The Great Gatsby Gender Analysis

Scholars seem to interpret that our narrator in The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, has homosexual tendencies that are based on his actions within the novel. There are many instances to back up this particular claim, but the most convincing part of the text is Nick’s actions that take place after his interaction with Tom and Myrtle in the city. The scene of Carraway looking at McKnee, clad in underwear, implies that they might have had casual sex the night before:

‘Come to lunch some day,’ he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator. ‘Where?’ ‘Anywhere.’ ‘Keep your hands off the lever,’ snapped the elevator boy. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. McKee with dignity, ‘I didn’t know I was touching it.’ ‘All right,’ I agreed, ‘I’ll be glad to.’ …

I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands. ‘Beauty and the Beast … Loneliness … Old Grocery Horse … Brook’n Bridge ….’ Then 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. (Fitzgerald 42)
The language used within this section of text is very suggestive of homoerotic behavior between the two men. For instance, the lever within this passage could be used to represent a phallic symbol that one of the men might ‘accidently’ be touching. In reading this passage, it would be simple to not think much of it. For this reason alone, a homoerotic interpretation of The Great Gatsby is not one that is commonly taught.
This passage related to the party in the city and the events that succeed can be interpreted in many different ways. One of the lesser-known interpretations, by Frances Kerr, brings to the table that the act Carraway and McKee committed was out of rebellion to the strong masculine actions in the scene before:
It is immediately after Tom uses ‘the enormous power of that body’ (11) to break Myrtle's nose that McKee and Nick depart together, as if fleeing Tom and his masculinity, and perhaps the heterosexual drama itself. What is important here is not whether Nick feels homosexual desire for Mr. McKee but Nick's responses to both McKee and Tom, which create the ambiguity of the whole McKee episode. Rather than an absolute ideological statement about "feminine" emotion in art or a clear revelation of Nick's sexuality or gender identity, the chapter registers Fitzgerald's ambivalence toward the high modernist taboo on sentimentality and personal expression and perhaps also anxiety about the nature of his own artistic talent. The chapter's strange gender transgressions suggest Fitzgerald's discomfort with strict divisions between masculine and feminine behavior and personality. (Kerr 416)
Kerr is illustrating that Fitzgerald’s point within the text was not to show that Carraway and McKee were being intimate, but to show that this act was an answer to the extreme actions of masculinity within a heterosexual relationship. The two male figures within this chapter retreat to the safe place of a bedroom not out of lust for one another, but to hide from the stern lines amongst male and female conduct. This passage reflects Fitzgerald’s discomfort with the idea of actions being labeled masculine and feminine and drive the text away from such notions.
Carraway, aside from the character of McKee, shows interest, romantically, in both Baker and Gatsby.

The differences between these two characters, specifically gender, represent the misperception that Carraway possesses regarding his sexuality. “Nick's own gender confusion and the ambiguity of his erotic desires
first appear in bold relief as he contemplates the plight of the sentimental photographer Mr. McKee…. Fitzgerald presents Menckenesque gender stereotypes at every turn, only to undermine them with a bizarre homoerotic rebuttal” (Kerr 412). Sex typecasts still are very potent within the novel, like the domestic relationship between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Winston because they help the reader understand the gender roles that led to the inevitable decay of society’s morals within the 1920’s. Inside the ‘gender stereotypes’ that Fitzgerald creates within his writing, there is a hidden meaning with the interlaced homoerotic aspect of the novel. Many scholars believe that the, almost randomly interjected homosexual scenes, represented Fitzgerald’s deepest desires. “And just as surely as Fitzgerald's career records the ambient, dodging pressure to repel charges of his own homosexuality by continually stabilizing the needful opposition between heterosexual and homosexual definition, it also manages on occasion to deflect that pressure with surprising agility and grace” (Fessenden 29). Fitzgerald, while also trying to hint at the thought that homosexuality should be

normalized, wrote in a style that repressed his curious, wandering thoughts about the opposite sex. Our author perhaps intends that, at first glance, his novel is written from the perspective of a straight man, but under the surface, he may have had other intentions.
While Fessenden believed that Fitzgerald was creating gender norms within his writings to deny accusations of his personal homosexuality, others were more inclined to rationalize his text as him trying to live vicariously through the characters that he created. “Sex was frightening to Fitzgerald and he tempted and confronted his fears by laying them bare in the novels; and because he was human, very human, he kept his fears at bay by hatred and repugnance. And for a while it worked. The controlled fantasy of art helped him keep his life under control” (Wasiolek 22). Fitzgerald used his writings as a free space to thrive in because quite possibly the outside world was not as accepting as the world he had created for himself. During such a time period, the simple thought of sexuality apart from heterosexual was shamed due to lack of tolerance. Art, for the creator, can be anything that they choose for it to be, and for Fitzgerald, it was a land where the most inner layer of himself would be accepted for who he truly was.
Jordan, the only women that Nick seems to be interested in the whole novel of The Great Gatsby, is described in a masculine way with a ‘boyish figure’, which may lead to the sole reason why Carraway is enticed by her.

