Money Can’t Buy Happiness

That’s my takeaway from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (#28 on Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels List) and Wuthering Heights (#73 on AFI’s Top 100 Movies List).

Tender Is the Night focuses on a husband and wife who seems like a dazzling duo at the outset. They’re wealthy, flit between European countries, and throw fun parties. And then the backstory comes forth and things start unraveling. There’s betrayal, mental illness, alcoholism. Money doesn’t guard against any of that. I wasn’t surprised to learn that most of the characters were based on real people in Fitzgerald’s life. This reads as a personal story.

Wuthering Heights is the classic tale of childhood love gone wrong because the boy is poor and has no means. Cathy asks Heathcliff to go make something of himself…that doesn’t happen right away and then there is some serious miscommunication. So she marries another man who is well-to-do. The heartbreak that ensues! I will say no more.

I’m checking off two more birthday list items this weekend so until tomorrow…