Despicable people get their rewards in The Beautiful and Damned

The Beautiful and Damned includes what may be the most terrible couple I’ve ever read about. Taking place in the mid 1910’s, it shows the very worst of wealthy America at the early 20th century.

Anthony Patch is a ne’er do well. Grandson of a multi-millionaire, he loafs through life waiting to collect on his inheritance, openly dreaming for the day his grandfather dies. He is well educated but has absolutely no ambition to ever work, thinking it beneath him. He falls in love (or at least in lust) for Gloria Gilbert, another socialite who is described as the most beautiful woman any have ever seen. She too has no ambition for anything in life, getting everything she ever wants from her beauty, and making sure she is always the center of attention wherever she goes.

The whole book is their miserable life together. In their early married days they have money to burn, but as the novel progresses they continue to churn through Anthony’s savings until, after just a few years together, money starts to get tight. They party and spend every weekend, not just on themselves, but on their friends and holders-on as well, always picking up the tab as the big shots they see themselves as. Anthony develops a severe drinking problem, while Gloria frets for the day when she turns 30 and loses her beauty, the only thing she really cares about (even more than her husband). When World War I comes and Anthony is shipped off to training, they hardly miss each other and spend their time apart thinking about the things that really matter (money to him, privilege and looks to her).

Finally the grandfather does indeed die, but he ends up leaving his entire fortune to servants, friends, and charity, and not a dime to Anthony. Anthony immediately sues, and while the case spends a few years in the courts, he and Gloria continue to spend, drink, and party. Finally at the end they have nothing. They have lost their high-rise apartment, have no savings, and no friends. Even then Anthony refuses to get a job and spends his days and nights drinking himself into a stupor. When the courts finally award him his fortune, Anthony has lost his mind to the point he isn’t even aware of his millions and Gloria has grown so far apart from him that she only cares to buy new clothes rather than take care of him.

In the book I read previous to this, Rabbit, Run, the author makes us like the protagonist before showing his true, selfish nature. In The Beautiful and Damned, we know from the beginning how much of a waste Anthony Patch is, so we can despise him from page one. F Scott Fitzgerald paints a pretty bleak picture of the lifestyle of the wealthy in this time period. Even the characters that do work show extreme contempt for the common man and only care about their own status. Well before the end, I was praying that Patch would not get his money and would end up dead or abandoned by all. He got the abandonment, but the ending was even more fulfilling that I could have hoped. He gets the money, but due to his insanity can not enjoy it.