The Socio-historical Approach

Abstract

So far, we have examined The Great Gatsby from several perspectives; the mythic, the formalist, and in the context made available from Fitzgerald’s other work. As its name indicates, a socio-Chistorical approach may be characterized as one by which the novel’s themes are explored in relation to their social and historical context. The assumption behind this approach is that whatever its subject matter, the literary work in some way reflects the prevailing interests and ideas of the time in which it was written. This would be true even of a novel which itself dealt with few characters or hardly any ‘society’. For example, one of the first novels — Daniel Defoe’s The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) — even though it seems removed from a social context actually reflects many of the ideas and concerns of Defoe’s contemporary society. In particular, the novel endorses the contemporary rise of the middle class, by celebrating enterprise, rationality, and the capitalist spirit (Watt, 1957).