“I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she ‘got done.’ I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small- breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face” (Fitzgerald 14). Nick might be interested in looking at her and surrounding himself by her simply because of her looks and actions that set her aside from the female gender within the novel. This alludes to the fact that potentially Nick might have homosexual tendencies, even when having interactions with the opposite gender. “Although Jordan's masculine appearance and emotional reserve initially appeal to Nick, he is never interested in intimacy. Their exchanges are wooden throughout, marked by Nick's reserve and hesitation and what he suggests is Jordan's arrogant indifference” (Kerr 418). While Baker grabs Carraway’s attention in the text, or so it seems, the relationship between the two might be more complicated than we see at first glance. In a long-term aspect, it was quite clear that Carraway did not see a future for the two, otherwise we believe he would have pursued it with a deeper passion than

the lack of concern that he did. Kerr infers that with Carraway’s doubt within the relationship, Fitzgerald has a more complex meaning of homoeroticism buried within the text for why the young stockbroker did not chase the connection with Baker. Fitzgerald’s possible hope, by showing that not every heterosexual relationship worked out perfectly, was to normalize the culture of gender rules. Carraway’s actions and emotions represent that of a female, while Baker seems colder than the rest of the women within the novel. Showing that the characters are not bound to a certain gender standard throughout the atmosphere of the novel normalizes for the reader that a person can be true to who they are and that sex labels should not change that.
Aside from the fact that Baker possesses physical and emotional qualities that a person may see in a stereotypical man, there are passages within the text that support her own homosexual propensities, which the reader can tell by her disinterest in the male gender:
Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever shrewd men and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body. (Fitzgerald 64)
Baker avoided cold men within the novel to be safe and not at a disadvantage in the relationship, but as the novel progresses on from this point, Fitzgerald eludes that the golfer might avoid men altogether. “‘You forget there’s a lady present,’ said Jordan. Daisy looked around doubtfully. ‘You kiss Nick too.’ ‘What a low, vulgar girl!’ ‘I don’t care!’ cried Daisy and began to clog on the brick fireplace” (Fitzgerald 124). Within this passage, even with the off and on courtship that continues between Carraway and Baker, the golfer shows an utter disregard for the male gender, using Carraway as a scapegoat for the time being.
The fact that Jordan Baker does not show interest in the male gender suggests that she might show a certain admiration for the opposite sex:
Aside from her relationship with Nick, all of Jordan’s relationships and interactions are with women, and it is in women—Daisy, the girls at Gatsby’s parties—that she takes an active interest; Jordan is, at least, a woman-oriented and woman-identified woman. Tom disapproves of Daisy’s and Jordan’s intimate friendship. As a professional athlete, Jordan is a transgressive figure, the phallic golf club liberating her from a patriarchal capitalist economy that is the subject of Nick’s scrutiny as a bonds man. (Froehlich 91)
Jordan Baker senses the oppression that goes on in heterosexual relationships within the 1920’s and rebels against it with every moral fiber. Baker’s golf club is emancipating her from the rules of the patriarchy that, not so coincidentally, Carraway supports. Froehlich brings this to our attention by relating the relationship between the two so- called ‘lovers’ by comparing the scenario to one of economics, which contributed to the decay that was plentifully found within the era.
While Carraway was not necessarily pulled in by the entity that was Jordan Baker, he was enticed by who everyone knew as the Great Gatsby. Nick seems to profess love for Gatsby in ways of such admiration, so much of which to make the reader believe that this might not be a simple platonic relationship between the two males. A really intense passage within the novel that shows the utmost admiration for the man in the pink suit is when our narrator is describing Gatsby’s smile:
He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. (Fitzgerald 53)
Carraway continues to explain how Gatsby’s grin made his entire life feel justified up until this point of his life, which shows that Carraway’s feelings for the man might not be strictly one of a neighborly bond.
Nick Carraway was purely drawn toward Baker for her representation of masculine stereotypes within the novel. Our narrator is also attracted to Gatsby for just the opposite reason. The protagonist infatuates Carraway because he sees not the ‘great’ man Gatsby is known to be, but the feminine qualities that the character holds:
This attraction to Gatsby follows Nick's second flight from Tom Buchanan's brutality, and it is 
the second alliance he has formed with a sensitive, alienated, and defeated man. Nick's obsessive interest in Gatsby's suit comes just after Tom's second major display of aggression, when he forces Daisy to
leave Gatsby by humiliating them both in a room at the Plaza Hotel. In that spectacular scene, Tom turns Gatsby into the social equivalent of a woman. (Kerr 419)
Tom Buchanan shows his violence in the city this time in another manner: not with violence, but with words. Tom destroys the bootlegger’s character in front of the woman he spent the last 5 years of his life trying to win back. This experience for Gatsby is very emasculating, which Fitzgerald uses to pull out his inner feminine qualities. Kerr states from his writings that since Tom insulted Gatsby profusely, he turns him into, “..the social equivalent of a woman” (Kerr 419). This goes to show, without even mentioning, that women have such a low place of status within the 1920’s society. While the era found femininity a sign of weakness, Carraway found love and appreciation within Gatsby’s female characteristic traits.