Gender Roles In The Great Gatsby

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Laura Mulvey, film theorist, is quoted as saying, “Women, in any fully human form, have almost completely been left out of film.” The study of gender representation in cinema began in the 1970s with women like Molly Haskell and Mulvey. Theorists found that there was an abundance of the male who successfully ran the narrative, while the female was there only for the “visual pleasure” of the male, thus coining the male gaze. 1974 gave birth to two blonde, vapid Daisies on the silver screen, both presented for eyes of the men around them: Daisy Miller, from Henry James novella, and Daisy Buchanan, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Peter Bogdanovich’s film adaptation of James’s Daisy Miller (1878) is a mix of comedy and sadness, …show more content…

He sketches Daisy as everything a proper member of Victorian society should look down upon. She is a lively girl in the midst of propriety. This is shown in the film through costuming. Daisy is given gorgeous outfits, beautiful light colors with flounce. Mrs. Walker is in dark greens and reds and Mrs. Costello is dressed in very severe and old fashioned clothes. The men are all impeccably and correctly dressed. Here, Daisy is the only one that sticks out, seeming to radiate light as she glides around Vevey and Rome. One cannot help but wonder if she would be the same in America, or if her resentment of proper society is due to her living in …show more content…

He is “studying hard -- an intimation that he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady” (p.87). Daisy’s death does not seem to have had much of an affect on him. In the film on the other hand, the final shot is that of Winterbourne, alone, standing at Daisy’s grave. Bogdanovich seems to highlight this theme of lost love, rather than that of a mere fling; Winterbourne clings to Daisy, even after her untimely death. Instead of focusing in on the hypocrisy of the upper class, as James does in the novella, Bogdanovich opted to concentrate more on the lines regarding disgust in Daisy’s flirtations and how everything she does and says violates the gendered role expected of her. Something debatable in the novella is Winterbourne’s motive: does he truly love Daisy or does he only wish to get her in bed? Bogdanovich goes for the bed

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