Attitudes Of Women In The Great Gatsby

The Jazz Age was a term coined by Fitzgerald himself during the 1920s, which was when Fitzgerald was at the height of his career, following the release of ‘The Great Gatsby’. The book captured perfectly the very essence of the 1920s. In 1934, The New Yorker stated that “It caught superbly the spirit of a decade”. This included the nervous energy of the population, loosening of sexual morals, changing attitudes of women, emergence of the unstable ‘new money’ types, the growing gap between the rich and poor and the corruption of the American Dream. These topics will be explored individually, particularly focusing on the effect that the Jazz Age had on Fitzgerald’s writing of ‘The Great Gatsby’, eg. the characters and their attitudes. This essay

He based entire characters on the ‘flapper’ style of women, for example Myrtle’s sister, Catherine. She embraces the entire image of the 1920s woman, as like the flappers, she had fashionable bobbed hair, which was the style, as like many modern styles at the time, it rebelled against social norms. Women were generally more sexually free, as their less conservative dress and modern music and dances allowed them to be so. Women (of lower and middle classes generally), publicly smoked and wore lipstick, which had previously been associated with prostitution. Myrtle is also presented as a woman of the times, as she is described as having great vitality, similar to the restless vitality of the 1920s, where old rules seemed to have faded, and new ones had not been established. This left an empty space between the two that people seemed trapped in, striking much similarity to the Valley of Ashes, located between old money and the unstable new money, where people of very little money live and are trapped in their own

Like Daisy, she was born into a wealthy family and does not have to work hard to maintain her status as a celebrity. However, her career is corrupt, as she is known to cheat and yet escape notice due to her high status and immense wealth.

Myrtle is beautiful in a seductive, immoral way that tempts men in, with her exciting attitude and confidence. Although she lacks natural beauty, she knows how to be alluring to men and uses it to her advantage. Fitzgerald portrays her confidence when he writes, "...but she carried her flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face... contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smoldering."

Her relationship with Tom is based solely on a physical attraction, which is a stark contrast to Gatsby and Daisy’s deeply emotional relationship. This reinforces Fitzgerald’s view of people in during the Jazz Age to be obsessed with appearances and objects instead of emotion and humility. Myrtle wants to improve her status throughout the novel, and uses Tom to do so. Myrtle’s corruption lies in her actions, she feels that she can only be successful by using her body to get what she wants. However, this has a terrible effect on the views she has of herself - she begins to see herself as a body alone, as she asks George to beat her as Tom