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Gender in us literature 20th century
Feminism in The Great Gatsby
Reading great gatsby through feminist lens
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The Great Gatsby Through Feminism
In the Great Gatsby, there are multiple leading female roles. The women in the novel are all portrayed in similar ways and follow the same common themes. The novel discusses the issues of infidelity and love. While exploring these things, the women in the novel tend to be shown as materialistic and inferior. Throughout the novel, patriarchal attitudes, stereotypical gender roles put on women, and stereotyping women as materialistic liars, all are common.In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, he portrays the characters Daisy and Myrtle as inferior and materialistic, showing/revealing that Fitzgerald supports patriarchal attitudes.
The patriarchal attitudes are possibly the most prevalent sexist
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theme in the novel. A huge example of this is the struggle between Tom and Gatsby over who will get Daisy, thus treating her as a possession rather than a person. Tom is almost a living example of a patriarchy. Tom continually feels the need to assert his dominance and power of everyone, especially Daisy and Myrtle. Tom continually cheats on his wife with Myrtle, but when Daisy cheats on him he becomes irate and shouts “she is not leaving me!” This is an example of a patriarchal attitude because Tom, a man, is telling Daisy what she can and cannot do while also being hypocritical about his feelings towards affairs. He thinks that because he is a man, it is okay to have an affair because it makes him seem superior, but it is not okay for his wife to have an affair because that makes him seem inferior. Throughout the novel, marriage plays a key role and helps to exposes who the characters truly are. Marriage is portrayed as a patriarchal construct that is problematic in all of the characters lives. Infidelity is what causes all of the major points and events in the novel. The marriages in the novel are always patriarchal relationships in which the men treat the women as their property and mistreat them. An example of this is when Mr. Wilson calmly says “I’ve got my wife locked up there!” in reference to Myrtle. Although Myrtle and Daisy were both victims of sexism and abuse, Daisy may have endured the worst of it. The whole novel is about Jay Gatsby and his love for Daisy.
Daisy is married to Tom who is sexist and treats her quite poorly. Although it seems like Gatsby truly loved Daisy and would treat her like a goddess unlike Tom, that’s not exactly true. Both Tom and Gatsby don’t treat Daisy with the respect she deserves. Gatsby uses his money to try to buy Daisy’s love. Daisy briefly has an affair with Gatsby, but once Tom found out she began to distance herself. Once again Tom’s sexist hypocrisy shows up when he becomes enraged over Daisy’s affair, despite having one of his own. Both of those men treated Daisy as if she was naive and inferior. As for Myrtle, she doesn’t get treated much better. Men in the novel, especially Tom Buchanan, continually feel the need to assert their dominance over everyone. An example of this is when Tom assaulted Myrtle. "'Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!' shouted Mrs. Wilson. 'I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai ---' Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand". Tom broke Myrtle’s nose just for saying Daisy’s name. This shows that Tom is offended when somebody speaks negatively about his wife but not so much his mistress. This proves that Tom thinks having another woman in your life is okay, but there is a huge difference between a wife and
a mistress. This leads him to treat Myrtle like less of a human being. Ironically, when Fitzgerald wrote “The Great Gatsby”, it was the 1920’s and the women’s rights movement was at it’s peak. Despite this, Fitzgerald makes the women possess stereotypical gender roles and be inferior to men. There are many examples throughout the novel that involve women being looked down upon or being treated as property. This makes the reader wonder if Fitzgerald was possibly a misogynist. All throughout the novel men act superior to the women. Both Daisy and Myrtle aren’t wealthy figures themselves, they just have money because of the men they married. The men are always the ones with wealth. Sexist language is prevalent throughout the novel as well. Females, like Daisy and Myrtle, are referred to as “his girl”, rather than by their names. An example of this is on page 24 where it says "Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her- but I did ... 