Fitzgerald Scott

Fitzgerald lived during a period when the United States was becoming a dominant economic and cultural power. Industrial expansion, urban growth and the accumulation of vast fortunes encouraged faith in progress and individual achievement. Yet the promise that anyone could rise in society coexisted with deep class inequalities and social exclusion.

After the First World War, the 1920s brought rapid changes in consumption and culture. Cars, radio, cinema and advertising reshaped daily life and offered new images of desire and success. Jazz and new dance styles became associated with youthful freedom, while the image of the independent young woman challenged established expectations of behaviour. These changes, however, did not reach every social group equally.

Prohibition, in force from 1920 to 1933, exposed the contradictions of the period: efforts to impose moral reform coexisted with speakeasies, bootlegging and organised crime. Meanwhile, American writers and artists settled in Paris and on the French Riviera, taking part in the experiments of literary modernism.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression undermined the optimism of the preceding decade. Unemployment, bank failures and financial insecurity revealed the limits of prosperity. This movement from the promise of abundance towards disillusionment provides an important historical framework for reading Fitzgerald’s work.