Compare how the authors of two texts that you have studied present aspects of desire:

By exploring the objectifying power of romantic desire, both Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci explore how desire for women threatens their male protagonists; however, Fitzgerald and Keats present the power of a desired female over their male subjects as contrasting, exploring how desire can empower and deny both men and women.In La Belle Dame sans Merci, Keats immediately establishes the tradition of Courtly Romance from which his ballad form harks; this Keats solidifies through the chivalric image of a “knight-at-arms” courting a “lady in the meads”. Associating her with the pastoral, “her [long] hair, [light] foot/ and [wild] eyes” become archetypal of the Courtly Love maiden that is exalted by the knight, an act that is ultimately objectifying. However, in spite of the implications of traditional, patriarchal courtship the poem suggests- in which the woman is the passive object of male desires-, Keats hints as to the inversion of this traditional gender power dynamic. Through fricative alliteration and caesura, Keats draws attention to the “[f]ull beautiful” maiden, identifying her with “a faery’s child” and in turn connoting her “faery’s song” to be that of a siren. Through these classical and pastoral images, Keats suggests the powerfully subversive nature that desire can have, indicating that the knights romantic and sexual desires for the maiden leaves him merciless. As “she [lulls him] asleep”, Keats indicates the passivity of the knight as he becomes the passive object of her actions, indicated through Keats use of subject and object pronouns. Keats begins to present romantic and sexual desire as thus emasculating, as the displaced knight “sojourn[s …]/ Alone and palely loitering”. This morbid image of desire received and lost ultimately makes the maiden romantically autonomous and shifts her from a position of object to subject. As a result, the knight that encapsulates the patriarchal Courtly Love narrative is displaced by the maiden, whose allowing of physical desires – “and made sweat moan”- is incompatible with his world of virtuous romantic desire. Comparable to Keats, Fitzgerald explores how desire can consume and even emasculate the male admirer, though unlike him, Fitzgerald presents women as inhibited by this romantic desire also. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy is presented as the ultimate object of Gatsby’s desires, as her romantic appeal to Gatsby is intertwined with the class and money that she symbolizes. Mirroring the Maiden in La Belle Dame sans Merci, Daisy also inhabits “faery” like qualities, with her surname “Fay” being an archaism of ‘fairy’. Compared to “the King’s Princess [high in a white palace]”, the “golden girl” Daisy presents a romantic ideal that is in turn integral to her identity; thus, it is no surprise that Gatsby’s obsession with The Green Light is juxtaposed to Daisy. As Gatsby is finally reunited with Daisy, Nick notes that Gatsby’s “count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” as the “green light … vanished forever”, indicating how the money and greed that the green symbolises is conflated with Daisy also. Belonging to the de facto aristocracy of the US, Gatsby’s love of Daisy is intrinsically linked with his infatuation with her wealth and class, as when “he kissed thus girl, [he] forever wed his unutterable visions to her”. The “incarnation” seems to have little to do with romantic love but is more a conception of the ideology of himself. It is clear, therefore, that Gatsby’s idealization of Daisy is an objectifying one, reducing her to an ideological key to his self-actualisation. This is presented as having a suffocating and overwhelming effect on both Gatsby and Daisy, as Gatsby has “thrown, [… added and decked]” his ideology of Daisy. Through a listing style, Fitzgerald builds up a destructive image of romantic desire, as its dislocation from reality leads to all “falling short of [Gatsby’s] dreams”. Thus, mirroring Keats, Fitzgerald explores the objectifying and pacifying potential of desire, though he presents the female object of affection as most ultimately suffocated by male desire.