Women In Great Gatsby And Bernice Bobs Her Hair

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F. Scott Fitzgerald, having lived through the era of the “New Women” in the 1920’s, uses two female protagonists in both his novel Great Gatsby (e.g. Daisy Buchanan) and his short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (e.g. Marjorie Harvey). As such, he personifies his desired theme to define the female presence shaped by shifts in society during the 1920’s. He uses an apathetic and cynical tone that paints each character in a negative light. In other words, American women were known as having unequal rights as compared to men; they were often entrapped in oppressive marriages and seen as the inferior sex. Women are portrayed as inferior to men through Fitzgerald’s writings of both the Great Gatsby and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Both passive-aggressive …show more content…

The more evident difference between the two characters was that Marjorie is characterized to represent the more modern ideals of 1920 feminism through her rebellious and manipulative actions, while on the other hand, Daisy is a symbol for the contrasting Victorian, more traditional, ideals of femininity through her charming and materialistic ways. For example, rather than depicting Marjorie to be a sweet and innocent girl, he portrays her to be a “girl…who really [does] have a good time” (“Bernice” 5) and a girl who frequently has “slightly intoxicated undergraduates… [make] love to her” (“Bernice” 4). This defines Marjorie as an unruly human being, reflecting Fitzgerald’s implicit views towards the modern women during the 1920 society. Daisy, on the other hand, is made to be more traditionally dependent, having been given characteristics of typical women from the Victorian Age. Fitzgerald’s use of a whimsical and fanciful tone when it is stated that Daisy’s voice is “full of money… [with an] inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, and the cymbals’ song of it… the golden girl” (Gatsby, 120) and Daisy herself exclaiming “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!” helps prove this point. Overall, Fitzgerald, because of his continual ¬¬¬negative tone surrounding both Daisy Buchanan and Marjorie Harvey, characterizes them in a vilifying manner with the purpose of giving the reader insight into the female presence of past WWI. In other words, personifies his desired theme to define the female presence shaped by shifts in society during the 1920’s to not only provide the reader with insight, but to also reflect his own opinions about the era of the “New Women” through Daisy and Marjorie’s

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