The Remixed Classics series—published by Macmillan—is a positive force for representation and inclusion in stories that have historically shunted non-majority characters and perspectives to the sidelines, if they were included at all. As we contend with our history and work to imagine and create an inclusive and affirming present and future, this series gives readers the opportunity to identify and explore stories that have previously gone untold and voices that have been too long silenced, through returning to familiar narratives viewed through a new lens.
Each book in the series1 dynamically reframes these canonical narratives by changing their setting, privileging the perspectives of non-white/global majority characters, or disrupting expectations of gender binaries and heteronormativity by recasting familiar characters as LGBTQIA+. Through these radical retellings, the authors and the series as a whole create spaces for people whose stories have not been told, though their existence in all of these times and places is undeniable. There is strength and community in joining together to say that our voices should be heard and that our stories matter, and these Remixed Classics flip the script in affirming and empowering ways, offering comfort in a political moment when every day seems to bring a new attempt at erasure and silencing.
Gabe Cole Novoa’s Most Ardently and Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys reimagine familiar and beloved literary characters as trans men: Elizabeth Bennet—here rechristened Oliver—from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). While the historical and geographical settings of Austen and Fitzgerald’s novels are quite different, gender dynamics and expectations are the heart of each, in the Regency marriage traditions and sex-based inheritance laws of Pride and Prejudice and the emergence of the 1920s New Woman in The Great Gatsby. Overt identity construction are at the heart of each novel as well, as the Bennet daughters try to catch the eye of appropriate suitors and as Jay Gatsby literally invents himself in an attempt to win Daisy’s heart. Discourses of identity and belonging also reverberate through both novels, from Darcy’s uncertainty about whether Jane Bennet is an appropriate match for his friend Charles Bingley to the rampant speculation about who Gatsby is and where he has come from. The central significance of gender, identity, and belonging in Austen and Fitzgerald’s novels offer radical opportunities for looking at these familiar stories through a LGBTQIA+ lens and reframing them with trans men at the heart of these narratives.
In these Remixed Classics, Oliver Bennet, Jay Gatsby, and Nick Caraveo have different experiences and interactions in claiming their gender identities. In Most Ardently, for much of the book, the majority of the characters see and address Oliver as Elizabeth, misgendering and misunderstanding him. In the opening chapter, as Mrs. Bennet discusses marriage prospects with her daughters, this misperception and its emotional impact on Oliver are front and center, as Novoa writes that “Oliver fitted his teeth as the cinching fabric pushed his chest up and forward—accentuating a shape that made him utterly nauseous—and at the equally suffocating address of his sisters and him as girls. This could only be expected, however, as Mrs. Bennet, like most of the world, believed that Oliver was the second-eldest Bennet daughter, rather than the only Bennet son” (1, emphasis original). Throughout the book, Oliver finds opportunities to sneak out of the house, dressed in men’s clothing that affirms his gender identity, and move through the world as a man. He doesn’t need a chaperone; he is able to strike up conversations and friendships with several other young men, including Charles Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy; and is able to move freely in spaces that would not otherwise be available to him, including Waiter’s, a local men’s only club, where gentlemen dine and play cards. Oliver knows who he is, but he keeps this reality a secret from the vast majority of his family and friends, and for most of the book, he is constantly worrying about being found out or exposed.
While Oliver essentially finds himself living two separate lives, Jay Gatsby and Nick Caraveo are established and accepted as male when Self-Made Boys begins. Nick is a Latinx boy from Wisconsin, who makes his way to New York pursuing a job opportunity and at the invitation of his cousin Daisy. Nick’s parents support him completely, accepting him as their son without reservation. As he recalls early on in Self-Made Boys, “Papá had always been one to give advice, even back when he thought I was a girl. But last winter, I had told him and Mamá that I was a boy … And ever since he and Mamá had given me my new name and the shirts and trousers to go with it, he’d been working twice as hard at this dispensation of wisdom, like a priest administering Communion at double speed” (2). When Nick goes to New York, he is unquestioningly accepted as a man and similarly, Gatsby’s identity as a man is never questioned.
Both books address themes that resonate across generations, simultaneously highlighting contemporary trans experiences and the historical fact that trans people have always existed, even if their presence has often gone unacknowledged and their stories untold in the mainstream discourse. In Most Ardently, Oliver navigates social pressures and family expectations while doing everything he can to live as his true self. He doesn’t act like a “proper” daughter of his class or position as he is forced into dresses and ferried to balls, where he is expected to try to attract the eye of an eligible young bachelor. None of these external expectations and restrictions match who he and Novoa captures the dissonance of Oliver’s reality versus how others see him, as well as his self-doubt and fear of being discovered. When he is invited to Waiter’s with Bingley and Darcy, Oliver worries about whether he should accept, thinking
It was true that the person he saw in the mirror was totally different when he wore men’s clothes, but there was always a part of his brain whispering that he was a fraud. That he would never be like Darcy, or Bingley, or any other person recognized as a boy at birth. There was always a fear that someone might notice the very slight bump of his chest beneath his binding cloth, or might think his hips too wide, or his voice too high, to truly be a man (44).
