UK: It's definitely American values, which is still interesting. I felt I didn't really get it (read when my sister was studying it), because it all seemed too obvious, money, all awful vulgar people, hypocrisy, Ok, which has often been how I feel about American writers with the exception of Henry James. We read Death of a Salesman in school which is perhaps a tad more nuanced but to me similarly puzzling, I don't have a lot of sympathy for either 'tragic hero', to me both simply behave badly to inexplicable ends. My sister does like American lit...but has always been materialistic and is working on moving to the US! What I don't really get is it tends not to feel like the pursuit of these values is questioned enough, Gatsby is far from really outside them himself. It is low class here to be seen to throw money around, but our aristos have tended to be considered particular cheapskates even next to continental European equivalents (France emphasises money used to show artistic/aesthetic good taste more).

I did get a lot more out of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which shows the emergence of new, American values, and whose heroine while a monster of materialism in a lot of ways is shown to have been influenced by her upbringing and have better impulses, and there's a more critical lower class perspective. My new little rabbit is named Lily for her heroine and Trollope's Lily Dale (Wharton's bad girl Lily turns out to suit her best). Do think it shows that Wharton would go on to have a strong connection to France, though (FSL speaker myself - consider French values to have remained closer to those we're losing through Americanisation). Lily's aesthetic desire for the beautiful and very expensive may even make more sense in that context than it would in an English one, you only have to compare our palaces to Versailles (Wharton was interested in interior design. I do think Americans still care much more than us about it).