-found it on DeviantArt-

The Original: Females

Does the book contain one or more female characters? Yes

Do these characters have names? Yes: Daisy, Jordan, Myrtle, Catherine, Lucille

Do these characters talk to one another? Yes

Do they discuss something other than men? Yes. Travel (p.34)

Other-Though Fitzgerald seems to be less sexist than many of his contemporaries, the predominant sexist attitude of the time tends to slip through on occasion. For instance, when Nick first describes the lavish parties at Gatsby’s house: “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths” (p.39). One could make the argument that, like many of the wealthy men of today, the men of Gatsby’s parties are attracted to women very much their juniors, and therefore, Nick is simply describing the party-goers as he sees them. However, when speaking about his lover Jordan, this bias becomes clearer: ”Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply” (p.58). Clearly, Nick can’t hold Jordan to the same moral standard as he would a man, because she is just a weak woman. The last sexist moment doesn’t come from Nick, but rather from Tom. Tom serves as the window character to show some of the more repulsive commonly held views of upper class society members of the day. Near the end of the novel, Tom makes Daisy drive home with Gatsby shortly after Gatsby reveals to him that he is in love with Daisy and that he intends to run off with her. For some reason, Daisy agrees, showing that both she and Gatsby are powerless in the face of Tom. To add insult to injury, Nick tells Gatsby after the fact, ”I don’t think she ever loved him…You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her things in a way that frightened her” (p.152). Ah, yes. Women are known to betray every emotion and relationship they’ve ever had once they get excited, just like a dog that urinates on itself.

Racism:

Does the book contain one or more characters of a minority race? Yes: “A Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove. ” (p.4)

Do these characters have names? No.

Other: Fitzgerald uses Tom to show the worst traits of upper class society, therefore making him a racist, along with many other things. Tom goes on and on in long rants about his views of minorities: ”The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be–will be utterly submerged…It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out of these other races will have control of things;” ”Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white” (p.130). This racism also extends to Myrtle, Tom’s mistress, but to a lesser extent: ”I almost married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me” (p.34). However, the idea that Fitzgerald is using racism as a literary device falls through once the narrator starts saying things a bit off color: ”As we crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed  aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry” (p.69); ”A pale well-dressed negro stepped near” (p.139).

Heterosexism:

Does the book contain one or more gay characters? No.

Classism:

Does the book contain one or more lower-class characters? Yes and no. The book is aware of lower class characters, and even pitches Nick as one of them, as he is not super rich. However, someone whose parents pay for him to take a year off after college to find himself is pretty far from poor by any standards. The book constantly refers to these characters, but treats them as mythical creatures that they’ve all been told about in fairy tales: “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer / The rich get richer and the poor get—children” (song p.95). Oh plight of the lower classes, you’re so funny.

In this article  Frank Kovarik wrote for Jezebel, he began applying the Bechdel test to the classic literature he teaches in high school. For those of you unfamiliar, the Bechdel Test, created by Alison Bechdel in a 1985 Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip puts movies to three simple questions:

• Does a movie contain two or more female characters who have names?
• Do those characters talk to each other?
• And, if so, do they discuss something other than a man?

A surprising number of films do not pass even the first of these questions, and very few can answer “yes” to all three.

You may think that it’s unfair to apply this test to classic literature. After all, we know that the majority of literature was written by old, white men, (in some cases young white men) but it is also true that these works are and have been extremely influential in American culture. After all, we all must read some amount of classic literature before we graduate any level of education, be it middle school, high school, or upper level education. Applying the Bechdel test to sexism, racism, homosexism, and classism and seeing how literature’s perception compares to the real world could give some insight into the collective consciousness of America.

So that is exactly what I intend to do. I’ve compiled a list of 78 books taken from 3 100 best novel lists: Modern Library, Time Magazine, and the New York Times. If a novel made more than one of these lists, it made my final list. I now intend to read every one of these books and analyze them in terms of sexism, racism, homosexism, and classism. Wish me luck.