Oliver doesn’t have any doubt about who he is, but he does worry about how others see him and the consequences for himself and his family if someone were to discover the truth. And his concern is not misplaced: George Wickham finds out and attempts to leverage this information to blackmail Oliver. In doing so, Wickham attempts to reassert both conservative gender roles and class dynamics, taking a bribe from Collins and telling Oliver that “You will marry me and stop fighting the role you were born to fulfill” (268). Wickham’s communications with Oliver are domineering, with the threat of physical and sexual violence looming large over their interactions, as Wickham tells Oliver that “What you need is a strong husband to remind you of who you are and who you always will be: a woman in need of serious guidance” (259, emphasis original). Through this exploitative and abusive agreement, Wickham gets richer, Collins’ claim to inheriting Longbourn is uncontested, and Oliver’s identity and humanity are discredited, all of which Oliver flatly refuses. When Wickham threatens to out Oliver to his family, assuming they will reject him, Oliver is terrified but responds with “Maybe so … But I still won’t marry you” (269).
Echoing Austen’s novel, there is the tension of Darcy’s rejection of Elizabeth Bennet, though in this instance, readers discover that this rejection stems from Darcy being a gay man, which provides a new shade of meaning to his comment that Elizabeth is “tolerable, but not handsome enough to interest me” (15) at the Netherfield ball. While Darcy has no interest in Elizabeth, when he meets Oliver, the two of them hit it off right away, quickly becoming companionable friends, bonding over their love of books and their impatience with social expectations, all while Oliver tries to ignore the undercurrent of desire he feels between himself and Darcy. In this reframed relationship, readers get a new perspective on the established Darcy/Elizabeth dynamic, while removing those interactions from a heteronormative romance framework allows for more nuanced and complex exploration of Darcy and Oliver as characters, which naturally culminates in the two boys learning the truth about one another and choosing each other.
Self-Made Boys upends some of the established expectations of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby narrative, while deepening and reframing others. In addition to introducing trans characters, McLemore shifts the traditional narrative of the novel by making Nick and Daisy Latinx characters: Nicolás Caraveo and Daisy Fabrega-Caraveo. Tom Buchanan’s racism and classism are a recurring point of conflict in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and these prejudices remain in McLemore’s Self-Made Boys. When Nick first arrives in New York, he is shocked to discover that his cousin Daisy is passing as white, having lightened her skin and dyed her hair, which adds another layer to these characters’ negotiations of identity and belonging. One of the repercussions of Daisy’s subterfuge and self-presentation is that while she still claims a friendship with Nick, she disavows him as a member of her family, telling Tom “Nicky’s mother was one of my family’s maids” (14), as she attempts to secure her spot within this upper-class realm by denying who she is, who she loves, and where she has come from. Daisy’s commitment to passing for white and the constant microaggressions and casual racism Nick encounters on a daily basis provide the opportunity to question and critique the American Dream at the heart of Fitzgerald’s novel.
Putting that dream and its ideal in the hands and hearts of non-white characters disrupts its idealized simplicity, demanding the recognition that this dream doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone and is not equally accessible, no matter what its rhetoric may claim. While they are pursuing it in different ways, Nick and Daisy both share a common goal in chasing their own American dream: to be able to provide for their families. However, they both miss the mark here, coming to realize that their goals don’t align with the vision of the American Dream that their parents have for them. As far as Daisy is concerned, she can best communicate her love to her family by sending them money and expensive gifts, though the distance between them grows as she gets fewer and more perfunctory letters from her loved ones back home, who believe—and rightly so, to some degree—that she is embarrassed by and does not want to be associated with them. While Nick doesn’t have the means to send as much money home as Daisy, his desire to go to New York and find success is also somewhat transactional, as he writes to Daisy early in the novel that “Ever since my parents helped me become Nicolás Caraveo, I’ve been wondering how I was ever going to pay them back. If I take this job, I could” (1, emphasis original). He works hard to get this chance and once he starts working in New York, he works hard to fit in, swallowing his objection when his boss tells him that where he has come from, “you be whoever you want. But here, you forget the family name. You’re Nick Carraway” (53). Nick wants to prove himself as a man and as a son, feeling that this professional, economic success is a way to repay his parents for their love, acceptance, and support, though he eventually realizes that his parents want nothing in return, only for him to be happy. Both Daisy and Nick’s version of the American Dream hinges on social status, economic position, and finding a place within the dominant culture, even if it means disavowing or losing important parts of themselves, a high cost that the Tom Buchanans of East Egg never have to consider.
