplation of herself until she realizes that she is to be born again. But in whom? The placement of this personification—right before Gloria appears—suggests that Gloria is the reincarnation of Beauty.
However, there is one key difference between this Beauty and Gloria: in the former, the beauty of her physical form matches the beauty of her soul. Gloria, on the other hand, is the most beautiful woman in the novel and yet remains lazy, dependent, and vain. The purpose of personifying Beauty in this singular dramatic scene is to call attention to the extreme unreality and unattainability of perfect beauty towards which Gloria strives. It also highlights the disparity between physical and spiritual beauty. By the novel's end, both Gloria and Anthony have become shells of their former selves and lack both the spiritual and physical beauty of Fitzgerald's personified Beauty.
