In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, society is obsessed with gossip and scandal. So, when Mr. Button’s son Benjamin is born with a condition that makes him age backwards, Mr. Button spends more time worrying that this will destroy the family reputation than actually caring for his son. Even the doctors and nurses who delivered Benjamin fret that the hospital’s reputation will suffer because he was born there, and they treat Mr. Button and Benjamin terribly. This reaction validates Mr. Button’s fear that Benjamin will bring dishonor to the family, indicating that society really does ostracize people who are different—this, apparently, isn’t just an irrational fear of Mr. Button’s. Indeed, as Benjamin grows up, people continuously spread salacious gossip about him because of his condition. And though this undoubtedly makes his life harder, there’s one saving grace: nobody ever remembers the gossip for very long. Instead, the rumors always go away after a while, lying dormant until something else comes along and kicks up a new scandal. In fact, by the end of the story, only Benjamin’s immediate family seems to know about his peculiar condition. This suggests that although gossip can be deeply hurtful and can tarnish a person’s reputation in the short term, it isn’t worth worrying about in the long term, because it’s bound to fade away.
In the world of the story, the idea of losing face in society leads to a kind of hysterical fear, as people act like nothing could be worse than tarnishing their reputation. Benjamin’s birth brings out this intense fear about reputation and status, since nobody wants to be associated with his condition. Doctor Keene barely lets himself stop to talk to Mr. Button outside the hospital, clearly afraid that being seen in public with him will jeopardize his own good name as a physician. Similarly, the nurse who takes Mr. Button to see his son treats him poorly, saying the hospital will no longer have even the “ghost of a reputation” after Benjamin’s birth. For Mr. Button, who has yet to meet his newborn son, this treatment is jarring and nerve-wracking. Mr. Button doesn’t even know about Benjamin’s condition yet, but the nurse shows him no compassion at all—she not only keeps him in an excruciating state of anticipation, but also makes him feel unwelcome at the hospital. This suggests that society’s obsession with reputation is so powerful that it keeps people from empathizing with one another. Most doctors and nurses make a point of comforting patients and their loved ones, not chastising them and making them feel worse. But Doctor Keene and the nurse don’t comfort or reassure Mr. Button at all, since they’re more concerned with maintaining their reputation than with being kind to other people.
Unfortunately for Benjamin, this obsession with status runs deep in Baltimorean society—so deep that even Mr. Button seems to care more about his reputation than about his own son. Faced with having to walk Benjamin home from the hospital, Mr. Button is terrified that important people will see them together, finding the very idea “grotesque” and “appalling.” In the same way that this obsession with reputation overshadows any empathy that Doctor Keene or the nurse might otherwise have for the Buttons’ situation, Mr. Button’s own fixation on status keeps him from fully loving and supporting Benjamin.
Of course, there’s a reason that so many characters in this story are protective of their reputations: the society they live in is hungry for gossip. Benjamin’s birth becomes a huge “sensation” in Baltimore, and the only reason it doesn’t severely “cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially” is that the Civil War begins, drawing attention away from the scandal. But gossip about Benjamin’s condition resurfaces when, years later, he and Hildegarde announce their engagement. Because Hildegarde is the daughter of one of the most widely respected figures in Baltimore, everyone suddenly remembers the “almost forgotten story of Benjamin’s birth.” To make matters worse, people circulate the story in salacious, scandalous ways, embellishing it to make it even more ridiculous but also more intriguing. People even talk about him as if he’s some sort of demon. The main effect of this gossip is that it turns Benjamin’s future father-in-law against him. Just like seemingly everyone else in the story, General Moncrief apparently cares more about his family’s reputation than about his daughter’s happiness, since he tries to convince Hildegarde not to follow her heart by marrying Benjamin. Once again, then, an obsession with reputation negatively impacts Benjamin’s life.
At the same time, though, the gossip about Benjamin doesn’t completely derail his life. The rumors about Benjamin do have some negative effects at first, but the gossip and mistreatment never last very long. This is made evident by the fact that nobody really talks about his condition between the time of his birth and when he marries Hildegarde. And although his marriage stirs up some gossip, the stories quickly fade away again. In fact, by the time Benjamin leads the life of a young man, nobody remembers his condition. People gossip about the age difference between him and Hildegarde, but not about his process of reverse aging. Society has, in other words moved on—not necessarily because people don’t care, but because society as a whole doesn’t remember. When Benjamin goes out dancing with young women, for example, people gossip about his marriage with Hildegarde, not knowing that their own parents also used to gossip about Benjamin and Hildegarde, but for entirely different reasons. This highlights the passing nature of gossip and scandal. Everyone fixates on reputation, relishing any kind of slander that might dismantle a person’s status, but the story implies that none of this really matters. And although this hurts Benjamin throughout his life, only a small handful of people even recall Benjamin’s strange condition at the time of his death. This suggests that no matter how much people obsess over things like status and reputation, “people inevitably forget” even the juiciest gossip.
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Reputation, Gossip, and Scandal Quotes in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy. This was their first experience with the charming old custom of having babies—Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, at which institution Mr. Button himself had been known for four years by the somewhat obvious nickname of “Cuff.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Here now!” cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion of irritation, “I’ll ask you to go and see for yourself. Outrageous!” He snapped the last word out in almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering: “Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation? One more would ruin me—ruin anybody.”