'I want you to meet my girl.” Also, men flaunt their women as if they were their material property rather than people. A good example of this is Myrtle. Tom uses Myrtle for sex only and is uninterested in who she is as a person. Myrtle is continually abused by both Tom and George when she isn’t being the perfect wife they want her to be. Sh may be important to Tom and George, but they do not treat her equally or properly. In the novel, Tom is discussing Daisy and Myrtle becomes emotional. Things being to escalate, and Myrtle begins to shout Daisy’s name repeatedly. This occurs on page 37 which says, “I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai ---' Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.” Myrtle was assaulted purely but getting emotional. Later on in the novel, Myrtle and George get into a fight and he becomes violent and on page 146 Myrtle yells, “throw me down and beat me you little coward!” Later on, George goes as far as locking Myrtle in a room after a fight. All of Myrtle’s relationships with men are abusive and sexist. Ultimately, none of the women in the novel have healthy relationships with the men who claim to “love” them. Gender roles, or stereotypes, are big parts of the novel as well. With Daisy, she lives a stereotypical life for the most part. She is a housewife, her husband has all the money, she is considered dumb and inferior, and she is continually manipulated by the men in her life. This leads Daisy to have a depressing outlook on being a woman. On page 20 Daisy is talking about her daughter and says, “The best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” This statement implies that women should never aspire to be smart or successful and the best thing they can do is accept inferiority and become nothing but housewives living off of their husbands. Myrtle is also portrayed as a stereotypical woman. She also is a housewife whose husband is the breadwinner. She is treated as if she is inferior to Tom and George and is manipulated by them both. Both Daisy and Myrtle are described as materialistic, perpetuating the stereotype that all women are materialistic. The novel prominently suggests that a woman’s main concern is money. On pages 75-76 it says, "In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago... and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” That suggests that Daisy’s main concern in life is money. That may be true for Daisy and Myrtle specifically, but the repetitive use of women being materialistic leads readers to wonder if Fitzgerald generally believes that women are shallow. An example of this stereotype is on page 120 and it says, "Her voice is full of money... That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbal's song of it..." Even the narrator, Nick Carraway, stereotypes women. He sees women as liars who only create drama. This is evident when Nick says “Dishonesty in a woman is something you never blame deeply.” All throughout the book women are portrayed as money-hungry. Daisy and Myrtle only care about being rich and will do anything in their power to be with a wealthy man, even if it means mistreating men and having affairs. Is “The Great Gatsby” an eye-opener to the underlying patriarchy of the world or a look into the mind of a misogynist? Is Fitzgerald himself a misogynist? The novel leaves reader with many questions regarding Fitzgerald’s own personal views on women and also makes them question how women are treated in society. The novel provides a look into the roaring 20’s and the changing times of the 20th century. Throughout the novel, patriarchal attitudes, stereotypical gender roles put on women, and stereotyping women as materialistic liars, all are common.In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, he portrays the characters Daisy and Myrtle as inferior and materialistic, showing/revealing that Fitzgerald supports patriarchal attitudes.
Daisy knows very well that tom is cheating on her, but doesn’t care because it's more convenient to stay in her unhappy marriage. Even though she wants to be with Gatsby, she wants to keep her social status and being with Tom makes this all the easier. Now, this is quite the opposite of Myrtle. She has a loving husband who would do anything for her, but her social status is all she cares about. Myrtle is willing to hurt George and ruin their marriage in order to climb up the social ladder. Neither of these women have respect for themselves. Both Daisy and Myrtle allow Tom to treat them
Myrtle eventually had similar goals as Gatsby, but her life did not begin the same way. She was of the lower class of society and married a simple man. The two pursued a poor life, but Myrtle’s husband George was a decent man. Nevertheless, Myrtle became unsatisfied, and when the opportunity arose to better the quality of her life, she took it. Daisy’s husband Tom, an unfaithful, rough man not very committed to his marriage, began an affair with Myrtle.
The Great Gatsby is often referred to as the great American novel; a timeless commentary on the American Dream. A dream that defines success, power, love, social status, and recreation for the American public. It should be mentioned that this novel was published in 1925, which is a time when the American public had recently experienced some significant changes, including women’s suffrage, which had only taken place 6 years prior to the publication of this novel May of 1919. The women of this era had recently acquired a voice in politics, however, the social world does not always take the same pace as the political world. F. Scott Fitzgerald developed female characters that represented both women in their typical gender roles and their modern counterparts. I will be analyzing gender roles within the context of this novel, comparing and contrasting Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker, and Daisy Buchanan alongside one another, as well as comparing and contrasting their interactions with the men in the novel.
