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    564. GO WEST AND REST: GENDERING MEDICINE AND FITZGERALD'S FAIRY TALE

    564. GO WEST AND REST: GENDERING MEDICINE AND FITZGERALD'S FAIRY TALE

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    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gretchen’s Forty Winks, included in his masterful collection All the Sad Young Men (1926), is much more than a fairy tale about fidelity and domestic harmony. When placed in the context of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century medical cures for nervous disorders, the recurring threat of mental collapse in the story offers a provocative commentary on modern medicine and gender roles in America. Fitzgerald appears to draw on the writings of two prominent turn-of-the-century “nerve doctors” in his portrait of mental health—George Beard and Silas Weir Mitchell. Mitchell’s infamous Rest Cure, as damningly portrayed in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), isolated women from family and friends, forbid any mental activity from sewing to writing, and restricted them to complete bedrest. His solution to the nervous conditions afflicting men, which he and Beard called “neurasthenia,” involved the exact opposite. His West Cure encouraged men to work on ranches and farms in order to ride horses, hike, hunt, fish, and camp. In short, they were advised to spend their days outdoors and to journal about it at night. Fitzgerald juxtaposes the Rest Cure and the West Cure in Gretchen’s Forty Winks to highlight problematic gender norms and a consumer ideology that values money over emotional engagement.

    Details:
    Go West and Rest: Gendering Medicine and Fitzgerald's Fairy Tale
    Professor Thomas Fahy
    1 session: Monday, June 8
    10:00 – 12 noon 
    Fee: $35

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    About the lecturer(s)

    Thomas Fahy

    Thomas Fahy, a nonfiction writer, novelist, and professor of literature and creative writing, has published 19 books. His most recent, The Life of the Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald, was released in November of 2025. He has also published essays on everything from Paris Hilton and 1980s vampire films to contemporary television and theater. His works have been translated into several languages, and he has been interviewed by the Associated Press, Salon, and other publications, as well as radio hosts in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Malaysia. He was recently featured in a documentary about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood for Arte Television and on the BBC radio program Literary Pursuits. When he is not writing, Dr. Fahy performs regularly as a classical pianist with the New York Piano Society and has appeared in recent concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, and other venues in New York City. He has a degree in music from the University of California, Davis, and he previously served as an adjunct professor of piano at UNC, Chapel Hill.

    Lecture Details

    Program
    Summer 2026
    Sessions
    1 lecture(s)
    Day & Time
    Monday, 10:00 – 12 noon
    Date(s)
    Jun 08, 2026