Capitalist Aspiration and Class Performance in The Great Gatsby and Crazy Rich Asians

This study interrogates the narrative and ideological construction of capitalist aspiration and class legitimacy in The Great Gatsby and Crazy Rich Asians, focusing on how both texts stage reinvention, wealth, and belonging as performances conditioned by exclusion. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of capital and habitus, Berlant’s cruel optimism, and postcolonial readings of elite identity, the analysis reveals that both novels structure aspiration as a paradox, promising mobility while reproducing hierarchy. Through close textual analysis supported by thematic coding in NVivo, the study traces how characters navigate economic desire, racialised taste, and gendered legitimacy under capitalist regimes. It also examines how reception, adaptation, and commercial framing distort or dilute each novel’s critical force, rebranding critique as spectacle. Media adaptations and audience sentiment are analysed as sites where ideological content is reauthored through affect and market appeal. By situating both novels within global circuits of consumption, this research highlights the emotional economies that sustain capitalism not through coercion but through seduction, repetition, and narrative containment.