The 1920s served as a significant period of time for women as it was then that they broke away from all the traditional social constrains.However, this leads to the issue of the negative representaion of women in the novel. It is noted that none of the main women in the Great Gatsby is portrayed in a good light. There is Daisy, who is beautiful, but also extremely shallow and materialistic- seeing that she only married Tom for his wealth.Next, readers meet Jordan, Daisy’s friend. Jordan is portrayed as extremely independent and self- sufficient. However she is also seen to be a little detached, this is highlighted when Nick’s first description of her was that she was ‘motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balaancing something on it which was quite likey to her’, and we can infer that Jordan has an air of aloofness that makes her seem rather unapproachable. There is also Myrtle, Tom’s mistress. Myrtle and Daisy are binary opposites in terms of appearance, however, Myrtle like Daisy, is extremely materialistic. Myrtle chooses to have an affair with Tom while fully knowing that he was married because he was able to provide her with material things she could never afford. Furthermore, she insults her loving husband, and claims that he is ‘not fit to lick [her] shoe’ simply because he was not rich. Here, readers can clearly see that Myrtle is a woman with loose morals who is completely
In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy Buchanan is unthinking and self-centered. Daisy is unthinking because when she meets Nick for the first time after the war; the first thing she says is “I’m p-paralyzed with happiness” (8) which is really unbecoming for a social butterfly like her. Moreover, she stutters while saying the word “paralyzed” which could imply that she says this without really thinking, because this is not the typical greeting one would say to their cousin, even after a long time. Also, since Daisy is pretty high on the social ladder, she expects people to laugh at her terrible jokes because she laughs after saying she is “paralyzed with happiness” even though Nick does not, illustrating her inconsiderate
Daisy is aware of Tom’s mistress, but she chooses to ignore it and to avoid showing her emotions. This shows that she wants others to see her marriage as perfect. It is fairly evident that she is bothered by the affair; when Tom goes to answer the phone with Myrtle on the line, Daisy suddenly throws her napkin on the table and follows him inside. She tries to hide the fact that she knows about the affair in order to keep her husband pleased. Also, her timidness around Tom may suggest she does not fully trust him and may be abused by him, whether it be verbally or physically. On the contrary, Myrtle is open with her relationship with Tom. Myrtle has even introduced Tom to her husband, George. Both Daisy and George know their spouses are cheating. Acquaintances and friends have seen Tom and his mistress in public, in the city, and at parties. Tom is attracted to both women, but the love with Daisy has been flickering out, and she seems to be more of a trophy wife now rather than his loving spouse. Tom may be attracted to Myrtle for the attention she gives him, or the fact that she loves to party and have fun. However, readers often speculate that Tom would never divorce his wife to marry someone of a lower class, despite having a stronger love and connection with Myrtle than Daisy.
The exploring Fitzgerald's use of gender roles in the novel requires a certain amount of scholarly research. Including text searches throughout the book, reading scholarly criticisms about the novel and reading articles that present new ideas about Fitzgerald's work. Gender definition and patriarchal values is the main topic of Bethany Klassen's article entitled, "Under Control: Patriarchal Gender construction in the Great Gatsby." The quotes and ideas in this article are profound and bring on a whole new meaning to events, conversations and actions that take place in the book. For example she notes, " To place Daisy and Myrtle in the passive position necessary to Tom's ego, Fitzgerald employs imagery that denies them their humanity and transforms them into objects defined by their purpose to display Tom's wealth and power"( Klassen ). This passage in the article refers to the way in which Tom puts value on women not by personality or his love but as a material trapping. Not showing emotion towards his wife adds to Tom's persona. The article also includes opinions about the female roles in the novel. Daisy and Myrtle personify the typical female who is basically living to fulfill her husband's needs instead of getting a degree and making a living. The article continues to explain how during that time period, there was even a consequence for not fitting into gender roles. Referring to the tragic car accident, Klassen writes, " Because Daisy's affair with Gatsby places her in the car with him that night and because Myrtle's rebellion against her husband leads her to run into the road, both incidences of female empowerment structurally precipitates the disaster" ( Klassen ). This quote is extremely interesting because it claims that when women try to overcome being trapped by feminine stereo-types, it ends in disaster. This article is obviously beneficial to any person who is exploring gender roles in the novel.
