This Side of Paradise

by

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rosalind Connage Character Analysis

Rosalind Connage, the younger sister of Alec Connage, has a brief but passionate love affair with Amory that leaves him devastated for the rest of the novel. The two meet at Rosalind’s debutante ball, where they are immediately infatuated with each other. Rosalind is beautiful, clever, sophisticated, and flirtatious, and she has many male suitors whom she tires of easily. Rosalind and Amory are in some ways male and female counterparts: they are both intelligent, attractive, vain, selfish, and charming. And while they’re both prone to infatuation, they’re also quick to change their minds. But their different social positions ultimately leads to the disastrous end of their relationship. As a woman from a respectable, wealthy family, Rosalind is expected to marry a wealthy man who can give her a luxurious lifestyle. Amory, as an educated man from a respectable family, is supposed to provide money for his wife—but his vanishing inheritance and lack of income make this impossible. Eventually, Rosalind chooses to marry Dawson Ryder, a wealthy bachelor who convinces her that she will grow to love him. Rosalind promises Amory that he is the only man she will ever love and that their love was “the first real unselfishness” she ever experienced—however, because of his poverty, their marriage would make both of them miserable. Rosalind’s abandonment sends Amory into a self-destructive drinking binge.

Rosalind Connage Quotes in This Side of Paradise

The This Side of Paradise quotes below are all either spoken by Rosalind Connage or refer to Rosalind Connage. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 4: Narcissus Off Duty Quotes

She was immemorial…. Amory wasn’t good enough for Clara, Clara of ripply golden hair, but then no man was. Her goodness was above the prosy morals of the husband-seeker, apart from the dull literature of female virtue.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Isabelle Borgé, Eleanor Savage, Clara Page
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 1: The Débutante Quotes

SHE: Well, Amory, you don’t mind—do you? When I meet a man that doesn’t bore me to death after two weeks, perhaps it’ll be different.

HE: Odd, you have the same point of view on men that I have on women.

SHE: I’m not really feminine, you know—in my mind.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine (speaker), Rosalind Connage (speaker)
Page Number: 159
Explanation and Analysis:

All life was transmitted into terms of their love, all experience, all desires, all ambitions, were nullified—their senses of humor crawled into corners to sleep; their former love affairs seemed faintly laughable and scarcely regretted juvenalia. For the second time in his life Amory had a complete bouleversement and was hurrying into line with his generation.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:

ROSALIND: Amory, I’m yours—you know it. There have been times in the last month I’d have been completely yours if you’d said so. But I can’t marry you and ruin both our lives. (…) I can’t Amory, I can’t be shut away from the trees and flowers, cooped up in a little flat, waiting for you. You’d hate me in a narrow atmosphere. I’d make you hate me.

Related Characters: Rosalind Connage (speaker), Amory Blaine, Dawson Ryder
Page Number: 179
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 2: Experiments in Convalescence Quotes

“ ‘S a mental was’e,’ he insisted with his owl-like wisdom. “Two years my life spent inalleshual vacuity. Los’ idealism, got be physcal anmal,” he shook his fist expressively at Old King Cole, “got be Prussian ‘bout ev’thing, women ‘specially. Use’ be straight ‘bout women college. Now don’givadam. (…) Seek pleasure where find it for to-morrow die. ‘At’s philosophy for me now on.”

Related Characters: Amory Blaine (speaker), Rosalind Connage
Page Number: 183
Explanation and Analysis:

Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never love another living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth and brought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprised him, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to another creature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in those he went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which the girl became the mirror of a mood in him.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Eleanor Savage, Clara Page
Page Number: 191-2
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 3: Young Irony Quotes

Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil crept close to Amory under the mask of beauty.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Isabelle Borgé, Eleanor Savage, Clara Page
Page Number: 204
Explanation and Analysis:

“Rotten, rotten old world,” broke out Eleanor suddenly, “and the wretchedest thing of all is me—oh, why am I a girl? (…) Here I am with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony.”

Related Characters: Eleanor Savage (speaker), Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Dawson Ryder
Page Number: 218
Explanation and Analysis:
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Rosalind Connage Character Timeline in This Side of Paradise

The timeline below shows where the character Rosalind Connage appears in This Side of Paradise. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 2, Chapter 1: The Débutante
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
In February of the next year, Rosalind Connage and Cecelia Connage, Alec’s young sisters, are preparing for Rosalind’s debutante ball at the... (full context)
Money and Class Theme Icon
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
Mrs. Connage reveals that their father has lost money, and she urges Rosalind to meet the wealthy bachelor friends of her father’s, especially Dawson Ryder, rather than wasting... (full context)
Money and Class Theme Icon
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
Amory and Rosalind dance and kiss again. They admit that they are both selfish people, but Amory says... (full context)
Money and Class Theme Icon
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
Mrs. Connage tells Rosalind that she is wasting her time with Amory because he is poor. Rosalind ends her... (full context)
Book 2, Chapter 2: Experiments in Convalescence
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
War, Modern Life, and Generations Theme Icon
Money and Class Theme Icon
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
...very drunk at a bar, consuming alcohol to numb the pain of his breakup with Rosalind. Amory drunkenly laments his time spent in the war, explaining that he has lost his... (full context)
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
Money and Class Theme Icon
...sorrows in alcohol. He reveals that he will never love anyone more than he loved Rosalind. He begins writing and reading again. Amory contacts a friend of Monsignor Darcy’s, Mrs. Lawrence,... (full context)
Book 2, Chapter 4: The Supercilious Sacrifice
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
Friendship and Masculinity Theme Icon
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
...deaths of their friends, Jesse, Kerry, and Dick, as well as by his pain about Rosalind, yet he agrees to spend the night in a hotel with Alec and the two... (full context)
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
Friendship and Masculinity Theme Icon
Money and Class Theme Icon
Love and Sexuality Theme Icon
...the same newspaper that publishes the news of Amory’s misconduct, Amory sees an announcement that Rosalind is engaged to Dawson Ryder. He considers her as good as dead. The next day,... (full context)
Book 2, Chapter 5: The Egotist Becomes a Personage
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
War, Modern Life, and Generations Theme Icon
...students subjected to the same old traditions. He feels nostalgia for his youth and for Rosalind. He raises his arms to the sky, saying “I know myself,” “but that is all.” (full context)