Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
Chapter 5 · Narrator
Context
While waiting in the rain for Gatsby and Daisy to reconcile, Nick muses about a brewer who once owned Gatsby's mansion and tried to pay his neighbors' taxes in exchange for thatching their roofs—an attempt to create a feudal estate. Nick reflects that the neighbors' refusal illustrates a distinctly American attitude toward class.
Analysis
The verbal irony of the juxtaposition between 'serfs' and 'peasantry' exposes a paradox at the heart of American class consciousness: Americans will accept economic servitude (wage labor, corporate hierarchy) but refuse the visible markers of permanent lower-class status, preferring an invisible subordination to an acknowledged one. The parallelism of 'willing, even eager' against 'obstinate' sharpens the critique—Americans don't merely tolerate serfdom but embrace it, provided it comes without the aesthetic humiliation of appearing poor.
How to Use in Essay
Excellent for essays on the novel's critique of American class ideology, or for arguing that Fitzgerald exposes how the myth of social mobility masks actual economic inequality by substituting pride in appearance for genuine class advancement.