3 March 2023
Matthew Mullett, University of East Anglia
A short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘Thank You for the Light’ (1936/2012) uses tobacco to explore the relationship between society, religion and the taboos associated with 20th century femininity. Although written in 1936, the story was deemed sacrilegious at the time and was rejected for publication by The New Yorker magazine.[1] It was found by his descendants and accepted for publication by The New Yorker in 2012, finally allowing Fitzgerald’s tobacco-focused short story to see the light of day.[2] The tale provides a valuable insight into 1930s American society, following the excess and optimism of the Roaring Twenties. It is included in my broader research on tobacco in literary modernism, such as cigarettes and cigars in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), smoking addiction in Italo Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno (1923), or tobacco production in Cuban Counterpoint (1940) by Fernando Ortiz. Tobacco modernism forms a significant part of my doctoral thesis on commodity modernisms.
Fitzgerald’s text follows Mrs Hanson, a recently promoted ‘pretty somewhat faded woman of forty, who sold corsets and girdles, traveling out of Chicago’,[3] which West notes is an atypical heroine in comparison with ‘the beautiful, spoiled, and wilful young woman who at the end of the narrative, in a final suspiration, succumbs to romance and probable marriage’ in many of Fitzgerald’s other texts.[4] One of these nicotine addicted heroines more typical to Fitzgerald’s work is Daisy in The Great Gatsby (1925), a tragic figure dependent upon her suitors for her luxurious lifestyle. In comparison Mrs Hanson is far more grounded, seeking only time to do her work and smoke freely. She is defined by the individual freedoms associated with modernity: a financially independent, mobile consumer whose work enables her to escape the traditional roles imposed on women. Mrs Hanson’s work as a traveling corset salesperson forms a direct link between the tobacco consumer and modern consumer society, with tobacco consumption acting as an aid to performing her role in sales. There is irony in her job denying her the same freedom to consume as her clients,
“We think we cover a different field. It’s all rubber and canvas, of course, but we do manage to put them together in a different way. A thirty-percent increase in national advertising in one year tells its own story.” And to herself she was thinking, if I could just get three puffs I could sell old-fashioned whalebone.[5]
This amusing thought reveals how ingrained smoking is to Mrs Hanson’s way of life and how it is perceived both as a crutch and as a performance enhancing drug. The craving interrupts her thoughts and disturbs her ability to function properly in modern society. The cigarette here represents a moment of reprieve for Mrs Hanson, specifically from the hectic demands of modern selling, which is denied to her.
Smoking is one of Mrs Hanson’s sole enjoyments, serving as both a recreational and a spiritual respite from modernity, further emphasised by Fitzgerald writing,
Smoking meant a lot to her sometimes. She worked very hard and it had some ability to rest and relax her psychologically. She was a widow and she had no close relatives to write to in the evenings, and more than one moving picture a week hurt her eyes, so smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.[6]
Despite an absence of faith, Mrs Hanson nonetheless takes a great deal of comfort from the ritualistic act of smoking. It serves as a meditative aid allowing her to detach from the pressures of modernity—surrounded by stimulation and the need to produce capital to survive—and rejuvenate. This relates to how time operates differently while smoking. It serves to create pauses and punctuation in an otherwise fast-paced environment, slowing time in an era that is increasingly fast. It plays an important psychological role in relaxing the individual, momentarily relieving them in a hectic society. There is also the suggestion that it allows her to gain some spiritual relief from her condition. Alone, and with no close family, Mrs Hanson’s smoking habit seems more similar to a ritualistic religious practice than a straight addiction. She gains not only a sense of calm from smoking, but it also serves as a small cure to her isolation.
Fundamentally, ‘Thank You for the Light’ is about isolation in the modern world. West contends that ‘[t]he story is about loneliness. It is about some of the ways human beings avoid alienation and despair’.[7] Fighting against social isolation from her peers, by the story’s conclusion Mrs Hanson remains solitary, but finds refuge in the spiritual embodiment of femininity. It is through the Virgin Mary that she has her miraculous experience, momentarily rescued and rejuvenated by a benevolent deity invested in her wellbeing. Fitzgerald writes,
She awoke at the realization that something had changed, and gradually she perceived that there was a familiar scent that was not incense in the air and that her fingers smarted. The she realized that the cigarette she held in her hand was alight—was burning.[8]
The significance of tobacco is inverted, rather than signifying masculinity it instead embodies female camaraderie in the face of loneliness. Far from sacrilegious, the act of smoking in church becomes a moment of spirituality. The miraculous light in the church acts as a sign that Mrs Hanson is not alone. Smoke is associated with both Christian and pagan practices, becoming a way to connect with a belief in God, with incense burning in particular a major feature of Catholic rituals and worship. This transcends tobacco’s status as a simple commodity, elevating it to a component in religious belief.
There is significant irony in Mrs Hanson taking shelter in a church for an activity widely thought to be sacrilegious, but Fitzgerald humorously writes, ‘Suddenly she had an inspiration: if so much incense had gone up in the spires to God, a little smoke in the vestibule would make no difference. How could the Good Lord care if a tired woman took a few puffs in the vestibule?’.[9] Rather than a place for dogma, the church becomes a refuge from modern life, and a place for rejuvenation. It further suggests that Mrs Hanson’s quiet, ritualistic smoking habit better reflects worship than the speed, bombast and pressure of modern society. Wagner’s assessment that ‘smoking in any form was nicely attuned to the nervous urban civilisation that was beginning to dominate the American style [supplying] something romantic that was missing’ rings true for Fitzgerald’s belatedly published short story.[10] Joyce treats tobacco as a humorous anti-imperial signifier in Ulysses. Svevo uses it to reflect the anxiety and paranoia of the eponymous Zeno. In ‘Thank You for the Light’ Fitzgerald refigures tobacco as the incense of a new age, bringing with it comparable power over the human psyche.
Image credit: Suzanne Valadon, ‘The Blue Room’, oil on canvas, 1923. Public domain.
Sources
[1] James L. W. West, ‘Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and “Thank You for the Light”’, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, 11.1 (2013), p. 1.
[2] West, p. 1.
[3] F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thank You for the Light, Kindle edition (New York: Scribner, 2012), loc. 4.
[4] West, p. 2.
[5] Fitzgerald, loc. 24.
[6] Fitzgerald, loc. 11.
[7] West, p. 4.
[8] Fitzgerald, loc. 39.
[9] Fitzgerald, loc. 31.
[10] Susan Wagner, Cigarette Country: Tobacco in American History and Politics (Praeger, 1971), p. 34.
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