During Fitzgerald’s time, the 1920’s, women’s rights became an important topic of political and social debate. Females began to re-invent themselves, taking back the traditional ideal of a women. They were now working, pursuing educations and careers; they were drinking openly, accompanying men while unmarried, and cutting their hair short in order to downplay their femininity. Throughout the text of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald draws on the use of the classic female figure and compares it closely with the new progressive female that emerged during his time. Draws on the use of the changing gender roles to create his female characters. Daisy Buchanan is the initial female figure in The Great Gatsby. She is what appears to be the most perfect, …show more content…
most respectable type of woman. Daisy came from a very wealthy southern family and was expected to marry well within her social class. She fulfilled her role as the ‘traditional’ female figure by marrying Tom Buchanan and having children as she was supposed to. One would assume that Daisy had everything a woman could have possibly wanted in life: a husband, a child, a home, and security. Throughout the text, Daisy shows subtle opposition to the expectations that society has set for women like herself.
At the beginning of the book, she has a conflict with her husband concerning an affair he has been having. Daisy says of her daughter: “I’m glad it’s a girl. And 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). Daisy is not the unintelligent, traditional wife that she appears to be. She knows first-hand that the only way her daughter will find true happiness is to remain a “fool.” Society prefers women to be simplistic in nature and obedient to their male partners. Educated women are not highly valued. Daisy wants her daughter to be a “beautiful little fool” in hopes that she will find happiness in wanting nothing more than what is allowed in …show more content…
society. Tom, as well as the rest of society, acts as if it is acceptable for him to have an affair.
However, he gets offended later in the story when he discovers that Daisy is having an affair with Gatsby. This is a perfect example of how Daisy opposes society's expectations for women. Instead of remaining the traditional, obedient wife that society prefers, she starts to become more of a 1920’s progressive female. She is tempted to abandon her “traditional” role as Tom’s wife for a penniless man from the Midwest whom she actually loves. Although Daisy is in constant conflict with society's expectations of her and who she really wants to be, she does her best to please those around her. Sadly, pleasing those around her is accomplished by fulfilling the societal obligations to the best of her ability. Daisy is a product of her raising; being part of the upper class of her society, she is subject to close scrutiny and judgement. Daisy is obedient, and chooses to stay with Tom out of obligation and expectation. The choices she made reflect the pressure women felt from society during this time
period. Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, is is of a separate class of society: the working middle-class. She is a product of her circumstance; she does what she needs to in order to survive, and that mindset has shaped much of the character that we see in the book. Myrtle is neither the traditional female, nor is a progressive female figure. Her character is versatile and adaptive depending on who she is around. Throughout the novel, she is dominant over her husband, George Wilson, where she exhibits more masculinity. With Tom Buchanan, however, she is submissive and much less aggressive. These changes in character reflect the way Myrtle is expected to act by these two very different classes of men. She is neither herself, nor what society wants her to be. Jordan Baker is another female character in the novel who is from the same class of society as Daisy. She was held to the same high standards but was not so willing to conform to them. Jordan was her own person rather than allowing society to determine who she should be and how she should act. She chose to be a professional golfer (a male dominant sport) rather than marrying and having a family. Unlike Daisy, who is married with a family and still appears to be unhappy and unsatisfied with her life, Jordan is unmarried with a career - free to come and go and do as she pleases, and throughout the novel, she appears to be content with her state of womanhood. She seems to have a self-satisfaction that Daisy lacks, and this is what makes her a more ‘progressive’ woman. The changing gender roles during the 1920’s plays an important role in shaping the female characters in the novel, The Great Gatsby.
Daisy Buchanan may look like the persona of beauty and innocence, but in reality she is cunning and deceitful. She has men wrapped around her finger with little to no effort, and her manipulation runs deep. In F Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchannan betrays those who care about her most in this world, and leaves a path of ashes and destruction.
The great Gatsby gives us an accurate insight into the 1920s zeitgeist regarding the role of women in society. America was in a state of an economic boom and rapid change. Society had become less conservative after world war one. The role of women was revolutionary during this time and although women had a lot more freedom now; they were still confined to their sexist role within society; Men were still seen as the dominant gender. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the extremities of gender and social class, and the lack of independence this brought upon women. This essay will discuss the three major female characters and the ideas that Fitzgerald confronts of female stereotypes of the 1920s.
In this novel Fitzgerald shows Tom and George’s negative philosophy’s towards women. He shows in The Great Gatsby how men can be heinous, but he also shows the positive treatment of women by men in the form of Nick and Gatsby’s characters. Fitzgerald is trying to portray that there are a lot of men that mistreat women in the world, but there are those select distinguished few such as Nick and
Daisy, for example, lives a miserable life, even though she appears otherwise. On the outside, she seems to have everything—a happy marriage, wealth, and beauty— which also connects to the American dream. Her relationship with Tom may appear to be perfect, however their marriage is marked by adultery, deception, and dissatisfaction. She married him only because she had to for his wealth and reputation. Daisy finds out that Tom has an affair with another woman in New York, but she does not leave him when Gatsby gives her the chance to.
