How Does Portuguese Present The Independent Voice In The Great Gatsby

Both texts ,The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald and EBB’s Sonnets from the Portuguese express the differences in the time periods and the changing social context. Though the different periods of time, the values and perspectives were conflicting .The values of love, time and social norms, where all encountered by the characters within the text.
The texts have different perspectives on the similar values of the time. These values were challenged by EBB’s Sonnets of the Portuguese and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . The Great Gatsby was written in 1920’s, which was known as the Jazz Age. The new arising period of the post-World War 1 began and the values of the time where mainly materialistic and achieving idealistic goals set by society and the

American Dream . TGG was in an society where consumerism was at its peak and material items such as Cars and Houses were very important in deciding social status. Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived in times of great social change. Barrett Browning lived in Victorian England, during a time when religious faith was beginning to be questioned and relationships was private. In the Sonnets, love has a vocal point for her sonnets. The Sonnets of the Portuguese was written between 1806-1861, during this period of time the romanticism period was beginning and EBB Sonnets demonstrated this.
When TGG is read in comparison with EBB’s Sonnets, the idealistic nature of American 1920’s aspirations becomes apparent. EBB in the Sonnets writes both a narrative of a real love relationship, the story of her growing love for Robert Browning, and her personal representation of her aspirations for what a shared, fulfilled love should be. While Gatsby is drawn to Daisy by her good looks, her smile and her voice that is “full of money”. Her status as “the golden girl”, Sonnet XIV insists that the lover should not love her for “her smile –her look-her way/Of speaking gently” but only “for love’s sake”. This is demonstrated throughout the text and how he treats Daisy and places her on a pedestal. While Gatsby defines love as taking possession of Daisy, this is reversed in Sonnet XXII insists that it is the two souls together who “stand up erect and strong”. Ironically, though EBB’s Sonnets are the much earlier text and TGG comes from a supposedly liberated era.
They love for one another was different against the values of time. Due to EBB and RB had an open relationship due to her sonnets displaying they relationship, this was quite controversy regarding the times she was in, love publicly displayed was not lightly accepted. The difference between TGG and the Sonnets was that each text displayed a different type of love, in the TGG materialistic and idealistic love. Gatsby’s love for Daisy.
The values of time in TGG and EBB Sonnets challenged the social norms and the values of the time.

EBB displayed a strong feminist voice throughout her sonnets which was contradictory of the values of the time, and the social norms of a male dominated society. In the Great Gatsby, Nick Caraway had a unbiased opinion about the life of Gatsby and was internal challenged on Gatsby’s situation with his love for Daisy. In comparison EBB throughout the sonnets has a strong voice with her language ,”Don’t not say” In sonnets XIV demonstrate her independent voice in comparison to the social norms, of women being timid and being able to be obedient to men/husbands. This is also seen in TGG with Jordan Baker. She is strong female character seen as an independent and reliant on her self-abilities of her career Golf. Jordan Baker is resilient figure that challenges the social norms, of pursuing towards getting married and having children and serving husband. Even with all this ,The Sonnets give a far stronger portrait of women as having the right to they own aspirations and identity. In 18th century it would be greatly difficult to openly write a love relationship especially being a women. Due to the male-dominated tradition of love poems going back to Theocritus, which to express her story, reflecting , “The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,/Those of my own life”, and in Sonnet XIII remarks “Nay, let the silence of my womanhood/Commend my woman-love to thy belief”. Even though

male was greatly dominated in 18th century. Gatsby demonstrates quite the opposite values and traits of a typically independent man. It is shown through TGG , the flawed nature of Gatsby aspirations that Daisy is portrayed as a weak indecisive figure, far too conscious of her own appeal, a spoilt girl who moves from her father’s control to Tom’s, swept up in her fling with Gatsby only to drift back to Tom’s protection. In contrast EBB has a persistent and feminist voice that expresses her identity in a strong manner with her voice conveying a tone of dauntless. Though there are similar characters and values of time some characters portray quite a different values .
TGG and the Sonnets present very different perspectives on identity. In TGG most of the characters lack any strong identity but emerge more as constructs of their society and its obsession with appearances. Gatsby remains for the reader a series of puzzles as Nick sifts through the range of stories about him. How did he come to make his money? is disturbed and puzzled by his inability to fix the identity of Gatsby. Likewise Daisy has at best a shadowy identity. In the book’s closing pages Nick admits his inability to understand “whatever it was” that holds Tom and Daisy together . Ultimately we are left with the sense that Nick admires the mystery that is Gatsby just as he feels a strong distaste for the inner emptiness of Daisy – he doesn’t “have the stomach” for such people. It is precisely the narrator Nick with his clear-sighted honesty, his lack of pretensions about himself, who emerges as having the strongest identity in the book.
In the Sonnets EBB emerges as a strong decisive identity who has endured her grief’s and her “shadow” to be transfigured by love.

Sonnet 28, tracing the story of her love through the pile of love letters from Robert, gives an economical and powerful image of her own transformation from doubting individual to one who has experienced the intimacy of lovemaking . Her honest appraisal of herself is also evident in Sonnet 32 where she compares her no-longer-young body with an “out-of-tune worn viol”. Whereas Daisy’s identity is all in appearances and the glamour of her physical charms. EBB rather sees love, even physical love, as based more on the soul’s intensity ,“great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.”)The “master-hands” of the genuine lover knows how to bring her to life and she accepts that to judge by outward appearances is to wrong the nature of love. This expresses how values of the time was based on identity and how individuals and society viewed

themselves.
In conclusion the comparison between the changing values of times between each text the TGG and EBB Sonnets demonstrate how each text were shaped towards and the values of the time and were shifted and altered towards the writers perspective of the social norms and values.