Characteristically Fitzgerald: Propriety in Morphing Cultural Contexts in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Thank You for the Light”

Abstract

ABSTRACT F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Thank You for the Light” seems atypical of the author at first glance compared to the larger body of his work. Discovered by his grandchildren, it appeared in The New Yorker in 2012, the same magazine that rejected it when submitted by Fitzgerald in 1936. This short story about Mrs. Hanson, a forty-year-old widowed corset saleswoman who just wants to smoke a cigarette, has baffled modern critics as much as it did the editors who initially denied its publication. However, a closer read and consideration of the author’s contemporary cultural and personal context reveals that the trademarks of Fitzgerald’s 1920s flapper stories are just as evident in this work. Using a social contract theory-based framework positing that time and place are inseparable mediators in determining propriety, this article focuses primarily on how the evolution of cultural attitudes toward smoking is expressed in this work, but also discusses other contemporary references, connections to the author’s personal experiences, and comparisons to his other works. These connections and comparisons illustrate how in this piece from his late career, though he was plagued by personal issues, professional disappointments, and poor physical health, Fitzgerald is still the ever-autobiographical, morally questioning chronicler of the times, but times are just different: Mrs. Hanson’s uncertainty is simply a result of the uncertain times in which she and Fitzgerald were living.