FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS

Published soon after Fitzgerald’s debut novel This Side of Paradise Flappers and Philosophers was the author’s first collection of short fiction a form through which he had gained notoriety in newspapers and magazines. The familiar themes of aspiration and social satire already permeate his writing: in ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ the fashionable Marjorie attempts to turn her dowdy cousin into a debutante before betraying her out of jealousy while ‘The Ice Palace’ features a Southern belle whose engagement to a Northerner finds her confronted with a cultural clash between tradition and modernity.