Tom views Daisy as his trophy wife, a woman he can have to make things look good at home and while he’s out on business while he secretly travels to New York to have an affair with Myrtle, thus making her a victim of Tom’s infidelities. The way Tom dehumanizes her is by making her seem small, almost fairy-like and by not allowing her to express herself. Though, he’s not physically putting his hands on Daisy, he still has a violent side and is doing a violent act of not allowing Daisy to be herself. Daisy accuses Tom for her bruised finger and later in the novel, Tom “strikes Myrtle’s nose” (). In a way Daisy’s just Tom’s “beautiful little fool” (), because she continues to put up with his cheating because she is scared to leave his possession of security and stability because that’s something Gatsby can’t offer
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys how Jay Gatsby’s ambition is the root of his success and death. When Gatsby, a man of humble beginnings, meets Daisy, her wealth and high status allures him. They fall in love, but due to Gatsby’s low financial and social position, Daisy feels insecure and leaves him. Gatsby’s optimism and obsession to win Daisy prompts the ambition that ultimately drives him to his noble yet tragic ending.
They are both born into impoverished families, but deny acceptance of their lower status. Myrtle and Gatsby also share similar aspirations, to gain money and higher status. They are attempting to rise above their social class. Fitzgerald’s interpretation of Gatsby however, is much different from his portrayal of Gatsby. Gatsby is a tragic hero. He has nothing but good intentions and aspires for love, while Myrtle is simply shown as a foolish woman who is so absorbed in greed that she sacrifices her morals and sanity, in exchange for money and higher status. Gatsby, unlike Myrtle, maintains redeemable qualities until his murder. Everything he does is for his love, Daisy, because he wants only the best for her even if his life turns to ruins as a result. In contrast, Myrtle who has the same aspirations as Gatsby, exhibits impure intentions. She wants to achieve her goals of becoming a wealthy, elite member of society, purely to feed her selfish, eager desires, at the cost of her husbands’ sanity. This is what removes any sympathy a person may have had for Myrtle. She is depicted as a silly imbecile who cheats her way out her marriage and into her
In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the two primary women presented are Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson. These two women, although different in many ways, have very similar personalities. Throughout the novel, there are instances in which the reader feels bad for and dislikes both Daisy and Myrtle. These two women beautifully portray the hardships and difficulties they have in their marriages. Neither one are really satisfied with what they have, and are always longing for more. This incomplete and lonely feeling lead them both to cheat on their husbands in torrid affairs.
Myrtle is, as Daisy, impressed with Tom's wealth and appearance, but, like Jay Gatsby, is stuck in a fantastic, idealized perception of her object of affection. Even when abused and trampled over by Tom, Myrtle continues to adore him, just as Gatsby continues to dote upon Daisy after being obviously rejected by her. As far as ethical considerations, Gatsby tends to prove himself a sincere and caring person, while Daisy and Tom just destroy the lives of two people and then leave town to escape the consequences of their actions.
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.
Scott Fitzgerald portrays men as superior in The Great Gatsby. Throughout the course of the entire novel, “woman” is a term used to describe only the lower class females. For example, the Finnish maid and Myrtle, two lower class females, are referred to by “woman”, whereas the higher class females like Daisy and the ones at Gatsby’s parties are referred to as “girls”. This shows sexism because the more childish word to describe females is used for the higher class females, the better ones. This shows that at their best, women are really just “girls” who never grew up.
Looking at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby through a feminist perspective, it seems apparent that the text supports and challenges the assumptions of a patriarchal society. Interrogating this text with a critical feminist viewpoint reveals that the men and women appear to be victims of social and cultural norms of the 1920s that was almost impossible to change. Although, some of the character’s attempt to redefine society and culture, more so the women in the text in order to renegotiate the gender norms. Jordan resists social pressure to conform to feminine expectations and, despite Daisy and Myrtle being more traditional in the way they live, they are both willing to have affairs. The female characters’ approach feminism in a multitude