How Does Fitzgerald Use Gender In The Great Gatsby

The gender differences in the novel are first subtly admitted by Nick, ‘I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchannan’s.’ Nick refers to the Buchannan’s as the ‘Tom Buchannan’s’ subtly acknowledging the fact that Daisy has no control or power within the relationship. She embodies the role of Tom’s simple and self-centered ‘trophy wife’, relating to the idea she is perceived as an object rather than a person. She usually wears white or cream dresses which juxtaposes and highlights her corruption as she begins an affair with Gatsby and ultimately causes his death by running over Myrtle in his car allowing him to be blamed. Fitzgerald fails to describe Daisy with any depth or consideration towards her personality, Fitzgerald appeals

to her voice using the idiom and metaphor, ‘a voice full of money,’ and her looks, ‘her face was lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes, and a bright passionate mouth.’ Daisy is described through her looks and the way she sounds rather than her feeling or emotions further dehumanising her and again relating to the idea women are seen as objects.

There are similar themes within The World’s Wife as Duffy exposes conventional ideas of gender and sexuality, as well as exploring female inequality. Feminist literary criticism covers several critical practices, but broadly speaking it applies feminist theory to the study of texts in an attempt to understand and challenge the representation of women and how those representations conform to stereotypical gender roles and assumptions of what it is to be a woman. The Worlds Wife challenges many of these assumptions and inequalities by creating a variety of female speaker who do not subscribe to conventional ideas about women. Through use of irony and humor, Duffy conflates feminine and masculine stereotypes. Mrs Beast behaves like a male chauvinist, ‘on my poker nights, the beast.’ Also the Kray sisters are modelled on two alpha male figures, the Kray twins. Furthermore, Queen Kong, who has the physique of the male gorilla King Kong is stereotypically feminine, ‘Next day, I shopped. Clothes for my man, mainly.’ Duffy uses this technique to highlight her belief that gender roles are virtually non existent, aiding the feminist criticisms of the work. Similar to The Great Gatsby there is a theme of male dominance. In Thetis, Duffy refers to how she sang until she ‘felt the squeeze of his fist’ the sibilance used here creates a threatening, unsettling atmosphere when referring to the male in the poem. It is used again later in the poem when appealing to the man, ‘I felt the grasp of his strangler’s clasp.’ The pre-modifier ‘strangler’ highlights the sinister intentions the man possesses. In the poem she changes into a mermaid only to be caught again by the man with ‘his hook and his line,’ she then becomes ‘racoon, skunk, skoat’, etc and is ‘stuffed.’ Then, she is ‘wind’ and ‘gas’ only to be destroyed by ‘a fighter plane.’ Duffy mentions how all these are images of the masculine world, and how it asserts its power over the female.
Both Duffy and Fitzgerald depict females characters as mannish figures in their work, conflicting with stereotypical gender roles. Duffy’s The Kray Sisters wear Savile Row suits giving them a masculine edge. They are also very masculine in their language and style, ‘We wanted respect for the way / we entered a bar, or handled a car.’ Finally they also carry out stereotypical male norms such as ‘buying someone a drink.’ The authorial intent in this poem was to highlight that females are capable of the same as men and that they are equal as Duffy is a well known feminist she believes in the equality of men and women. Similarly Fitzgerald uses the same technique through the character Jordan Baker. The androgynous name ‘Jordan’ initially highlights the masculinity of her character. She is also described by Nick through the use of conventionally masculine language when referring to her body, ‘hard,’ ‘muscular,’ ‘that of a young cadet.’ He also admires her for her conventionally manly attributes, ‘she is athletic, confident and self sufficient.’ Here the characterisation of Jordan and The Kray Sisters completely refutes gender roles therefore arguably promoting the feminist criticism.

Another poem where Duffy explores genders roles conflicting with the stereotype is ‘from Mrs Tiresias’. Here, Duffy challenges stereotypical gender roles. Deryn Rees-Jones discussing how Duffy constructs Mrs Tiresias dual sexuality says, ‘Mrs Tiresias sees Duffy addressing explicitly the relationship between gender and the body, exploring the performances that make up gender, and also, potentially, deconstructing them’. (Consorting with Angels: Essay on Modern Women Poets) In the poem, Tiresias’ gender and sexuality become increasingly unstable as the poem goes on. He is first a man, then a woman. ‘His woman’s voice’. Tiresias is unable to accept his new self, as he peers out the bathroom window speaking to himself, ‘the curse he said, the curse’ the repetition of the word ‘curse’ further implies the negativity towards the female sex. In this poem Duffy challenges the norm of gender by describing Tiresias using a lexical set with denotations of women’s body parts, she implies that gender is more mental rather than physical. Although Tiresias has ‘breasts’ and a ‘womans voice’ he still holds an awkward relationship with his sexuality and gender referring to it as a ‘curse’. Duffy creates parallels between Tiresias and his wife’s newfound lover at the end of the poem almost as if they were mirror images of one another ‘his hands, her hands/ the clash of their sparkling rings ands their painted nails’. Also, the fact her newfound lover is also a female further conflicts with patriarchal gender roles of sexuality.

