It was on one of these afternoons a few weeks ago that I was approached by the Press Association to comment on the use of a passage from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as part of a 'Royal Wedding' that I'd only vaguely heard about. Apparently Princess Eugenie was getting married!
My first instinct was to be critical; to undermine the choice of the passage with irony.
The
context of the passage is interesting because it is describing the
first meeting between Nick Carraway, the narrator, and Jay Gatsby, early
on in the novel (so it does not occur between the lovers Jay and
Daisy). Nick has been invited to a party thrown
by the mysterious Gatsby, and doesn't therefore recognise him when he
announces himself. So when Gatsby smiles 'understandingly, much more
than understandingly', this is in the context of social awkwardness,
trying to put Nick at ease for making the mistake
of not having recognised or acknowledged his host. All of the
impressions of Gatsby's smile are Nick's own, as are the majority of the
impressions of the narrative as a whole, and the idealistic reading of
this smile has more to say about Nick than it does
about Gatsby.
From 'Precisely' onwards, however, Nick collects himself and
realises perhaps that it has been foolish to read so much into a smile; there is a sense, too, that he does not wish to be taken in by this nouveau riche stranger,
and so he uses class-based
commentary to belittle Gatsby within his own thoughts ('elegant young
roughneck', and an 'elaborate formality of speech' which 'just missed
being absurd'). Then we are told that Nick had already noticed Gatsby,
not knowing who he was, and had already thought
that he had been 'picking his words with care'. All of these subtle
comments suggest that Gatsby is trying too hard to be part of the elite group that he has suddenly entered, and that he doesn't quite belong.
I'm not a fan of the royal family and so don't know much about
Eugenie's partner, but it strikes me as a little strange that a passage
that points to Gatsby's arriviste qualities, and puts them (at
least towards the end) in a less than favourable
light, should be used in the wedding service. The sense that Gatsby
doesn't belong within the gilded worlds of West Egg and East Egg
underlines Nick's characterisation of him here, and it is therefore
strange that possible parallels with the royal family and
outsiders might not have been noticed before selecting the passage. It's
also a passage about self-perception, and about how one might wish to
be seen in another's eyes.
Then again, when I tried to think about it more kindly, I realised that The Great Gatsby is one of those novels that
people often read for the beauty of its language, and if we read this
passage out of context it can be seen as a gorgeous description of
unspoken communication between two people, which is
why (I imagine) it was chosen. That this is between two strangers who
each have their own agendas is, however, slightly difficult to ignore
and therefore strikes an odd note. I also wonder why the decision was
made to include the section after 'Precisely',
unless there is a hidden humour here about the relationship between
Eugenie and her partner -- perhaps she sees him as her 'elegant young
rough-neck?' -- that people who don't know the couple wouldn't get.
The main result of this comment was that I -- the daughter of an Irish Republican -- ended up being quoted in, among others, the Sunday Mail, and becoming an accidental royalist. Sorry, Mum!
