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Research Articles
Fitzgerald and Anderson on
Lovers, Wives and Mothers
Elizabeth Rose Carraway
Abstract: “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Mother” by Sherwood
Anderson are two short works that have been surrounded
by criticism because of their enigmatic portrayals of female characters.
Is Judy Jones a shallow seduction symbol? Or is she an
intelligent character using her beauty as a counterpunch to social
conventions? Does Anderson trap women with his nostalgic
optimism or does he give trapped women a voice as characters
advocating intimacy and creative expression? These works
are plagued with the contradictions of artists struggling for truth
within the constraints of a distinct time and place: post-WWI
America. By exploring Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” alongside
Anderson’s “Mother,” I attempt to unearth the complexities
that Fitzgerald and Anderson find in a new kind of female
character while simultaneously examining their biased conclusions
which pigeonhole these characters into female stereotypes.
Key Words:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Women in Literature,
Modernist Writing
“‘I will stab him,’ she said aloud. ‘He has chosen
to be the voice of evil and I will kill him.
When I have killed him something will snap
within myself and I will die also. It will be a
release for all of us’” (Anderson 1217). This
passage from Sherwood Anderson’s “Mother”
does not lead to murder, but the woman
speaking has become desperate enough to
contemplate killing her own husband. Elizabeth
Willard has lost her sense of identity, a
dramatic portrayal of how many Americans
felt during the political, social, and economical
upheaval of the early twentieth century.
When the United States entered World War
I in 1917, America was still a largely agricultural,
rural nation (“American Literature
between the Wars” 1071). Americans had
30
to come to terms with irreversible global
modernization and learn to compromise
pre-war ideals with the emerging capitalist
society. The nation was beginning to see a
“New Woman” in Quentin E. Martin’s words,
one that “worked, talked freely and frankly,
and questioned the rules of society” (162).
Mobilized by the Nineteenth Amendment’s
grant of women’s right to vote in 1920, as
well as a growing female presence in the
workforce, women had begun to demand
freedom from sexual double standards
(“American Literature between the Wars,”
1074). Unfortunately, as Martin notes, “this
transformation of women was by no means
complete - it was, in fact, producing profound
complications and problems” (163).