Daisy’s character can also be identified by the way she speaks of her daughter, Pammy, “I hope she'll be a fool, that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (17). This implies that woman don’t have power in the world compare to a man. Daisy thinks it’s best to have beauty rather than brains. Daisy treats her daughter as an object, showing her off to guests at her house, which suggests her lack of concern for her child and how careless she is. Daisy’s relation with Tom is unstable at sometimes. Daisy and Tom both came fr...
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.
Fitzgerald published the book right after women won their voting rights in 1920. However, no male characters in the book acknowledge females’ individuality; as a result, this triggers public anger. Barbara Will (an English professor at Dartmouth College) believes that Fitzgerald’s stand on the issue adheres to society’s common fear over “the expanded power of the alien” (Will, p.216). A valid point is made here: males – the centre – restrict and alienate females in order to prolong their superiority. It is specifically ironic in today’s modern era since human rights are equally distributed. The advocacy for sexism presented in The Great Gatsby will influence the young readers to re-create this inequality. That is, men will again have the absolute power to judge women on their looks instead of intelligence. Thus misogynists will be able to claim the novel as their bible and use offensive practices against females in their daily lives. Fitzgerald is communicating and promoting anti-feminism – which is ultimately offensive nowadays – through the main character,
She believes that she is a beautiful little fool, but no one can blame her. Whenever Daisy is spoken about it is not in relation to her intelligence, but rather that, “‘Her voice is full of money,’ [Gatsby] said suddenly. That was it for me. Tom had never understood before.
In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy struggles between her desire to be with someone she truly loves and her rational to be with someone who will give her social and financial stability. Ultimately, Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby as he is the safer option once Gatsby is revealed to be untruthful, showing that she is predominately interested in a steady life.
Even if they disagree about other issues, all feminists believe patriarchal ideology works to keep men and women confined to traditional gender roles so male dominance may be maintained. Utilizing the precepts of Feminist criticism, it could be argued “The Great Gatsby” promotes a thinly veiled patriarchal agenda. Through Fitzgerald’s treatment of the three women in “Gatsby”, as well as masking the possible homosexuality of a central character, the novel seems to promote only the traditional gender roles, swaying uncomfortably from any possible variance.
Daisy's life is full of excitement and wealth, she gets practically everything she desires and feels like she has it all. As a person of high society she treats those below her with disdain, even her cousin. “What shall we do with ourselves this afternoon...and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” (Fitzgerald 118). The Jazz age had changed Daisy and influenced her to become careless as she seeks empty love, money and pleasure. It is only when Gatsby comes along she realizes that she has been missing something. Gatsby had been her first love, but she
“I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 20). This quote is as true now as it was when Daisy Buchanan said it about her daughter in The Great Gatsby. Women grow up in a box of expectations. They are told to act a certain way and do certain things. Daisy knew that this was the world that her daughter was going to be growing up in, and that if she grew up to be a fool then she would fit into the world very nicely. If she grew up and became someone who noticed inequality, or who wanted independence, she would struggle in the world. While woman are no longer put in such a black and white box, there are still many expectations and limitations that woman have to face in their
Women are seen from a biased point of view in pop culture as they are often criticized and portrayed in degrading ways. The Great Gatsby takes place in the early part of the 20th century which is also known as the Roaring 20's. In regards to feminism, the women in The Great Gatsby are mainly depicted as second class to men. The story gives readers an insight of the roles that gender played in past World War I America. In The Great Gatsby, the author Scott Fitzgerald shines a light on the submissiveness of females toward males during the Roaring Twenties by giving the women in the novel an unfair representation as they are often identified as passive or negative “objects”.
The gender issues in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby adhere to the traditional gender roles of a male-dominant society where women are sexually objectified and made inferior, while men are portrayed as the dominant gender. The narrator’s relationship with the female characters of the novel and their character traits reveal not only the established patriarchal society in the novel, but the chauvinistic attitude of the author as well. While feminine conformity to the ideal standards of women in a male-dominant society is reflected through characters such as Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, male characters such as Tom Buchanan and George Wilson appear to represent the traditional man, thus satisfying the ideal gender roles of a male-dominant society. Though it appears that Nick Carraway’s admiration for masculinity allows him to suffer from his potential anxieties about his own masculinity, Carraway’s male chauvinistic mentality is certain because of his enforcement of traditional gender roles that exerts dominance over women in the novel. Carraway’s attraction to Jordan Baker’s masculine traits and his fascination of the socioeconomic status of men, such as of Jay Gatsby’s and of Tom Buchanan’s, display his conformity to the ideal, traditional standards of gender roles in a male-dominant society that explain his admiration for masculinity.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald took place in the 1920’s when the nation was undergoing rapid economic, political, and social change. Looking through different literary lenses the reader is able to see the effects of these rapid changes. The marxist lens reflects the gap between rich and poor while the feminist lens showcases the patriarchal society.