The twenties came about like a roaring thunder. When thinking about the twenties, what comes to mind? Flappers, illegal booze, jazz and parties sound about right. Fitzgerald loosely documents the lifestyle he lived with his wife during that era in his novel “The Great Gatsby”. Fitzgerald does a great job at capturing the party lifestyle of the time, but he takes time to develop the female characters as well. Despite the roaring twenties being a liberating time for women, Fitzgerald’s shows through the different traits of the female characters, that woman still faced many challenges due to patriarchy and social class. Daisy is arguably the most important female character in “The Great Gatsby”. She lives in the sophisticated East Egg with
Daisy is perhaps the most enlightened of the female characters because she realizes that the top of the ladder for her and her daughter are to be trophies. Her aspirations seem limited to just having a good time. Her social status was a hindrance to Gatsby 's marriage to her. Gatsby knew that she would never marry him based on love, because he was poor. Daisy wouldn 't find it hard to deny him because it 's a simple as Gatsby puts it, “he had no real right to touch her hand “. He was poor so he shouldn 't have even have had the chance to talk to her. Jordan is also at the top of the social ladder too. She just wants to have a good time too but it seems that she is motivated to be at an equal level with men. She jokes and is blunt when she speaks, as if she were on the same level as them. This could be true because at times she interrupts Nick in mid-sentence, who is of a lower class. Similar to Daisy, Jordan’s affair with Nick would have never gone anywhere because he too is of a lower class, therefore it would be taboo to marry. We later find out that she is like Tom, she 's engaged and but still using Nick as a plaything. Perhaps that is a privilege that a higher class has over a lower one. Myrtle on the other hand is not at the same level as Jordan and Daisy, but she is desperate to reach her goal of reaching the same
Many of the events and characteristics directly correlated to his real life according to a brief biography on F Scott Fitzgerald (Oxford). He utilized Myrtle, Daisy, and Jordan to express what he thought about the state of women in the 1920s. The 1920s was a time of swift changes in moral and social values and Fitzgerald exhibits that women were caught in the midst of a chaotic transition from the old ways into the new. This is especially evident in the case of Jordan Baker. In her conversation with Nick about driving, which is actually a conversation about relationships, she implies that she wants the best of both worlds. She wants the comfort and security of being a sophisticated lady, but she too wants to live a carefree life. This symbolizes the process of how 1920 's women were making decisions about how they wanted to spend their life. Also, since she clearly won 't let a man influence her, she represents modern women 's increasing independency. Myrtle was at another extreme of the spectrum. Although Myrtle didn 't reach her dream of being rich and married to Tom, she died trying. The author conveys through Myrtle that women have the determination to get further in life but promiscuity is not the means. Through Daisy, Fitzgerald shows that women can be careless and it is unfair that they can get away with
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Show MoreCharacters in The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald are often described differently than they actually act throughout the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Daisy is told to be “by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville”. She was said to have great beauty, and its even said that she holds her popularity spot because of it. She is also described as a “fool” which means she is beautiful, just like an angel. As we read on, we come to see that Daisy is actually very careless, selfish, and only focuses herself on wealth and power. She never looked at the consequences of her actions; and she let others clean up the messes she made. She wanted her daughter to grow up just like her, even though it’s a life nobody wanted to live. She even gave up her true love to be with somebody who had money and a good repetition. As perceived in the novel, Daisy is the most despicable character in the novel of The Great Gatsby.
The 1920s was of time of class, rich people thrived, woman started to revolutionize, music, and everything started to change. Major things happened during this time period including, discrimination against minorities and women pushing for natural rights. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of, The Great Gatsby, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota during the 1920s into a family with high social aspirations but little wealth. He attended Princeton University in 1913 in hopes of becoming something more in life but failed to graduate. After serving for the army Fitzgerald wrote his first book and became wealthy and famous( Wiggins, Grant. The American Experience: California. 2010.pp 729). Two of many themes in the The Great Gatsby are resistance to change and the “new woman”. There were numerous events that led to these changes in the 1920s and many had a huge significance to the nation and still affect us today.
Throughout Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” the role of women can be examined to demonstrate anti-feminism. Initially, Daisy is viewed as an innocent, loving character, but once her true motives are revealed, it is clear that she is very corrupt, desiring only money and power. This is used to show the stereotypical female who lives under the man for his possessions, and lacks the self-respect to stand against the opposite gender. She is not the only female to act like this, there are many, but her case is the most important because it directly influences all of the main characters. Gatsby is also portrayed as a stereotype: the boy who wants his true love and will do anything and everything to get her, even be accused of murder. Once each character
F Scott Fitgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is centred upon 1920’s America. In the text, characters such as Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan are all carefully constructed to reveal various attitudes held by America in the early 20th century. Overall, the construction of female characters in The Great Gatsby showcases an accurate representation of women in the time period the text was composed in.
