C/LI/14. Female Sexuality in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night: The role of female sexuality in the story of the decline of Dick Diver.

The essay examines the way female sexuality figures in the larger story of a failed society. The moral failures in the novel are frequently expressed in sexual terms. Nicole's psychological problem originates in her father's abuse of her, and her love for Dick is intricately connected with her powerful transference of feeling to him in her treatment. Similarly, Rosemary, the star of the film "Daddy's Girl", idolizes Dick as a substitute father while being emotionally infantile, so that his sexual relations with both women have something incestuous about them. Both Nicole and Rosemary have great sexual power which Dick finds hard to resist. Rosemary becomes an emblem of "sex appeal", and Nicole's recovery from her illness finds its greatest expression in her new sense of herself as a sexual being in her adultery with Tommy Barban.