The novel The Great Gatsby is celebrated as a heteronormative romannce. However, the narrative offers many instances that cause ruptures to this narrative. The queer perspective enables to read the text against grain.

1. Unit II: The Great Gatsby
M.A. Hon. Sem III
PAPER XIII (B)
Rereading Canonical Literature
Sachin Labade@Department of English, University of
Mumbai4/23/2020

2. Rereading
The Great Gatsby
Lecture III

3. Questions to ponder
• How might the works of heterosexual writers
be reread to reveal an unspoken or
unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer presence?
That is, does the work have an unconscious
lesbian, gay, or queer desire or conflict that it
submerges (or that heterosexual readers have
submerged)?

4. • What does the work reveal about the
operations (socially, politically, psychologically)
of heterosexism? Is the work (consciously or
unconsciously) homophobic? Does the work
critique, celebrate, or blindly accept
heterosexist values?

5. How does the literary text illustrate the
problematics of sexuality and sexual “identity,”
that is, the ways in which human sexuality
does not fall neatly into the separate
categories defined by the words homosexual
and heterosexual?

6. (Hypo)Thesis
• The Great Gatsby is a sexually ambiguous
novel, in that, it raises a number of questions
about the sexuality of its characters, but it
does not answer them and this ambiguity
results from the delivery of a heterosexual
plot through the medium of a closeted gay
sensibility, that of narrator Nick Carraway.

7. heterosexual romantic triangles
• The novel’s narrative progression is driven by
Jay Gatsby’s tragic love for Daisy Fay Buchanan
and by : three overlapping heterosexual
romantic triangles: Gatsby-Daisy-Tom, Tom-
Myrtle-George, and Myrtle-Tom-Daisy.

8. The novel’s treatment of sexual transgression
and its proliferation of gay and lesbian signs
work together to create a homoerotic subtext
that disrupts and destabilizes the heterosexual
narrative, creating, in the process, a sexually
ambiguous novel.
This homoerotic subtext finds its most complete
embodiment in the characterization of narrator
Nick Carraway.

9. It is The Great Gatsby’s apparent obsession
with sexual transgression that sets the stage
for a queer interpretation.

10. • 1. At Gatsby’s party there are “two girls in
twin yellow dresses” :striking example of
same-sex “doubles” that function as lesbian
signs (Chapter III)

11. • 2. At the party in Tom and Myrtle’s apartment:
the encounter between Nick and Mr. McKee,
“a pale, feminine man” (34; ch. 2)

12. • Why would Fitzgerald bother to include this
strange interlude, a loopy Nick in bed with the
“feminine” Mr. McKee in his underwear at 3 in
the morning, if not to show the narrator’s
sexual preference? What other purpose can it
possibly serve? That Nick is interested in
photography?

13. Nick and Mr. McKee
1. At the house party
2. In the elevator (dropping pin)
3. At Mr. McKeee’s apartment
“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”
. . . I was standing beside his bed and he was
sitting up between the sheets, clad in his
underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
“Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old
Grocery Horse . . . Brook’n Bridge. . .”
Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower
level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the
morning Tribune and waiting for the four o’clock
train. (Fitzgerald’s ellipses, 42 ; ch. 2)
Ellipsis as repressed memory

14. Nick’s train commutation episode
• (About the conductor)
• “Hot!” said the conductor to familiar faces.
“Some weather! hot!hot! Is it hot enough for
you? Is it hot? Is it…?”
• My commutation ticket came back to me with
a dark stain from his hand. That any one
should care in this heat whose flushed lips he
kissed, whose head made damp the pajama
pocket over his heart. (VII 120-121)

15. Gatsby’s grooming
Gatsby’s fastidious grooming and
flamboyant clothing and other
possessions function effectively as
gay signs
• “[H]is short hair looked as though
it were trimmed every day” (54;
ch. 3), and his impeccable
wardrobe features various shades
of lavender and pink, two colors
that have been long associated
with gayness.

16. His pink suit is mentioned at
least three times.
“[H]is gorgeous pink rag of a
suit made a bright spot of color
against the white steps” (162;
ch. 8).
• Much of the decor of his house
is extravagantly feminine

17. Tom’s homophobia?
• “Now, don’t think my opinion on these
matters is final,” he seemed to say,
“just because I’m stronger and more of
a man than you are.” (11; ch. 1)
• Tom’s comment on Gatsby’s pink dress
• Macho overcompensation: Tom’s need
to prove his own manhood leads him
to attack anything he perceives as an
indication of homosexuality in others

18. Jordan Baker
• Frequently described in masculine terms
• “hard, jaunty body” (63; ch. 3); “[h]er body
asserted itself with a restless movement”
(22; ch. 1); “her brown hand waved a jaunty
salute” (57; ch. 3); she has a “wan, scornful
mouth” (85; ch. 4); “her face [had] the same
brown tint as the fingerless glove on her
knee” (185; ch. 9); she “seemed to have
mastered a certain hardy skepticism” (20;
ch. 1); she’s a “clean, hard, limited person”
(84; ch. 4);
• Jorden dates men she can manipulate

19. • Throughout the book,
Fitzgerald hints that there
is something off about
him, something that
concerns his family.
Something that would
cause familial problems in
a prominent family in
1922…

20. Nick’s attraction to Gatsby
• His intense appreciation of Gatsby’s “gorgeous” appearance
and “romantic readiness” (6; ch. 1);
• Nick also describes Gatsby by saying “His tanned skin was
drawn attractively tight on his face.”(Fitzgerald 54).
• His frequent, passionate, and often blind defense of Gatsby
as the victim of others’ selfishness and corruption; and the
deep bond he feels with Gatsby after the latter’s death,
when it is “safe” to feel love for him.
•
Nick’s successful effort to help Gatsby rekindle his affair
with Daisy

21. • He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he
was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather
hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining
arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face
and gave him the appearance of always leaning
aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank
of his riding boots could hide the enormous power of
that body — he seemed to fill those glistening boots
until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a
great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved
under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous
leverage — a cruel body.

22. New York City
• “I began to like . . . the racy,
adventurous feel of it at
night” (61; ch. 3) (Nick)
• “There’s something very
sensuous about it—overripe,
as if all sorts of funny fruits
were going to fall into your
hands” (132; ch. 7).