How Does Daisy Change In The Great Gatsby

Daisy Buchanan

The Great Gatsby is a book written by author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows the characters living in West Egg on Long Island during the summer. The story is about the young and rich Jay Gatsby and his love crazed obsession with a young lady named Daisy Buchanan.
Daisy Buchanan is gorgeous and young, but she has a tendency to be shallow and self-absorbed. She’s a major socialite, also better known as a flapper. She is Nick's second cousin, married to Tom Buchanan. Daisy once had a romantic relationship with Gatsby, before she married Tom. Within this novel she must pick between her long lost lover Gatsby, or remain with her husband Tom.
This conflict initially causes a change within Daisy. She begins the story with a

queen-B attitude, knowing how she is loved and wanted by many. Fitzgerald put a lot of emphasis on explaining how she appears to be innocent and pure within Nick’s and the readers eyes; “... Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me” (10). Though with Daisy, there is more than meets the eye..
As the story progresses, Daisy has a small dinner party with her, Tom, Nick, and Jordan. The dinner party continuously gets interrupted by a phone call from Tom’s mistress, and everytime he goes to answer it Daisy becomes more and more distant from the group; becoming engulfed in her own thoughts and despair about Tom’s affairs. “The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air” (15). This is the moment where Daisy, as an individual begins to change. She no longer has the face of innocence and purity because her thoughts are now filled with poison and jealousy due to the fact she is not the only one in Tom’s life, and that she is just another victim of the eras ways towards woman.
Furthermore, as Daisy reconnects with Mr. Gatsby she becomes more distant from Tom. She no longer shows the same amount of respect for Tom because she has decided to except how she really feels; “I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance”(101). Tom soon realizes this, and becomes jealous and tempered towards Daisy.
On the contrary, at the end of the novel once Tom has “won” the fight for Daisy, she is reluctant to visit Gatsby at his funeral because of him. She purposely erased all thoughts of Gatsby , removing all past love and care for him; “I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them” (126). Daisy had gone from on the verge of running away with Gatsby, to not acknowledging his demise at all.
All in all, Mr. Fitzgerald portrayed Daisy as a character who is easily changeable once pushed in a certain direction. She began as a strong lady who felt as if she ruled the world with her popularity, to a pushed away and used girl who ends up becoming almost of a slave to Tom Buchanan. She is unable to stand up for what she once believed due to the pressure of male dominance during this time, leaving her fearful of being alone or being left. Thus, forever changing her.