How Does Daisy Fitzgerald Present The Women In The Great Gatsby

710 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of Gatsby and Daisy's relationship

In the 1920’s, also known as The Roaring Twenties, women were recognized as a major influence on American culture. This relationship is represented in the female characters of The Great Gatsby: Daisy Buchannan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson. Daisy Buchannan is a charming lady who captures the hearts of many. Jordan Baker is a mysterious woman who maintains an athletic career. Myrtle Wilson is an unfortunate woman who desires to live a wealthy lifestyle. Fitzgerald uses these women to represent the American dream by displaying their desires, motivations, and needs.
Daisy Buchannan is a radiant, young lady who lives in the fashionable part of New York- East Egg. Living in a Georgian Colonial mansion, she is the wife of a wealthy, arrogant man named Tom Buchannan. “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a passionate mouth,” (Fitz 25) This concludes that Daisy is apart of the American dream while …show more content…

Her unique, neutral attitude only exemplifies her beauty. She maintains mysterious features causing others to be intrigued. “She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage... Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face,” (Fitz 26) Jordan and Nick meet each other continuously at parties where they only know each other causing them to stick together. Nick eventually develops a tender curiosity towards Jordan. Nick later realizes that Jordan is dishonest when she cheats at playing golf. Jordan is able to easily forget the mistakes she has made as long as she has money on her side. This shows another aspect of the American dream. “At her first big gold tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers - a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round. The thing approached the proportions of the scandal - then died

Show More
Related

  • Jordan Baker Character Analysis

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel The Great Gatsby by American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jordan Baker portrays a professional golfer who is both Daisy Buchanan’s friend and a woman with whom Nick Carraway, the narrator, becomes romantically involved with. She is poised, blonde, very athletic, and physically appealing. Throughout the story, Baker represents a typical privileged upper class woman of the 1920’s Jazz Age with her cynical, glamorous, and self-centered nature. Despite the fact that she is not the main character, Jordan Baker plays an important role in portraying one of Fitzgerald's themes, the decay of morality, in the novel.

    Read More

  • The Women in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    529 Words  | 2 Pages

    Set in the Roaring ‘20s, The Great Gatsby focuses mainly on the lives of men as Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. However, it also clearly outlines the lives of several women : Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker. On the surface, the lives of these women couldn’t be more different. Daisy, a rich debutante, is torn between her husband, Tom, or her first love, Jay Gatsby. Lower on the social ladder is Myrtle, who is having an affair with Tom, hoping to rise above her station in life. Jordan, on the other hand, is unmarried and a successful golfer, who travels the country participating in tournaments. While these women may have seemed independent, they’re still subject to the will of society which sees them as inferior and objects to be controlled by men.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in the Roaring 1920s: An Examination of the Women of The Great Gatsby

    1786 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Great Gatsby is often referred to as the great American novel; a timeless commentary on the American Dream. A dream that defines success, power, love, social status, and recreation for the American public. It should be mentioned that this novel was published in 1925, which is a time when the American public had recently experienced some significant changes, including women’s suffrage, which had only taken place 6 years prior to the publication of this novel May of 1919. The women of this era had recently acquired a voice in politics, however, the social world does not always take the same pace as the political world. F. Scott Fitzgerald developed female characters that represented both women in their typical gender roles and their modern counterparts. I will be analyzing gender roles within the context of this novel, comparing and contrasting Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker, and Daisy Buchanan alongside one another, as well as comparing and contrasting their interactions with the men in the novel.

    Read More

  • The Girls of Fitzgerald

    1376 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... a symbol of feminism, a woman who is strong, and sovereign a complete parallel to Daisy and Myrtle who represent sexualised and submissive women, who are suppressed by societal expectations. Fitzgerald successfully conveys the ideas that society thought of women in the 20s, and criticises these beliefs through the stereotypical female characters and their position in The Great Gatsby. He captures both the revolutionary changes of women in post world war one society (Jordan) and the conventional roles of women from the ‘old world’ (Daisy and Myrtle).

    Read More

  • Women In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the book, women take important roles and change the story, ultimately leading to Gatsby’s death. Myrtle, Jordan and Daisy are just the same as the men, each striving for what they want, whether it be love from another or material goods, only to be held back by sexism of the time. Her husband Wilson loves her, but turned out to be poorer than the man she thought she was marrying. Myrtle wants someone to love that loves her to go along with her wish of a life of luxury.

    Read More

  • Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson of The Great Gatsby

    1358 Words  | 3 Pages

    These two women portray that wealth is better than everything else, and they both base their lives on it. Also, the novel shows the hardships and difficulties they have in their marriages. They are never satisfied with what they have, and are always longing for more. Daisy Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan and cousin to Nick Carraway. During World War I, many soldiers stationed by her in Louisville, were in love with her.

