│By Caley Collins, Gale Ambassador at University College London (UCL)│
At 100 years’ old, The Great Gatsby is more popular than ever. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal 1925 novel encapsulates the obsessive nature of the American Dream alongside investigating truths about love and desire. Novels like this are one example of a primary source, with primary sources being first-hand accounts of contemporary periods and phenomena.
Needless to say, various types of primary source should be positioned differently within the creation or evidencing of an argument, and each source has many arguments that can be drawn out from it. But what are the best ways to use these primary sources? This post will guide you through the process of finding and using primary sources from Gale Primary Sources, starting with The Great Gatsby.
How To Interpret Literary Sources
While literature students analyse texts every day, for scholars of Politics, History, Gender Studies, and other disciplines, textual analysis may seem daunting. However, it is not as difficult as it may appear. Take the Gatsby quotation, “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” – although at first this may simply seem like a description of Gatsby’s fabulous parties, it contains a lot more.
The capacity of Gatsby’s gardens is evident from all the “men and girls” that frequent them, highlighting his wealth and social status. Additionally, the disparity between the adult “men” and infantilised “girls” indicates the prevalence of misogyny in the time period, with the “champagne”-filled party itself also being a glimpse into the hedonistic lifestyle that many enjoyed during the Gilded Age. Thus, arguments regarding history, gender, wealth, and class can be founded on one quotation, showing how different disciplines can use the same source in varying ways.
Evidencing Arguments Using Critical Opinions and Historical Context
Newspaper and magazine articles are fantastic sources that provide historical context to substantiate arguments. Additionally, reviews and advertisements taken from these publications can reveal how media has been received, alongside showcasing public demand. The Great Gatsby was not a commercial success when it first came out, and this review of new novels in The Daily Telegraph exemplifies why, indicating that people found it uncompelling.
Comparing reviews and notices published in different years can also highlight changes in public feeling that often occur over time. Continuing with our example of The Great Gatsby, this pronouncement from The Times Literary Supplement states that the announcement of an upcoming film adaptation has increased the book’s popularity, indicating that a year after the aforementioned review, the public viewed the novel much more favourably.
Articles can also indicate the general sentiments of the period. If you were constructing an argument about gender inequality during the 1920s, this issue of The Designer and the Women’s Magazine outlines some of the common stereotypes surrounding young women in the historical period. However, it also refutes these, and so provides multiple points of view that can help contextualise or provide evidence for a line of reasoning.
Or, perhaps you are a fashion student looking for evidence of clothing trends surrounding the 1920s. Old photographs such as this one below illustrate how differently people dressed, alongside varying social norms. Most beaches no longer have tents to change in, and for the most part swimming costumes have gotten a lot smaller!
This photo can be used to evidence other arguments too, such as a women’s studies essay on modesty standards, or a historical investigation into how new technology has enabled the development of more portable furniture, such as lightweight beach and camping chairs.
Dealing With Lots of Sources
As we’ve now seen, different types of primary sources have varying uses. However, it can be time consuming and difficult to search for and read through enough documents to make generalisations regarding the period. That’s where the Gale Digital Scholar Lab can help.
Using this resource, I performed a sentiment analysis of 2,200 British and American daily newspapers in the Gale archives from 1920-1930. As is indicated below, while there were a variety of neutral and positive views, the average feeling of newspapers in the period was slightly negative, meaning that many were unhappy with current affairs.
However, a sentiment analysis of manuscripts from 1920-1930 reveals a slightly more positive result, perhaps indicating that journalists wrote about more negative topics than other authors. In a history essay, you could thus argue that people consumed more positive types of popular entertainment as a form of escapism from their dissatisfaction regarding recent events. If you conducted a similar analysis on another type of primary source, you would get a greater variety of results and be able to deepen your conclusions.
Misuse of Sources: What Not to Do
Although primary sources can be used to substantiate your arguments, it is important that they are not taken out of context to create an argument unrelated to their actual meaning. For example, the quotation, “‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’ shouted Mrs Wilson. ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy!’” from The Great Gatsby clearly indicates Myrtle’s obsession with Daisy, which readers know is due to her yearning for Daisy’s wealth and husband. However, taken out of context, you could use this quotation to argue that Myrtle has a close relationship with Daisy or that Myrtle is even in love with her, and that is why Myrtle wants to use her name. This may be a slightly silly example, but it serves its purpose.
Final Thoughts
Thus, primary sources can be useful for every discipline. A further example would be past business reports, found in newspapers such as The Financial Times, which can be used to create a portfolio tracking company growth and successes. This would be incredibly useful for students of Business or Economics, but, as with any primary source, may just be an item of general interest and curiosity. I hope that this article has inspired you to explore more primary sources and scholarly tools, and maybe even encouraged you to read The Great Gatsby!
If you enjoyed reading about primary source use or The Great Gatsby, check out these posts:
- Which (potentially unknown) American novel will inspire your research?
- United Farm Workers and Chicano Literature: Primary Sources as a Tool for Language and Cultural Studies
- The Development of Poetry in Medieval and Renaissance British Literary Manuscripts
Blog cover image citation: Chadwick Pictures. “Still from the Film “the Painted Flapper” (1924),” Moving Picture World (Jan-Feb 1925), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Painted_Flapper_(1924)_-_1.jpg.