Self-Made Boys also takes on the central theme of Fitzgerald’s novel of Jay Gatsby as a “self-made man” and situates that within a specifically trans frame of reference, as Gatsby and Nick overtly think about and discuss the ways they have made themselves and constructed their own identities, in both their bodies and behavior. Gatsby shares his past with Nick as he “talked of growing up poor in North Dakota, raised by his aunt and the woman his aunt called her roommate … ‘They gave me my uncle’s name … When I told them I was a boy’” (207). When Gatsby talks to Nick about his experiences in World War I, he reflects that “Boys like you and me knew we’d have to work harder to be considered men, and we’d still have to no matter what we’d done in the war” (210). There’s an overtly intentional construction of self at play here with gender, class, and belonging.
Gatsby was a self-made boy, in so many ways. He had sandpapered down his accent and taught himself to say sofa instead of couch, to toast good health instead of cheers. But Gatsby’s life, the dazzling parties and pressed shirts, were as much a reaction against what he’d lived as it was a display for Daisy or anyone else. He was now a version of himself so utterly incompatible with North Dakota dust and blood-tainted mud that he might think of these things as belonging to someone else. He had carried the shame of it and then beat it back into the past with the light of a hundred chandeliers (211, emphasis original).
Gatsby’s construction of himself both echoes and transcends this central theme in Fitzgerald’s novel, a reality which becomes more pronounced when Nick realizes that while Gatsby cares deeply for Daisy, that love is not a romantic one. Gatsby and Daisy understand, support, and adore each other: Gatsby is gay, Daisy’s a lesbian, and they dream of a lavender marriage future together where they can love who they want, share their lives with one another, and be safe.
Alongside the introduction of trans characters and perspectives into white, heteronormative narratives, the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ communities is one of the most innovative and affirming moves of Most Ardently and Self-Made Boys. The trans characters at the heart of these novels aren’t isolated or alone, instead finding themselves surrounded by a supportive and protective LGBTQIA+ community, allowing the reader to consider the existence of such communities that, like trans people’s stories, has been shunted to the periphery of canonical narratives. In Most Ardently, Oliver is supported by his friend Charlotte Lewis and her married female lover Lu, who everyone else sees as “Charlotte’s close friend” (18). Oliver has a very small handful of friends and family members who really know him, and while Charlotte’s house serves as a convenient place to keep the clothes he doesn’t want his mother to see, he also finds great comfort in Charlotte and Lu’s company, noting that “While it wasn’t the same as Oliver’s experience (Charlotte and Lu enjoyed presenting themselves femininely, for one, and Oliver was exclusively attracted to other boys), the honesty between them still made Oliver feel a little less alone” (19). Oliver gains a further sense of the queer community when he ventures into a nearby Molly House, where LGBTQIA+ patrons gather, dance, talk, and read, enjoying one another’s company in a place where they can truly be themselves. This type of gathering space is also important in Self-Made Boys, where Gatsby celebrates Nick’s birthday by taking him to a secret bar packed with queer patrons, which Gatsby describes to Nick as “The gayest place in New York” (131) and where Nick is in awe of “the impossible magic of so many hearts being fearlessly themselves” (136). Gatsby and Nick find and fall in love with one another, but they are only two stars within a larger constellation of LGBTQIA+ characters in this reframed Great Gatsby, including Daisy and Jordan Baker. At the end of the novel, both of these couples begin new shared lives, ones in which they are able to be wholly themselves, both with one another and with their accepting families.
Most Ardently and Self-Made Boys don’t dismantle the literary canon or fundamentally change anything about Austen or Fitzgerald’s novels, but they do offer queer readers a newly inclusive and affirming way to read and relate to these familiar texts. As readers look for comfort, support, and inclusion in these challenging times, these retold versions of classic books remind us that while their stories may have been silenced and many people’s lives may have been lived away from the spotlight, trans people have always existed, that supportive LGBTQIA+ communities have always existed, and that resistance and representation matter.
- The Remixed Classics series currently features nine titles: C.B. Lee’s A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix (2021), Bethany C. Morrow’s So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix (2021), Aminah Mae Safi’s Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix (2022), Tasha Suri’s What Souls Are Made Of: A Wuthering Heights Remix (2022), Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (2022), Kalynn Bayron’s My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix (2023), Caleb Roehrig’s Teach the Torches to Burn: A Romeo & Juliet Remix (2023), Cheri Dimaline’s Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix (2023), and Gabe Cole Novoa’s Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix (2024). ↩︎
