Myrtle In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald objectifies Myrtle and she is only seen in instances with her husband Tom. We don’t normally hear much of Myrtle but when we do she is described only as Tom’s mistress. Tom only tells Myrtle what to do and objectifies Myrtle but she lets him do it because like Gatsby, Myrtle just wants to rise to a higher class and will trade her independence for social mobility. Myrtle has just been referred to as Tom’s mistress and she doesn’t have much importance in the book as Fitzgerald has portrayed in his writing.

“‘You mean to say you don’t know?’ said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. ‘I thought everybody knew.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Why---’ she said hesitantly, ‘Tom’s got some woman in New York’
‘Got some woman?’ I repeated

She is the elephant in the room that gets Daisy all riled up not because she called at dinner time, even though that’s why she said she was mad, but instead because Tom answered the call and shut the door all secretively while they had guests. Even though Myrtle was just some no named woman, the fact that Tom had answered the call instead of just letting it ring shows her importance in Tom’s mind. Miss Baker said “you don’t know” and was surprised like it is some generic thing that everyone should know but doesn’t talk about. Myrtle is just described as Tom’s just she is just something he has and isn’t her own person. This is because she is called, “my girl” (24) and is told what to do by Tom and she only is seen when Tom wants to see her, she is never mentioned in the book without him. I question why Myrtle would let herself be treated like this, but she believed that Tom loved her and not Daisy. Tom is a conniving character to both Myrtle and Daisy. He tells them both that he loves them and to Myrtle he said they’d be married if Daisy wasn’t a Christian, but when he realizes Daisy is having an affair he gets furious with her even though he’s doing the same thing. Myrtle and Daisy are treated badly and to different standards than Tom which lowers their importance and

He even said that “her mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long”. Myrtle had been hiding her strength from everyone because when she was with Tom she had to do what he said instead of standing up for herself. This last scene describes her relevance in the book because she doesn’t have her own personality and is just described by her looks instead of showing the vitality she