Daisy, in The Great Gatsby, is passing for white
May 2, 2013In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is Jay Gatsby’s lost love, Daisy Buchanan, “passing” for white? In context with the story’s time, there’s clear indication she is.
By Charlene Porter
author of bestseller Boldfaced Lies
As an historical novelist my research necessarily includes literature produced during the time period in which the story I am writing takes place.
My debut book, Boldfaced Lies – Denver, Colorado: the wife of an ambitious Ku Klux Klan leader learns that she is one-quarter Negro – is anchored in 1925.
One of the many resources relevant to my learning as much as possible about the 1920s was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel, The Great Gatsby, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1925.
The Modern Library selected it the second best novel of the 20th century, with James Joyce’s Ulysses the best. However, during Fitzgerald’s lifetime The Great Gatsby sold just 25,000 copies. It was only after his death, at age 44 in 1953, that his work was considered anew.
Now, it is revered as an American classic, and required reading in nearly every U.S. high school.
Deep discussions about its various characters and themes abound, yet, I am unable to find a single mention…not by the renowned Fitzgerald scholar, Matthew J. Bruccoli; not in Cliff Notes; not even in the background material provided to readers by the National Endowment for the Arts for its inclusion of The Great Gatsby in its The Big Read program of what I discern to be one of the book’s embedded primary topics.
The issue to which I refer was aptly defined by social scientist and noted author W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) – the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University – when he wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”
I believe this issue is first wafted over in the Chapter 1 scenewhere Daisy says to her cousin, Nick (who has come to call on the Buchanans, and is the story’s narrator), “You ought to see the baby,” a notion which Tom quickly squelches by abruptly changing subjects.
But the curtain truly rises a bit more into this same scene – which also includes Daisy’s husband, Tom, and their family friend, Miss Baker – when Nick expresses to Daisy, “You make me feel uncivilized Daisy…can’t you talk about crops (in my mind, ‘crops’ is another gossamer reference) or something?”
Then Nick goes on to explain to the reader: I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way. At which Tom takes full control of the conversation.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was the word we –“
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or those other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California –“ began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I (Tom) am, and you (indicating either Nick or Miss Baker) are and you (again, indicating either Nick or Miss Baker) and –“ After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again.
“- and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization – oh, science and art and all that. Don’t you see?”
Nick reflects: There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose.?”
Why this passage has gone unheralded, I cannot surmise. I believe it is the smoking gun indicating that Daisy is “passing” for white.
Substantiated, by the following interesting fact.
The book, by Goddard, which Tom goes on about, is much known to be the veiled reference to an actual book – likewise published by Charles Scribner’s Son, only in 1920, a mere five years before Gatsby – The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy by Lothrop Stoddard.
When researching for Boldfaced Lies, I checked it out from the Pasadena, California public library. Pictures of the book, and even its full text, are easily found on the internet.
As mentioned, Boldfaced Lies regards the matter of “passing”…which was of immense concern as far back as when Africans were enslaved to work the “crops” of numerous American land owners…and those same land owners often engaged in intimate behavior with the female victims of enslavement, which, many times produced children.
A classic example is Thomas Jefferson, who, it came to light, made no secret of his involvement with black women subject to him on his plantation.
Mark Twain’s serialized novel (1893-4), Pudd’nhead Wilson, brought the topic of “passing” forefront via the story’s main character, the enslaved Roxy, who was one-sixteenth black, and tricked her master by switching, from crib to crib, her own infant son, who was deemed one-thirty-second black, with the master’s son; her master never the wiser.
These denominations of racial identity are entangled with what is known as the “One-drop rule” which was first adopted into law in Tennessee in 1910, and then in Virginia in 1924, under the Racial Integrity Act.
The Racial Integrity Act required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth and divided society into only two classifications: white and colored.
It defined race by the “one-drop rule” defining as “colored” persons with any African or Indian ancestry. It also expanded the scope of Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage (first enacted by the colony of Virginia in 1691, which was followed by the Maryland in 1692…and by 1913, 30 out of the then 48 states – including all Southern states) criminalizing all marriages between white persons and non-white persons.
Together these laws implemented the practice of “(‘it’s all…’) scientific eugenics in Virginia.
The goal of the now dis-credited pseudo “science” of eugenics was to “improve” the human race by eliminating what the movement’s supporters considered hereditary disorder or flaws through selective breeding and social engineering.
The eugenics movement proved popular in the United States. Indiana (like Colorado – see Boldfaced Lies by Charlene Porter – was a Ku Klux Klan hot spot in the 1920’s) enacted the nation’s first eugenics-based sterilization law in 1907.
In 1913 Wisconsin was the first State to enact legislation that required the medical certification of persons who applied for marriage licenses.
Along with Mark Twain, a number of writers have dared to illume the conundrum of racial identity. A few examples:
- Preceding F. S. Fitzgerald’s time and work…Hans Christian Andersen, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Charles W. Chestnutt.
- Contemporaries of Fitzgerald…Fannie Hurst, Nella Larsen, and Countee Cullen.
- And more recently…Claude McKay, Gwendolyn Brooks, and James Michener.
The 1925 case Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, in which the son of one the richest men in New York accused his wife of tricking him into marrying him – the marriage was announced in the New Rochelle Standard Star newspaper, on November 13, 1924, with the headline “Rhinelander’s Son Marries Daughter of Colored Man” – by passing for white, created a long lasting national news sensation…one which F. Scott Fitzgerald could easily have incorporated into Gatsby before the book was published in April, 1925.
The issue was of pressing importance to me, both as human being as well as a writer, because growing up I’d personally witnessed the pain and rippling effects inflicted by the color line.
Indeed, my own grandmothers, in skin color, were as white as could be…yet were “colored” by the day’s standards, and my father’s mother, who “passed” for white a good portion of her life, never was able to fully accept him because he was the “dark” one of her three sons.
I believe hints of Tom Buchanan’s rejection of his own daughter, for racial reasons, are also evident.
How I wish I could ask F. Scott Fitzgerald if my perceptions are valid. I would also ask him if Jay Gatsby is based on the rumors about Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Unfortunately, we’ll never know the answers.
What is for certain is that the color line remains problematic. I wrote Boldfaced Lies believing that learning about the related experiences of other families and individuals will help us achieve solutions.