Tender Is the Night



"Her naïveté responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers, unaware of its complexity and its lack of innocence, unaware that it was a selection of quality rather than quantity from the run of the world's bazaar; and that the simplicity of behavior also, the nursery-like peace and good will, the emphasis on the simpler virtues, was part of a desperate bargain with the gods and had been attained through struggles she could not have guessed at."

Tender Is The Night is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous novels. Published in 1934, it tells the story of a couple of wealthy, glamorous American expatriates living in France in the 1920s, Dick and Nicole Diver. At first sight they are the very image of success and connubial harmony, but all isn't what it seems. Dick is in fact a psychoanalyst and Nicole is a former patient of his, a young woman who as a child was raped by her father and who suffers from recurring bouts of trauma-induced schizophrenia.

Dick develops a drinking problem and, even as his wife recovers, his own life begins to fall apart. Nicole eventually leaves him for her lover, an assertively macho younger man, while Dick vainly tries to start over.

The novel's story arc actually mirrors Fitzgerald's own life as he was writing it, from the height of success and self-confidence to existential breakdown. It is also infused with a sense of postlapsarian wistfulness, as the hero feels that he is living in a world in which his values are no longer relevant.

"[T]he American Woman, aroused, stood over him; the clean-sweeping irrational temper that had broken the moral back of a race and made a nursery out of a continent, was too much for him. He rang for the vice-consul -- Baby had won."
 * The Alcoholic: Abe North is one from the start, and Dick Diver develops a drinking problem as the story unfolds.
 * Anachronic Order: The 1934 edition opens with Rosemary meeting the Divers, with volume II jumping back to when Dick and Nicole first met. The 1951 edition averts this.
 * Anticlimax: The farcical duel between Barban and McKisko. They both miss.
 * Author Avatar: Dick might as well be one of these, considering how much he has in common with Fitzgerald.
 * The Beautiful Elite: The Divers as seen through the star-struck eyes of young debutante Rosemary Hoyt. Their parties are the best, their friends are the smartest, and they form such a pretty couple ...
 * Big Fancy House: The Villa Diana, the Divers' seaside mansion on the Riviera.
 * Bittersweet Ending
 * Florence Nightingale Effect: Nicole falls in love with Dick while she is his patient.
 * Foreshadowing: Abe North's fate foreshadows that of Dick Diver.
 * French Jerk: Tommy Barban is enough of an honorary French to qualify as one.
 * Gay Paree: The Paris of The Roaring Twenties is depicted in all its splendor. So is the French Riviera.
 * Gold Digger: Baby thinks Dick is one.
 * In Medias Res: The 1934 edition opens when Rosemary is meeting the Divers for the first time.
 * Literary Allusion Title: The title is a line from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats. Other references to nightingales pop up here and there.
 * Love At First Sight: Rosemary thinks as much, anyway.
 * Maiden Aunt: The ironically named Baby, Nicole's older sister.


 * Parental Incest: Nicole.
 * Pet Homosexual: Campion, as the Camp Gay of Dick Diver's social circle.
 * Rape as Backstory: Nicole.
 * Rape Leads to Insanity: Nicole's statutory rape by her father leads to her developing schizophrenia.
 * Real Life Writes the Plot: Nicole Diver's schizophrenia was inspired by that of Zelda Fitzgerald, just as Dick Diver's gradual breakdown was inspired by F. Scott Fizgerald's own.
 * Re Cut: Two editions of the book exist. The 1934 edition is more well-known and held in higher esteem. A later edition was overseen by Malcolm Cowley based on Fitzgerald's notes and released in 1951 (among other things, it tells events in chronological order) - it was less favorably received.
 * Shout-Out: One of the secondary characters, a hack writer, intends to write a new version of Ulysses.
 * Stage Mom: Played with - Rosemary's mother does push her into being an actress, but the narrator makes it quite clear that she's not motivated by a failure to become a successful actress herself.
 * Ten Paces and Turn: The duel between Barban and McKisko.
 * Time Skip: Several, as when Dick discusses founding his own mental institution with Franz, and the next chapter opens with the institution having been up and running for a year and a half.
 * Upper Class Twit: Oh, ever so many of them.