Biases In The Great Gatsby

The Wealth, Womanhood, and Wedlock of Daisy Buchanan
When F. Scott Fitzgerald published his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, in 1925, he introduced the public to a memorable cast of nuanced characters, each with their own unique lives and deep-rooted biases. This sentiment is especially evident in the character of Daisy Buchanan. Daisy Buchanan is a woman who has always known a life of luxury, exemplifying the status of “old money”, despite the fact that she has never worked herself. This is because, as a woman living in the culture of 1920’s America, Daisy spends her life dependent on the men in her life, whether that be her father, or her very wealthy husband, Tom Buchanan. Throughout her life, Daisy has developed noticeable biases that

Often, people with immense wealth feel no fear of consequence, as if they are above the law as well as other people in general. This is because wealth often permits people to do things like pay off authority or leave the country and escape prosecution, a luxury that poorer individuals cannot afford. This same selfishness and recklessness can be seen in Daisy when Gatsby tells Nick, “‘Anyhow—Daisy stepped on it. I tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t so I pulled on the emergency brake’” (Fitzgerald 45). Due to Daisy’s coddled, pampered, and consequence-free lifestyle, when Daisy hits Myrtle with Gatsby’s car, she never stops to check on her or expresses any worry about what she’s done. This is because she is so focused on her own problems in her relationships with Gatsby and Tom. Evidently, Daisy’s self-obsessed recklessness can be attributed to her lifelong wealth keeping her above the law and embedding an unshakable prejudice against those of lesser status such as the citizens of the Valley of Ash, more specifically Myrtle

This is because in the 1920’s, it was still very common for women to feel they have to marry for money, leaving love as an afterthought. As a result, many married women during this time period were left feeling unfulfilled and often depressed. Daisy’s feelings of unfulfillment are depicted in the scene where she sobs into Gatsby’s expensive shirts. Due to her embarrassment, Daisy tries to explain herself by saying, “‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before’” (Fitzgerald 29). In this explanation, she claims to be sad about the opulence of the shirts. However, her sobs are much more of a reflection of her unfulfilling marriage with Tom. When she realizes that Gatsby can afford a very luxurious living, she simultaneously realizes that she would not have had to choose between love and financial stability with Gatsby the way she did with Tom. Although Daisy does care for Tom, by marrying him she had to sacrifice her passion with Gatsby for the financial stability that Tom was granting her, leaving her unfulfilled. Now that she sees how successful Gatsby is, Daisy can’t do anything but sob as she struggles to push aside