It’s a Hard-Knock Life for the Female Elites in The Great Gatsby

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Recommended: positive and negative depictions of women in the great gatsby

“It’s a hard-knock life for us!” cries the orphans of Hudson Street’s Home for Girls in the Broadway musical Annie. Indeed, it is a tough existence for the women in F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless novel, The Great Gatsby, but most specifically for the main character, Daisy. Throughout the novel, Daisy faces the choice between the fantasy life with her love, Gatsby, or a stable but superficial marriage to Tom. Daisy's fortunate wealth and status have sheltered her from the harsh realities of the world and taught her the discretions of a woman to ensure a life of comfort and wealth. One night Daisy reveals the hopes for her daughter, Pammy, and says, “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald, 17). This quote supports the disparagement and resulting behavior of women in the Jazz Age, revealing more about the complex nature of Daisy’s character, and showing how fear motivates her actions and drives the plot of the novel.
The Great Gatsby highlights the vulnerability of women during the Roaring Twenties, an idea expressed in many of the female characters, but most obviously in the character of Daisy Buchanan. To Daisy, success means marriage to a wealthy man who will provide her with a lifetime of lavish living. She conforms to the societal norm as the beautiful wife of a wealthy man while ensuring a respectable reputation. For many years in history the traditional role of women included cooking, cleaning, and raising children. Daisy rarely performs any of these domestic duties. She barely interacts with her daughter and displays a lack of concern for her obligations as a mother. The jaded world in The Great Gatsby objectifies females, especially Daisy, ...

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...hing to live in the glitz and glamour of the Roaring Twenties. The novel emphasizes how a woman's reputation and success results from the wealth and ranking of her husband, a way of life Daisy felt she had no other choice but to accept. Daisy’s words accent the positive and negative qualities of her character and present motives for her actions as a conflicted woman in the Roaring Twenties. Daisy's cowardly and selfish words cause complications with deadly consequences. Overall, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby surpasses the typical tragic love story in more ways than one. It allows insight into the accepted cultural norms of the period and their impact on American society by exhibiting the true struggles of a rich, beautiful, and desirable woman in the 1920s.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1st ed. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.

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