Two novels greatly influenced me as a writer, books I’d first encountered as a girl. One was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, whose sweeping storytelling seduced me from beginning to end. I wished I could tell stories like that.
The other was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a shorter and simpler tale, but one whose use of evocative language made me want to be a writer myself. He made you feel as well as understand the story.
It took many years for me to give myself permission to pursue that goal of being a writer, and in the meantime I read virtually all of the Fitzgerald oeuvre and more—his short stories, his novels (including Trimalchio, the first draft of Gatsby), The Crack-up, plus Zelda’s book, Save Me the Waltz, and numerous biographies of that ill-fated pair.
When I came up with the idea of imagining the Gatsby story from Daisy’s point of view, I knew the novel could not be a mere point-by-point retelling of that famous tale. It had to convey something more, something readers either didn’t get from the original or felt was missing and would enjoy seeing, a sort of behind-the-scenes look at the story.
This was the approach I used when writing a retelling, Sloane Hall, of Bronte’s classic. I not only wanted readers to experience that story afresh as if never having read it before. I wanted to expand on Bronte’s exploration of characters and themes.
In Gatsby, I felt called to develop Daisy’s character. The original isn’t her story—it’s Gatsby’s, Nick’s, even Tom’s. I missed her and wanted to get to know her better. In the original, she is like a sprite, something not real, not flesh and blood, a woman two men coveted but whose physicality is something distant or even symbolic, like that green light at the end of her pier. She is a possession, sought after and jealously guarded.
I wanted to make her real and yet not have her lose the romanticism of the original character, her sweet beauty and grace and desirability.
As I explored her character, I came to ponder how hemmed in women’s lives were during that period. I am of a generation that knew only some of that imprisonment. Women couldn’t get credit cards when I was young, but in Daisy’s time—well, it was virtually impossible for a woman in her position to be anything but the “fool” she wishes her daughter was, and how natural it was for a male author to draw this woman’s character as something a little unreal. (This is not a criticism of Fitzgerald. He was a creature of his time, and he always treated his wife with respect on the page, idealizing her, while in real life he protected and supported her financially, no matter how difficult.)
That was my springboard for carving out her figure more fully, and as I wrote, she became a cipher no longer, but a fiercely intelligent woman whose heart was open to the deepest kind of love, if she could only find it.
And, because Fitzgerald always seemed to use Zelda as the inspiration for his heroines, my Daisy is part Zelda, too, incorporating pieces of Zelda’s story along the way—her romance with a French aviator, her diving off a high cliff into the Mediterranean while Scott trembled with fear, her desire to dance and paint, and, of course, her madness. All of these are folded into this new Daisy.
I hope fans of the original like getting to know this Daisy and are not disappointed.
There are changes to the original story, some small, some large, that I incorporated to move plot along or to be true to the characterizations I was painting. Lovers of The Great Gatsby will surely notice them, but I hope will be swept up in this new tale.
I hope all who read this understand I’m not trying to compete with Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. I’m just using it as a springboard to answer questions this devoted fan mulled for many years—such as, what was Daisy thinking? I guess in that sense, it’s a love note to the original or maybe a piece of fan fiction. However it is classified, I hope it brings readers pleasure and, perhaps, an incentive to revisit the original.
LS