1. *ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. *THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. *A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. *LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. *BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. *THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. *CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. *THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
9. *UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
10. *1984 by George Orwell
11. *I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
12. *TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
13. *AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
14. *THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
15. *INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
16. *NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
17. *APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
18. *A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
19. *ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
20. *A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
21. *AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
22. *THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
23. *GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
24. *THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
25. *LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
26. *DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
27. *A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
28. *THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
29. *TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
30. *PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
31. *LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
32. *ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
33. *THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
34. *DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
35. *THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
36. *A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
37. *OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
38. *HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
39. *THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
40. *A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
41. *THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
42. *BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
43. *THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
44. *THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
45. *RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
46. *THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
47. *LOVING by Henry Green
48. *MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
49. *THE MAGUS by John Fowles
50. *WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
51. *UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
52. *THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
53. *ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand (cheat)
54. *THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
55. *TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
56. *DUNE by Frank Herbert
57. *GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
58. *SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
59. *GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
60. *A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
61. *THE STAND by Stephen King
62. *THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN by John Fowles
63. *BELOVED by Toni Morrison
64. *THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
65. *BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
66. *ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
67. *GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
68. *THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
69. *AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O’Brien
70. *WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
71. *NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
72. *ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST by Ken Kesey

73. *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
74. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
75. The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing

76. Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow-?

77. Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt-?

78. *Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

I was dressed, in my car, and stopped at a red light, halfway to practice. Two of my friends had come over to my place before I left to hang out with my boyfriend (and me–they’d tried to convince me to skip practice). The plan was to sit by the pool and drink. I was reviewing a conversation I’d had the day before:

“How’s stuff with roller derby going?”

“Fine. I still don’t really have any friends.”

“Really?”

“Well, the girls are really into each other and a little bit clicheish. It’s like what Town&Gown must look like to outsiders, except we’re more open to new, cool people coming in. That’s assuming I’m ‘cool,’ though. I could be the Eric Davis of roller derby and have no idea.”

There was an unexpected, awkward pause, then someone mumbled, “woah.”

My friends were quick to assure me that things couldn’t be that bad.

There I was, stopped at a red light, thinking about this conversation, when Born this Way came on the radio. It occurred to me that I could die the next day, not because I was doing anything particularly dangerous. The art of living is known to be hazardous. Were I to die, I would have spent my last night alive doing the exact thing I didn’t want to do when I had woken up that morning.

I turned my car around.

My parents raised me not to be a quitter. It’s gotten me through a lot of tough times. The problem is, in my later  years, I’ve stuck with certain activities (that are supposed to be fun) long after they’ve made me miserable. No outside person would have thought of quitting competitive swimming after 10 years as being a quitter, but I did. It wasn’t until I was so miserable that hated the one sport I had loved more than anything that I actually switched to cross-country.

On this team, until you’re deemed ready to hit other girls or be hit by other girls in roller derby, you wear a blue shirt. You remember being picked last in PE? Well wearing a blue shirt at roller derby practice is like being in a permanent state of picked last in PE. Not only are not allowed to participate in half of the practice, but no other girl wants to work with you on the drills you can do. And why should they? You’re really just wasting their time.

I also skipped a practice after I failed check-offs. The day I went back was the closest thing to a walk of shame I’ve ever had. Every girl on the team said hi to me, and most of them told me (for the first time) they were glad to see me. They had thought I’d quit. The one worse thing than failing a test in front of the entire team is everybody actively pretending like you didn’t. But their intentions were good.

A teammate that I’d spoken to once before came up to me that day, as I was getting ready:

“Um, ____ was just telling me that you’ve missed a lot of practices. Come and see me after practice to talk about what we can do about this.”

“Okay.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No”

“Would you tell me if you were?”

I take a moment to consider the question. She leans in closer to me.

“You wouldn’t, would you?” She shakes her head at me in a pitying manner, and stares at me. Eventually she goes away.

- Erin Gloria Ryan in Hilariously Named ‘Smart Girls Summit’ Throws Support Behind Michele Bachmann on Jezebel

Via Bunny Food

Brock Davis decided to make something cool every day for a year and post it in this album. Look through the whole thing, and make sure to read the titles. It’s fascinating, and totally worth the 15-20mins.

Via All Things Amazing

Not to self: Dance underwater more often.