During the 1920’s women were fervently depicted as inferior to men and incapable of the success. In the novel The Great Gatsby female characters are subject to gender based stereotypes and blindly follow culturally accepted norms which dictate their place and position within society. The expectations placed upon the female characters to comply with the norms of society limit their potential to become successful in comparison to the male characters, who are successful in the 1920’s. Within The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates the female characters as socially and economically limited and dependant, due to the strong implementation of patriarchal roles of men in society. Women are confined
...seemed cracked up to be. Myrtle Wilson is like Gatsby in a way that she is trying to rise above everybody else. Myrtle has never liked the classified class that she had been in since she was born. She demanded that she united below her, and she attempted to lecture about the "lower orders" as if she is not one: "I told that boy about the ice" (Gatsby 35). Myrtle lifted her eyebrows in anguish at the heaviness of the orders at the bottom. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time" (Gatsby 35). Myrtle Wilson in the eyes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a stupid fool. There is another character that is materialistic, Jordan Baker.
Daisy’s society places her under strict social regulations based on wealth, which ultimately decide many aspects of her life. The 1920s society that is the setting for The Great Gatsby seems to consist of three social classes: the wealthy, socially connected, and old fashioned in East Egg; the newly rich and flamboyant lacking social connections in West Egg; and the poor living in the “Valley of Ashes.” Daisy Buchannan belongs to the upper East Egg class. Those who are part of this class are held to high social standards. Coming from a wealthy family, Da...
by F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the extremely active nightlife of the "Roaring 20's." Daisy Buchanan, a fragile, flirtatious women with a past that no one would ever guess is one of the main characters. Her marriage seems to be perfect, until her husband has an affair with another women. She has a daughter whom she does not care for, and she feels like she has no love from anyone whatsoever, but then Jay Gatsby, her "life", he is her long lost love that tries to make everything like it was in the past. A past where only they existed, and no one else, but the circumstances of the present affect them from doing so.
In the story The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the role of the female characters Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle find themselves in conflict with society’s expectations of them. However, they each negotiate the conflict and resolve it. By examining Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle’s roles, one can contemplate how they went about resolving the issue.
The only reason Daisy is in The Great Gatsby, is so that she can run over Myrtle. If she were to be removed, either the story would not have that conflict and therefore resolve it with another instance of Myrtle dying and blaming Gatsby for the death, or have a completely different character that would run over Myrtle. The only other important female character is Jordan Baker and how according to Nick he saw her picture connected to a “critical and unpleasant story”. “The reader later discovers this concerns a time she cheated in a major golf tournament. Her insincerity with Nick in their love affair is another example of her detached personality.” (Telgen) This shows that Jordan can be removed because of her detached personality and that her cheating in the golf tournament does not add any conflict to the
In the novel, The Great Gatsby, the two central women presented are Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson. These two women, although different, have similar personalities. Throughout the novel, there are instances in which the reader feels bad for and dislikes both Daisy and Myrtle. 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.
When the leading female in the role, Daisy Buchanan, learns that the child she is giving birth to is a girl she says “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool . . . the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 21). This shows how Daisy has given up at this point in her life and realizes that women will never amount to anything and that they have no role in society other than becoming someone's wife and or mother. Daisy Buchanan is fully aware of the role that women play during this time. She, unlike most women, knows of her own marginalization and admits that females are powerless and unimportant as they are living in a male-dominated society. The author's presentation of women is essentially very unsympathetic and unflattering. Daisy is also a character who is struggling with being in love with a man other than her husband, but knows that she cannot go out and have an affair. A literary critic Lihua Zhang states how The Great Gatsby is a, “Disillusion of American Dream . . . the way of dealing with true love and lo...
Fitzgerald comments on the changing role and attitudes of women of the 1920s in America. He shows this through the characters Daisy and Jordan. Daisy and Jordan both drink, smoke and drive, and associate freely with men. Daisy's flirtatiousness is an example of this, along with her drunken state in the first chapter when she says 'I'm p-paralysed with happiness'. Daisy also shows the attitude Fitzgerald felt was common in this society, when talking about her daughter.
Daisy and Jordan are members of the elite class and are often presented as motionless, sitting or lying down, and when they do move it is leisurely. On the other hand, Myrtle is a member of the lower class and is depicted as annoyingly full of energy. During their journey to Tom and Daisy’s apartment, Daisy rapidly states “I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a wave and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little ashtrays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s grave that’ll last all summer” (Fitzgerald, page 40). Myrtle’s abundance of energy is induced by her obsession with obtaining wealth. Despite drastic differences in how females are depicted based on their differences in wealth, both Daisy and Myrtle are treated as inferior to their husbands. This patriarchal view influences a feminist
Overall F. Scott Fitzgerald’s visualization of women in The Great Gatsby demonstrates women living a life controlled by men and fortune. It is apparent that Daisy is conscious to this and decides she’d rather continue leading a materialistic life under Toms control. Fitzgerald’s female characters all follow a rigid pattern of social code, making them uniform and almost object like. Not only are the social contexts of the 1920’s highlighted throughout the text but also is the use of blatant sexism towards women, especially the violent mistreatment of lower class women. Jordan Baker breaks the social conformity of the 1920’s, creating the possibility of a brighter future in the gender balance between men and women in the future.