Comparing Women's Reputation In The Great Gatsby And Cather

Throughout the last century women have come along way. In 2017 women can achieve and be anything they aspire to. It wasn’t always like this. In the late 1800's and into the early 1900's a woman's reputation defined who they were and how successful they could become. In The Great Gatsby and My Antonia, authors Fitgerald and Cather respectively, show how the choices that women made affected their reputation.

In the early 20th century the choices American women made affected the career path they could pursue. In the story My Antonia, the author Willa Cather goes in depth about the hardships of a minor yet crucial character named Lena. The story Cather states, "I thought you were going to be married, Lena. Didn’t I hear that Nick Svendsen was

In My Antonia Cather states, "Then I'll just leave, Mrs. Harling. Lena's been wanting me to get a place closer to her for a long while. Mary Svoboda's going away from the Cutter's to work at a hotel, and I could have her place...Antonia, if you go to the Cutters to work, you cannot come back to this house again. You know what that man is. It will be the ruin of you." (Cather, 101) This shows that Antonia wants to work for the Cutters' because she feels she doesn’t' have enough freedom at the Harlings. Antonia is a teenage girl and wants to be able go to town and go dancing and have relationships with boys. Mrs. Harling however, believes that Antonia moving to the Cutters will ruin her reputation indefinitely because of Mr. Cutters history of how poorly he treats women. In the story Cather states, "He was notoriously dissolute with women. Two Swedish girls who had lived in his house were the worse for the experience. One of them he had taken to Omaha and established in the business for which he had fitted her." (Cather, 102) This proves just how bad of a man Mr. Cutter was. If a woman came to work for him he would force them to become involved in prostitution. In the early 20th century, women who were involved in such a scandalous industry were never able to recover and have a normal life. Antonia wouldn't be able to get

In the story The Great Gatsby, one of the main characters Daisy is married to Tom. Tom however is very unfaithful to Daisy and already had a mistress named Myrtle. One night at dinner Tom received a call from Myrtle. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald states, "The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed his chair back and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing." (Fitzgerald, 14) This shows that after Tom left to talk to Myrtle, Daisy chose to pretend like nothing was wrong. In the book it was obvious Daisy was fully aware of the situation. As a reader, you may be frustrated with this choice because she easily could've confronted him about it and possibly got away from an unhealthy relationship. However, if she were to leave him, she would become poor since Tom was the one who provided for the family. Not only would Daisy become destitute, but she would also lose her friends since they were very judgmental and only hung out with her because of Tom's power. All her so-called friends would judge her for divorcing Tom and leave her in an instant. As awful as this sounds, this was the harsh reality and consequence for Daisy throughout the story. One of the minor characters Jordan was involved in a golf scandal that