Dethriffe has a great deal of money as well as a past filled with all the classy artifacts of class. It's the former which attracts Alice while the latter will make her slightly insecure and after drilling here and there, as a model, playgirl, what have you, she marries George only to sulk and shout her way through domesticity in daily scenes of ""emotional harassment"" which abrade and erode the ""celebration of illusion"" which is what Bryan, like Fitzgerald, is trying to project.