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The Great Gatsby And Browning Essay

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A deeper understanding of aspirations and identity emerges from considering the parallels between Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1926), which can be interpreted as an ‘elegiac celebration of the man’. Bowing’s sonnets explore the romantic progression of her growing attachment to the younger, more socially mobile Robert Browning. By discarding the traditional Victorian poetic archetype, Browning’s aspirations of subverting from social bonds, using literature to generate a pathway for ambitious women and displaying discontent with the present, positively differed her identity into an influential, feminist figure. Additionally, Fitzgerald delves into a deeper understanding …show more content…

However, Browning’s aspirations to push through social barriers and separate herself from the conforming way of Victorian society, is an ongoing progression throughout her Sonnets. The lust to subvert from strict 19th century female values is eminent in the progression of Browning’s female poetic voice in Sonnet XLIII. She metaphorises the expansion of her love through a spatial metaphor “Depth and Breadth and Height” combined with polysyndeton to emphasis the scope of her affection, which is a stark contrast from the delayed Volta in Sonnet I “who by turns had flung a shadow across me”. This progressive journey of love illustrates Bowring’s aspirations to overcome the highly regimented social order that Victorian England provided to the love of young couples, denying them freedom make their own decisions, “the melancholy years… those of my own life”. In both texts, the desire to push away from the present conveys a deeper understanding of the hope within their characterisation. Towards the end of chapter six, we begin to understand Gatsby’s true aspirations during the conversation between him and Nick, “you can’t repeat the past”, “why of course you can … I’m going to fix everything just the way it was”. Gatsby believes in the mutability of reality and having faith in the realness of his dreams even though his desire is truly unattainable. The past exerts a

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