“All right, Mr. Button,” she agreed in a hushed voice. “Very well! But if you knew what state it’s put us all in this morning! It’s perfectly outrageous! The hospital will never have the ghost of a reputation after—”
“Hurry!” he cried hoarsely. “I can’t stand this!”
“Come this way, then, Mr. Button.”
“This is a fine place to keep a youngster of quiet tastes. With all this yelling and howling, I haven’t been able to get a wink of sleep. I asked for something to eat”—here his voice rose to a shrill note of protest—“and they brought me a bottle of milk!”
Mr. Button sank down upon a chair near his son and concealed his face in his hands. “My heavens!” he murmured, in an ecstasy of horror. “What will people say? What must I do?”
A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful clarity before the eyes of the tortured man—a picture of himself walking through the crowded streets of the city with this appalling apparition stalking by his side. “ I can’t. I can’t,” he moaned.
People would stop to speak to him, and what was he going to say? He would have to introduce this—this septuagenarian: “This is my son, born early this morning.” And then the old man would gather his blanket around him and they would plod on, past the bustling stores, the slave market—for a dark instant Mr. Button wished passionately that his son was black—past the luxurious houses of the residential district, past the home for the aged. . . .
If, say, he could only find a very large boy’s suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain something of his own self-respect—not to mention his position in Baltimore society.
But a frantic inspection of the boys’ department revealed no suits to fit the new-born Button. He blamed the store, of course—in such cases it is the thing to blame the store.
“They look sort of funny to me,” he complained. “I don’t want to be made a monkey of—”
“You’ve made a monkey of me!” retorted Mr. Button fiercely. “Never you mind how funny you look. Put them on—or I’ll—or I’ll spank you.” He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling nevertheless that it was the proper thing to say.
“All right, father”—this with a grotesque simulation of filial respect—“you’ve lived longer; you know best. Just as you say.”
As before, the sound of the word “father” caused Mr. Button to start violently.
The remaining brush of scraggly hair, the watery eyes, the ancient teeth, seemed oddly out of tone with the gayety of the costume. Mr. Button, however, was obdurate—he held out his hand. “Come along!” he said sternly.
His son took the hand trustingly. “What are you going to call me, dad?” he quavered as they walked from the nursery—“just ‘baby’ for a while? till you think of a better name?”
Mr. Button grunted. “I don’t know,” he answered harshly. “I think we’ll call you Methuselah.”
But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared that if Benjamin didn’t like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that he should “play with it,” whereupon the old man took it with a weary expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals throughout the day.
The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city’s attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite racked their brains for compliments to give to the parents—and finally hit upon the ingenious device of declaring that the baby resembled his grandfather, a fact which, due to the standard state of decay common to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin’s grandfather was furiously insulted.
When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where he was initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, of weaving colored maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard necklaces. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit which both irritated and frightened his young teacher. To his relief she complained to his parents, and he was removed from the school. The Roger Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.
By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no longer felt that he was different from any other child—except when some curious anomaly re- minded them of the fact.
The word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance examinations for Yale and attempted to palm himself off as a youth of eighteen. A fever of excitement permeated the college. Men ran hatless out of classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined the mob, professors’ wives with bonnets awry and bustles out of position, ran shouting after the procession, from which proceeded a continual succession of remarks aimed at the tender sensibilities of Benjamin Button.
“I’ve always said,” went on Hildegarde, “that I’d rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than marry a man of thirty and take care of him.”
The almost forgotten story of Benjamin’s birth was remembered and sent out upon the winds of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was said that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button, that he was his brother who had been in prison for forty years, that he was John Wilkes Booth in disguise—and, finally, that he had two small conical horns sprouting from his head.
The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the case with fascinating sketches which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish, to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. He became known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as is usually the case, had a very small circulation.
So many of the stories about her fiancé were false that Hildegarde refused stubbornly to believe even the true one. In vain General Moncrief pointed out to her the high mortality among men of fifty—or, at least, among men who looked fifty; in vain he told her of the instability of the wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosen to marry for mellowness—and marry she did….
In the fifteen years between Benjamin Button’s marriage in 1880 and his father’s retirement in 1895, the family fortune was doubled—and this was due largely to the younger member of the firm.
Needless to say, Baltimore eventually received the couple to its bosom. Even old General Moncrief became reconciled to his son-in-law when Benjamin gave him the money to bring out his “History of the Civil War” in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nine prominent publishers.
“Well,” he remarked lightly, “everybody says I look younger than ever.”
Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed. “Do you think it’s anything to boast about?”
“I’m not boasting,” he asserted uncomfortably.
She sniffed again. “The idea,” she said, and after a moment: “I should think you’d have enough pride to stop it.”
“How can I?” he demanded.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” she retorted. “But there’s a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you’ve made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don’t suppose I can stop you, but I really don’t think it’s very considerate.”
“Look!” people would remark. “What a pity! A young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife.” They had forgotten—as people inevitably forget—that back in 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this same ill-matched pair.
But though he was welcomed in a general way, there was obviously no heartiness in Roscoe’s feeling toward him—there was even perceptible a tendency on his son’s part to think that Benjamin, as he moped about the house in adolescent mooniness, was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now and prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out in connection with his family.
“And another thing,” continued Roscoe, “when visitors are in the house I want you to call me ‘Uncle’—not ‘Roscoe,’ but ‘Uncle,’ do you understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my first name. Perhaps you’d better call me ‘Uncle’ all the time, so you’ll get used to it.”
With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away. . . .
Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day and Benjamin found that playing with little strips of colored paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the world.
