What is the tone of Bernice Bobs Her Hair?

Social competition is a very important central theme in the short story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”. F. Scott Fitzgerald does an excellent job portraying social competition when it comes to females and competition between popularity and acceptance. Girls can be quite viscous and its quite evident in this short story; one example, in particular, is the competition between Bernice and Marjorie. Bernice and Marjorie engage in competition with each other over many things including; Fitting into society, the values of a woman, boys, and each other’s reputation. F Scott Fitzgerald’s short story becomes a ruthless competition of a “new woman” between two main characters. Who will win? You’ll just have to keep on reading…
In the beginning of the…show more content…
Marjorie’s value of a woman is modernized, it fits the description of what a flapper was in the 1920s. This can connect to another one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald does an excellent job portraying the values of women in the 1920’s. In the book, The Great Gatsby, when Daisy gave birth to her child, she hoped that her newly born daughter would grow up and hold the values that Marjorie portrays. “I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”. This is a perfect example that connects to Marjorie’s view of womanhood, according to these two characters, women should be dainty, have charm and have perfect appearance.
One of the biggest conflicts between Bernice and Marjorie is one over a boy named Warren. Warren grew up across the street from Marjorie, he was “crazy about her” since the beginning; however, the feelings were not reciprocated on Marjorie’s behalf. As the story progresses, Marjorie takes on the task to transform Bernice into a new woman. Bernice’s new appeal is soon taken into consideration when Warren gains an interest in the new Bernice. Even though Marjorie didn’t have feelings for Warren, she still became jealous. Marjorie’s new goal was to destroy the relationship between Bernice and Warren. Marjorie becomes successful in accomplishing her goals by putting Bernice’s reputation at risk.
Another example of social competition

F. Scott Fitzgerald, having lived through the era of the “New Women” in the 1920’s, uses two female protagonists in both his novel Great Gatsby (e.g. Daisy Buchanan) and his short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (e.g. Marjorie Harvey). As such, he personifies his desired theme to define the female presence shaped by shifts in society during the 1920’s. He uses an apathetic and cynical tone that paints each character in a negative light. In other words, American women were known as having unequal rights as compared to men; they were often entrapped in oppressive marriages and seen as the inferior sex. Women are portrayed as inferior to men through Fitzgerald’s writings of both the Great Gatsby and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Both passive-aggressive…show more content…
The more evident difference between the two characters was that Marjorie is characterized to represent the more modern ideals of 1920 feminism through her rebellious and manipulative actions, while on the other hand, Daisy is a symbol for the contrasting Victorian, more traditional, ideals of femininity through her charming and materialistic ways. For example, rather than depicting Marjorie to be a sweet and innocent girl, he portrays her to be a “girl…who really [does] have a good time” (“Bernice” 5) and a girl who frequently has “slightly intoxicated undergraduates… [make] love to her” (“Bernice” 4). This defines Marjorie as an unruly human being, reflecting Fitzgerald’s implicit views towards the modern women during the 1920 society. Daisy, on the other hand, is made to be more traditionally dependent, having been given characteristics of typical women from the Victorian Age. Fitzgerald’s use of a whimsical and fanciful tone when it is stated that Daisy’s voice is “full of money… [with an] inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, and the cymbals’ song of it… the golden girl” (Gatsby, 120) and Daisy herself exclaiming “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!” helps prove this point. Overall, Fitzgerald, because of his continual ¬¬¬negative tone surrounding both Daisy Buchanan and Marjorie Harvey, characterizes them in a vilifying manner with the purpose of giving the reader insight into the female presence of past WWI. In other words, personifies his desired theme to define the female presence shaped by shifts in society during the 1920’s to not only provide the reader with insight, but to also reflect his own opinions about the era of the “New Women” through Daisy and Marjorie’s

Published in 1920 in the “Saturday Evening Post,” a popular magazine of the day, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" deals with a favorite theme of F. Scott Fitzgerald's: the desire for popularity in the shallow, appearance-obsessed social climate of the famous "Roaring Twenties." Bernice visits her cousin Marjorie for a month in August. Marjorie makes it known that Bernice is a drag on her social life because she does not have the social graces to keep men’s attention. Bernice takes her cousin’s advice to be more attractive, but the advice comes at a price from a selfish, vindictive girl. Fitzgerald’s idea for this story came from instructional letters that he wrote to his younger sister to coach her how to be more attractive to men. Though he originally rejected the story as “trash,” he later published it in a collection of his 24 best stories—one of the only stories to make it out of the original anthology in which it was published.

What is the theme of Bernice Bobs Her Hair?

What is symbol in Bernice Bobs Her Hair?

What genre is Bernice Bobs Her Hair?

Who is the protagonist of Bernice Bobs Her Hair?