Tender is the Night is Mad Men or Bojack Horseman, but nearly a century older and set in the French Riviera: a psychological portrait of a glamorous, charming man succumbing to his weaknesses and temptations. Dick Diver is a renowned psychologist and author who marries a wealthy socialite, Nicole. He finds it difficult to pursue his academic work amidst the temptations of the life of luxury his wife’s bank account affords him, no matter how much he tries to live modestly when traveling on his own. He also finds reward in developing romantic relationships with emotionally-vulnerable and subordinate women; it devastates him when they no longer need him or prize him like before.
The novel is structured unusually: the first book is told through the perspective of Rosemary, an eighteen year-old starlet who falls in love with Dick at first sight. While her young love struck me as overly melodramatic, this method of introducing Dick to the reader allows us to see him in an idealized form, the way he wishes to be seen. He is charismatic, effortlessly graceful, the center around which the universe of wealthy American travellers rotates. Only slowly, and through partially-caught whispers, do we get the sense there is more to Dick and Nicole than they let on.
The second book relates Dick’s perspective through his decline, and shows us who Dick and Nicole are beneath the facade. We learn that Nicole was once Dick’s patient, seeking treatment for trauma from childhood sexual abuse; she fell in love with him, seeing him as a stable and dashing authority figure, and he liked her attention and the opportunity her money would give him to write. A decade later, Rosemary plays a similar role in his life as Nicole’s struggles with mental illness strain their marriage. Seeing Rosemary grow into an independent woman rather than remain an infatuated ingenue, Dick turns to drink, costing him his social grace and professional reputation. The third and final book relates his decline: his social circles shut him out, his business partner buys him out to prevent further fiasco, and Nicole divorces him. He lives in obscurity in America, still struggling with his demons. This book is told through Nicole’s perspective; this distance lets the reader appreciate the sad position Dick has fallen into, without the benefit of his own self-justification.
While painting this psychological portrait, the novel also explores socioeconomic themes. The novel was partially-written in the mid 1920s, and completed in the early 1930s. The careless extravagance of the Roaring Twenties permeates the scenes — but Dick’s decline also hints towards the Great Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it. Fitzgerald directly contrasts the wealth obtained from capital versus that obtained from wages, represented respectively by Nicole and Rosemary.
Nicole was the product of much ingenuity and toil. For her sake trains began their run at Chicago and traversed the round belly of the continent to California; chicle factories fumed and link belts grew link by link in factories; men mixed toothpaste in vats and drew mouthwash out of copper hogsheads; girls canned tomatoes quickly in August or worked rudely at the Five–and–Tens on Christmas Eve; half–breed Indians toiled on Brazilian coffee plantations and dreamers were muscled out of patent rights in new tractors—these were some of the people who gave a tithe to Nicole.
Her position in the world allows her to spend money with ease: “everything she liked that she couldn’t possibly use herself, she bought as a present for a friend.” On the other hand,
Rosemary spent money she had earned—she was here in Europe due to the fact that she had gone in the pool six times that January day [spent filming a movie] with her temperature roving from 99° in the early morning to 103°, when her mother stopped it.
While Nicole is independently wealthy, she is nevertheless dependent on men: first, her doctor-husband Dick for his psychological support, then her second husband, for helping her leave an unhappy marriage. Rosemary, a self-made woman, begins the novel closely attached to her mother for guidance, but soon learns to travel the world and advance her career on her own.
In the backdrop of this character drama, there is a world in flux. Europe is still the land of elegance and old money, but America’s rapidly-growing wealth is reshaping their dynamic. American tourists are pouring their money into the region, and the US is starting to be a leader in scientific research. The main characters are American by birth, but their “Europeanness” is often highlighted (“their point of resemblance to each other and their difference from so many American women, lay in the fact that they were all happy to exist in a man’s world....”). Dick’s downfall could also be a metaphor for the decline of an empire focused on leisure and frivolity rather than steady hard work and commitment.
The story of a psychological unwinding of a morally-grey, complicated man has been told many times, and this version shows its age in its handling of mental illness and race. On the other hand, it intricately weaves together its themes, its writing around misplaced affection and grief is often beautiful, and its unusual structure provides a unique vantage point into this particular man’s downfall. I enjoyed it.
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