Nick’s answer to Mr. McKee’s invitation to lunch occurs after this little scene; this shows Nick’s willingness to comply with the homosexual desire that Mr. McKee exudes. Finally, Fitzgerald’s ellipses on this page leave up to the imagination whether the two men actually do consummate their desire, but the fact that Mr. McKee ends up “sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear” establishes that they most likely did.

           Nick’s descriptions of Jordan and Gatsby further establish his sexuality. He describes Jordan as a physically boyish and masculine female. She’s “a slender, small-breasted girl with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet” and has a “hard jaunty body” (Fitzgerald 15, 22). Additionally, Nick seems to be overly obsessed with Jay Gatsby.  Despite the fact that Nick says “I disapproved of him from beginning to end,” he still notices “that radiant and understanding smile” and his “gorgeous pink rag of a suit” (162).  Nick additionally observes Gatsby’s flamboyance throughout the novel.  Clearly, Nick favors those who occupy “in between” gender roles; Jordan is a masculine female and Gatsby is a feminine male.  This fact serves to further confirm Nick’s queerness. 

           Moreover, all of these queer signs combined serve to undermine Nick’s heterosexual relationship with Jordan.  Even though Nick de-feminizesJordan, the fact remains that she is not male.  Nick is more interested in the New York subculture and his sexual encounters with men than he is with Jordan, as is shown when he breaks up with her near the end of the novel.  Jordan herself recognizes this; she says “I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride” (186).  That is, she can see underneath Nick’s heterosexual exterior.  She knows that he is lying to himself and to others about his true identity. Tyson is accurate when she says, “Nick’s insistence on his ‘normality’ and honesty has worn rather thin” (355).  Thus, it is Jordan’s final recognition of Nick’s true sexuality and Nick’s own inability to date a woman for a long period of time that destabilizes their heterosexual relationship.

           Finally, both Gatsby’s and Nick’s internalized homophobia will not allow either of them to come out as queer.  They clearly have a very tight homosocial relationship with each other that fits within Eve Kosofky Sedgwick’s idea about “the continuum of male ‘homosocial desire’” (1).  Nick and Gatsby live in a heterosexual world in which they each have heterosexual relationships, but their homoerotic desire for other males undermines these relationships.  Each of their sexualities is situated somewhere on Sedgwick’s “continuum between homosocial and homosexual” and each gets into trouble for expressing the sexually fluid side of themselves.  They are both closeted and prove it in how they go about choosing women for their objects of desire.  Perhaps Gatsby fixates on Daisy because he needs something on which to focus his desire; he seems to be more obsessed with her than in love with her.  As shown in Gatsby’s confrontation scene with her and Tom, Daisy proves to be someone entirely different than he thinks she is and ends up betraying him by staying with Tom; thus he cannot be in love with the true Daisy.  Gatsby’s sexual fluidity is demonstrated by contrasting his supposed love for Daisy with his relationship with Dan Cody and with his flamboyant manners and possessions.  As for Nick, he chooses masculine Jordan as an alternative to his other object of desire, Gatsby, because of his queer sexuality.  As mentioned above, he is attracted to those, like Gatsby and Jordan, who do not truly conform to the set gender roles of the time.  Gatsby and Nick’s heterosexuality is undermined not only by how others perceive their queerness, but they both undermine their own heterosexual relationships by refusing to acknowledge their own sexualities.

 

Works Cited

 

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890 – 1940.

          New York: Basic Books, 1994.

 

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.  The Great Gatsby. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

 

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Introduction.” Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1985. 1-20.

 

Tyson, Lois. “Will the Real Nick Carraway Please Come Out? A Queer Reading of The Great Gatsby.”Critical Theory Today:

          A User Friendly Guide. New York: Garland, 1999. 345-57.