    Read More

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    1214 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout The Great Gatsby, the three main female characters, Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson, all embody this flapper of the 1920s. Fitzgerald accurately portrayed the flamboyancy of the 1920s in The Great Gatsby. Many aspects contributed to this flamboyance and indifference. The pursuit of the “American Dream” contributed to the actions of Americans and to the actions of Fitzgerald’s characters.

    Read More

  • Free Great Gatsby Essays: Women Of The 1920's

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, women are used as trophies, forced, by society, to compete in a world dominated by men. Fitzgerald portrays these women as money hungry, willing to do anything to get ahead. Such as Daisy Buchannan, who marries her husband for the mere fact he has money, or Jordan Baker, who cheats on her golf tournaments to win, and last, Myrtle Wilson, who has an affair because she does not like her social status. This novel shows greatly how Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson compete with the superficial world that they live in and disregard their own happiness for the sake of status.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In The Great Gatsby

    1566 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald F.S, 1925) is a novel which focuses on narrator Nick Carraway after he moves to New York in 1922. Nick is drawn into the world of wealthy and mysterious neighbour Jay Gatsby, and his quest to rekindle his love with Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan. This does not quite go to plan, and an unraveling chain of events leads to a fatal hit-and-run with Gatsby’s own death following shortly after. This essay will however be focusing on the women of the novel: Daisy Buchanan; Jordan Baker; and Myrtle Wilson. These three women are all radically different from one another upon first glance, but all are subject to the sexism of the time period. Fitzgerald portrays love as a battle, a “struggle for power in an

    Read More

  • Alcoholism In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

    2309 Words  | 5 Pages

    "At first I was flattered to go places with her because she was a golf champion and everyone knew her name," (Fitzgerald 65). Jordan is known to be a professional golf player in the Great Gatsby. Everyone knows her and she a very wealthy woman. Many women in the Great Gatsby doesn 't have a stable career like Jordan and needs support from their husband to do the things that they want. "Women had enjoyed as much freedom as they could get in the 20’s. World War 1 was a way for women to take ownership over what the men left. It served as a liberating event in many ways. Throughout the National League for Women’s service, women took over jobs while men fought in war overseas. With this opportunity women were able to pay for their own things. They were financially stable and could obtain independence that their jobs gave them, " (Moss and Wilson pg.147). "In New York, you would usually found Flappers there. They were young women who wear short skirts, had short hair cuts and wear fancy jewelry and outfits," (Moss and Wilson pg.147). Flappers were a big thing back in the 20’s. They were mostly young women who wear flashy jewelry, short skirts and short hair cuts. Many men has left the U.S. to go fight overseas in world war I, which gave women just enough time to take over their jobs to stabilize themselves

    Read More

  • Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby

    611 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, we see that the character of Jordan Baker is quite different from other women of her time. She has beliefs and values that are radically different from everybody else's. Through her actions, it is clear that she represents the emergence of a different type of woman -- one who is self sufficient -- in the 1920's. Fitzgerald uses this individual to symbolize the changing ways of life in America.

    Read More

  • Emergence of Women in the Great Gatsby

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the 1920’s, the role women had under men was making a drastic change, and it is shown in The Great Gatsby by two of the main female characters: Daisy and Jordan. One was domesticated and immobile while the other was not. Both of them portray different and important characteristics of the normal woman growing up in the 1920’s. The image of the woman was changing along with morals. Females began to challenge the government and the society. Things like this upset people, especially the men. The men were upset because this showed that they were losing their long-term dominance over the female society.

    Read More

  • Great Gatby

    1369 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the 1920’s as an era of mistrust and avarice by revealing the corruption of the American dream and epitomizing the decadent parties and obsession with material possession. Although Daisy did not wait for Gatsby and marries Tom Buchanan, from that moment on Gatsby dedicates himself to winning Daisy back through superfici...

    Read More

  • Examples Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald third book, “The Great Gatsby”, stands as the supreme achievement in his career. According to The New York Times, “The Great Gatsby” is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. In the novel, the author described Daisy Buchanan as childish, materialistic, and charming. These characteristics describing Daisy is also description for the way women were seen during the 1920s.

    Read More

  • Cheating In Nick And Jordan's Relationship

    418 Words  | 1 Pages

    As Nick and Jordan’s relationship develops, it is revealed that Jordan is a frequent cheater. This is first shown when Jordan drives Nick home from a house party and he describes her as incredibly dishonest as well as mentioning, “She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage” (58). Despite being a reputable professional golfer, she cheated in her first big golf tournament. Nick suspects that she “had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young” (58). Since Jordan was born into a wealthy family, she is not used to having any disadvantages in her life. The people who are aware of her cheating never address it because she is popular and rich, so as a result, she never suffers from any repercussions. Jordan is not only a cheater,

    Read More

More about How Does Daisy Fitzgerald Present The Women In The Great Gatsby

Open Document