Similarly in the Great Gatsby, patriarchal gender roles are challenged in numerous ways.

Through Fitzgerald’s characterisation of the three main female characters, as well as hiding the possible homosexuality of Nick the narrator due to the novel being written before gay liberation, a time when it was not only condemned socially but it was also actually illegal in the United States, the novel promotes only the traditional gender roles of men and women. The patriarchal agenda is evident in how Daisy and Myrtle are dependent to various degrees upon their male counterparts. Even Jordan Baker, named after two dominant types of sports car at the time has some need for a man as Nick ends up ‘halfway in love’ with her. His admiration of her conventionally masculine traits she is described as ‘athletic’ and ‘muscular’ arguably conveys his attraction towards Jordan is a physical one, reflective of his own sexuality. Nick’s reluctance to enter a relationship with Jordan, and his highly held admiration for Gatsby (‘Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction-Gatsby , who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn’) raise further questions about his sexuality, which conflicts with the traditional gender roles of that time. J. A. Stanford, in ‘is Nick Carraway gay?’ states ‘Nick reports, “I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune and waiting for the four o’clock train” (42). When he’s around men, he’s up late. When he’s around women, he retires early. By itself it doesn’t amount to much, but when all of Nick’s private episodes are pieced together, an undeniable pattern emerges. He is gay. Not bisexual—gay.’ Also close reading reveals another controversial scene to take place at the end of chapter two where Nick Carraway ends up in the bed of Mckee after a night of partying with Tom Buchannan. It is left very ambiguous yet there are several references that

suggest the homosexuality of Nick and Mckee. Nick finds himself ‘standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear,’ here Nick finds himself at the bedside of Mckee who is unclothed within minutes of being invited to lunch by the man whilst touching what seemed to be a phallic symbol, the elevator control handle, ‘keep your hands off the lever.’

Similar to the female characters in the Great Gatsby, Duffy depicts women in The Worlds Wife as waiting women who remain immobile on the sidelines waiting for their husbands. ‘Penelope’ and ‘Mrs Lazarus’ could be seen as examples of this, however Duffy’s feminist way of thinking creates a different image. Penelope starts off as an abandoned lonely woman, ‘hoping to see Odysseus saunter home’, but eventually she moves on by occupying herself with embroidery ‘thinking to amuse herself’ and identifies with a woman at the centre of her work ‘self contained, absorbed, content/ most certainly not waiting’. And when Odysseus finally returns home from his travels she has made a journey of her own and reveals it is ‘far too late’ for them to resume their relationship. Similarly in the elegy ‘Mrs Lazarus’ she begins by mourning her husbands death, stating she initially ‘howled, shrieked, clawed / at the burial stones till her hands bled’ however her deceased husband eventually becomes a ‘memory’, ‘legend, language’ and she moves on. The rule of three ‘howled, shrieked, clawed’ intensifies her actions highlighting how much her husband meant to her coupled with the hyperbole ‘till her hands bled’ furthermore, there is slight use of alliteration ‘legend, language’ this speeds up the text making it roll off of the tongue almost mimicking the swiftness of her grieving. Duffy therefore is effectively portraying the two women as people in their own right rather than embodiments of marital faithfulness.

Similarly in The Great Gatsby, men are dominant over women and work to earn money for the maintenance of the women. The patriarchal agenda is supported in the way men do ‘business’ and the women sit around and gossip. The only hint of a role reversal is in the pair Nick and Jordan however even in this case the man (Nick) does ultimately exert his dominance over the woman (Jordan) by ending their relationship. In Tom Buchannan’s case he exerts his dominance over women in a more physical sense by breaking Myrtles nose when she repeatedly shouted the name of his wife Daisy. Tom is characterised in a stereotypical masculine manner, he is described by Nick as having ‘a hard mouth’ and when referring to his physique, ‘clothes could not hide the enormous power of that body, it was a body capable of enormous leverage’, ‘a cruel body.’ Toms views on gender and feminism match his stereotypical description as he disapproves Jordan’s lifestyle, ‘her family oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way’, and in response to Daisy attending Gatsby’s parties he says, ‘I may be old fashioned in my views, but women run around too much these days.’ However, whilst Tom is advocating stereotypically conservative views regarding women and family life, he is also a frequent adulterer, which highlights the corrupt patriarchal mindset he has adopted further highlighting the views of many people the time the novel was written. This treatment of women refers to them being viewed as a ‘second sex’. The hypocrisy shown by Tom exhibits the unfair treatment of women as he is critical of Jordan and Daisy, yet oblivious to his own wrong doings.