Miss Baker is described as “a slender, small-breasted girl” and compared to a “young cadet.” This description of her androgynous features characterizes her as a “flapper,” and makes her representative of the novel’s emphasis on modern styles that clash with established, traditional standards, including gender roles.
The Great Gatsby – 1
The Great Gatsby – 8
When Tom confronts Gatsby about his affair with Daisy, he makes hypocritical reference to “family life and family institutions,” even though he’s guilty of infidelity himself. This reference to traditional institutions symbolizes the challenge to tradition that is at the heart of this modernist novel. Gatsby’s modern dream is to be the upstart who topples tradition and wins the girl of his dreams, despite the fact that he’s not from an old, established family. Furthermore, Tom compares the affair between Gatsby and Daisy to the idea of interracial marriage, another prospect that represents a challenge to tradition and, in Buchanan’s mind, civilization.
The Great Gatsby – 9
As they recover her mangled body, Myrtle Wilson is described as having “tremendous vitality.” This description contrasts with that of the other women, the lithe, androgynous, modern flappers. What does it mean that the woman with the traditional appearance is killed, albeit accidentally, by the modern woman?
The Sun Also Rises – 3
The unspecified injury that stops Jake and Brett from being in relationship–to which Jake refers with the words “Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it”–has presumably resulted in his impotence. This impotence could be regarded figuratively. Jake and Brett, who symbolize modern culture, are incapable of generating anything new.
The Sun Also Rises – 6
Jake sees a cathedral he describes with the words “The first time I ever saw it I thought the facade was ugly, but I liked it now. I went inside.” Does this new interest in the church represent a nostalgic desire for former meaning-making institutions, for the authority and grandeur of old establishments that have become less accessible, with the dawn of modernism? Whether it does or not, Jake has trouble praying once he enters it.
The Sun Also Rises – 13
After their affair has ended, Brett indicates that Romero was ashamed of her because of her style, saying “He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I’d look so like hell.” Apparently, Romero feels like Brett isn’t sufficiently feminine because she has a short haircut. He symbolizes the traditional male and her modern style defies traditional gender roles.
Of Mice and Men – 9
Crooks, a black character, disparages Lennie and George’s dream of owning land and compares their dream to ideas about heaven. He says, “I seen hunderds [sic] of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads…Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land.” If Crooks’s disillusionment can be associated with modernism, does his perspective support Toni Morrison’s idea that “Black people were the first modernists,” the first to be disillusioned as a result of their experience in America?
To the Lighthouse – 2
Mrs. Ramsay feels protective towards men because of the boyish reverence “something trustful, childlike” they offer her and other women. In reflection, she contrasts this with what she thinks her daughters feel, the “infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other.” This association between Paris, the mecca for Western expatriates, and the rejection of traditional gender roles goes to the very heart of modernism.
To the Lighthouse – 7
Mrs. Ramsay’s feelings about God can be associated with a modernist lack of faith. “How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor.”
To the Lighthouse – 9
Nature is described as if it is unconcerned with humanity, as if there is nothing in it for people to appeal to, which seems consistent with the modern worldview. As Mrs. Ramsay puts her youngest children to bed, Woolf writes “she got up, and pulled the window down another inch or two, and heard the wind, and got a breath of the perfectly indifferent chill night air…” Nature’s apparent indifference can be compared to humanity’s philosophical disdain for itself, reflected in Mr. Bankes’s thoughts: “Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species?”