The Great Gatsby Female Characters
| Subject: | 📚 Literature |
| Type: | Analytical Essay |
| Pages: | 4 |
| Word count: | 979 |
| Topics: | The Great Gatsby, 🗽 American Culture, 📗 Book |
essay ASAP?
Table of Contents
Women portray various characterizations in the book The Great Gatsby. Themes such as materialism, and social classes, among others, indicate the role women play in society as depicted by the author. Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker are three women with significant authority within their spheres of influence. People have their internal representations of things like goals, imperatives, and requirements. Women characters in The Great Gatsby remain portrayed as materialistic and prone to do anything to get what they want by clinging to powerful and influential men, even if emotionally disrespected. This type of behaviour encourages the readers to question the women characters` morals.
Daisy Buchanan
Daisy wants to marry Tom Buchanan, a wealthy and respectable man. Despite knowing from the beginning that he is disloyal and has several girlfriends, she still wants to marry him. At the same time, Daisy did not love Tom Buchanan because she had fallen in love with another person who was an officer but chose Tom because of his wealth. Her true character is displayed here as Daisy is not in love with the man but ready to stay with him because of his wealth. Daisy feels terrible when she dumps her lover, thus numbing her feelings to suppress her desires.
As a result, she loses a lot due to her love for money when she feels she will marry the wrong guy (Pambudi et al., 2018). Daisy shows a class of women ready to live in toxic relationships because of their desire without thinking about their emotional lives. The author shows through her character how women prefer to use their bodies as instruments of negation while having no emotions for their partners. Daisy is a woman in modern society who believes she would rather be beautiful and stupid but have much wealth. Women’s perspectives are based on their characters and thinking ability, where they tend to be lazy and expect men to work and meet their daily needs.
Daisy believes she would rather have a beautiful and dumb baby because a beautiful woman can deceive a wealthy man by her looks. Through this, women characters are seen to be very desperate, and their perspective changes the narrative on how beautiful they are to capture the attention of a wealthy man. Through the dependence on wealthy men, female characters end up eroding good morals to raise children with the same ideology, thus developing a conflicting society with a lot of greediness and material wealth.
Myrtle Wilson
The book portrays Myrtle Wilson as representing the materialistic nature of women. Myrtle Wilson is the type of woman who is ready to do anything for her to enjoy her own lavish life. Myrtle Wilson represents many women within the society who feel that getting married to a rich man is to be a part of his riches(Gao, 2021). In the story, Myrtle remains depicted as a social climber and a woman who belittles her struggling man and seeks another. The author has shown how women try to fit in by working hard to please society and cling to wealthy male counterparts, thus engaging in unethical activities like cheating on their husbands. This behavior is a disgrace to a society that embraces honesty and loyalty.
Jordan Baker
According to Zeven and Dorst (2021), Jordan is embodied as the new lady of the 1920s, arrogant and pessimistic. Baker remains recognized as a gifted golfer with some distinct manly demeanors. When it comes to her character, she is dishonest, as proven by the fact that she cheated to win her first golf championship. Jordan rejected Nick’s advances since he shared her vices of corruption and depravity. Jordan is one of the main characters because she personifies the prosperous society’s underbelly—specifically, the balance between the comfortable life and the dark inner existence.
According to Pambudi et al. (2018), Jordan Baker had some excellent qualities despite being marked by many false characteristics. A piece of the American dream was Jordan Baker, which served as a prime example of contemporary women who remain independent and self-sufficient. Jordan Baker helps disprove the stereotype that women were weak creatures who required males to support them. First, the fact that she has a highly masculine name like Jordan shows her independence and self-sufficiency. She has been described as tough and small-breasted because she was often referred to as a young cadet, thus demonstrating her independence. Jordan Baker is also portrayed as incredibly self-sufficient because she is a golfer, and being a golfer was not a popular sport among women in her era or earlier. Nonetheless, Jordan has a careless attitude because of her drinking habits, where she engages in smoking and promiscuity activities even if she feels compelled by these activities.
Pambudi et al. (2018) depict the recklessness of many people during the Jazz Age, portrayed through Jordan Baker, who is often lazy, dishonest, and blunt. Tom Buchanan often remarked to Jordan how he wondered if she got anything done. Jordan Baker is a corrupt woman in society who bribes for gain or to turn things upside down. She ended up engaging in cheating activities when she won the Golf competition. Nonetheless, she is a rumor monger since she ends up freely sharing her thoughts and telling Nick about Tom’s mistress.
Conclusion
Every female character in this book shows how the women in society try to fit in to benefit themselves. After amassing a sizeable wealth for themselves, characters like Jordan no longer depend on Nick for monetary support. The culture of those days has shown how women have been using their beauty to exploit wealthy men from whom they want monetary benefits. Women characters downgraded their personalities to live wealthy lives by always believing they must be beautiful to have a wealthy man. The only way for a man to chill down and enjoy life is to have a woman who is both stunning and easily fooled.
- Gao, Y. (2021). A Feminist Approach to The Great Gatsby. International Journal of Frontiers in Sociology, 3(6).
- Pambudi, H. A. R., Sembiring, B., & Damayanti, I. (2018). The Portrayal of Women in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Its Relationship to Indonesian Women On Education. Journal of English Education and Teaching, 2(4), 48-67.
- Zeven, K., & Dorst, A. G. (2021). A beautiful little fool? Retranslating Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Perspectives, 29(5), 661-675.
Offered for reference purposes only.