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How Is Daisy Portrayed In The Great Gatsby

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In “The Great Gatsby”, a novel about wealth in the Jazz Age, the novelist Fitzgerald portrays a negative view of women. Throughout the entire novel, only a few women are described, and they are all described negatively either most of the time, or at some point. Could this be because of the time era or the novelist? Either way, it's beneficial to know what standpoints our classic literature takes so the reader can better understand viewpoints, themes, and vocabulary within them. The great Gatsby takes a negative view on women by introducing them lowly, stereotyping them, and barely having personalities in the story. Throughout the book, most women are introduced in a disrespectful light. In the first couple chapters, the main character Nick …show more content…

The 20s were a colorful era in history, things were changing, and mindsets were challenged. Daisy stays at home, doesn't do much, is shallow, materialistic, has nice clothes, a lavish lifestyle, and a rich husband. In the 20s, it was the ideal for men to stay home and embody the “softer things”. When Daisy’s introduced Nick describes, "It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again”. By making Daisy sort of live that stereotype, Fitzgerald portrays her as a man's dream and centers attention on her. Flapper dancing and parties are a key icon of the 20s, and we see this in Gatsbys parties with the dancing women. “Suddenly one of these gypsies... Seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage, and moves her hands like Frisco”, this sentence describes the flapper women poorly, suggesting they're messy and embarrassing. Myrtle is a social climber, just wanting to be known and live a different lifestyle, so she cheats on her husband Tom. Overall, she is a fraud unable to concur abuse and hardship, which leads to her demise. Jordan is free and unobtainable. Her self-centered nature makes her fit into the “new women” stereotype that was a trend in the 20s. Fitzgerald using these stereotypes demeans the women of the novel and strips them of

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When the idea of the 1920’s comes up the first thought is “the roaring twenties” with parties, wealth, and dancing. Often the issues of the time are forgotten. However, The Great Gatsby stands as a window into the social system of the 1920’s. With references to racism and prohibition, Fitzgerald created a story that gives a sense of society at this time. However, the most evident issue is the sexism often portrayed.

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With the right to vote, consumer based culture, leisure time, and modernism, women who followed these new practices and ideals created the flapper image of the roaring twenties we know today. In Fitzgerald’s story he describes the girls almost wanting to be flappers to me it seems as if in almost all of Fitzgerald’s books he has a girl who is the opposite of what her society wants her to be like and is leaning towards the lifestyle of a flapper girl it's like they are all the same person or have many of the same characteristic in “ The Great Gatsby” which is one of my favorite books, Jordan Baker is a golfer who represents what the new woman is which is cynical,boyish, and self centered. She kinda reminds me of how Beatrice and Marjorie are at the end. They had almost every iconic element of a flapper besides the bobbed hair,but they loved to party at the end , they dance to jazz music, was cut-in every few feet on the dance floor, was always wearing the latest fashions, and was all over casual dating. With this new flashy and flirtatious attitude and charm that young women

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She is such a stereotypical female character in a negative way. Fitzgerald portrays her as such a pure, pretty, proper character, but she does not really have a personality. She is stereotypically a bad driver, obviously, because she is a woman, but when it comes to her personality she’s just another cookie cutter woman in the 1920’s. Males overlook her because she is a celebrity and obviously she can’t use her head, but they trust her for as long as they still find her interesting. Once they decide that she does not have much of a personality, they abandon her and find someone better.

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Thesis: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays Daisy as the classic American girl, thus Fitzgerald uses social expectations of white women to characterize Daisy as a two dimensional stereotype. In the beginning of the novel, Daisy is introduced as the wife of Tom, together creating the exemplar of American couples; however, these social expectations limit the identity of Daisy as she is served as a complimentary character to Tom. Daisy demonstrates Tom’s power and authority when by diminishing her dignity.

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Scott Fitzgerald’s depiction of women in The Great Gatsby readers see women are prepared to emerge into the modern way of life, but society is not ready for the new nontraditional image of

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In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald illustrates that men seek women like Daisy because of the social class she comes from, but she is treated unfairly and objectified in society because she is a woman. At the beginning of the novel, Fitzgerald implies that Tom and Daisy’s relationship is unstable as “Tom’s got some woman in New York” (Fitzgerald 15). Tom felt the need to assert dominance over another woman, belittling Daisy and her worthiness in their relationship. His infidelity reveals the type of man Tom is and how unfaithful he is towards Daisy even when he swears that “[he] loves Daisy” and “[he] always comes back [because in his heart, he] loves her all the time” (Fitzgerald 131). His words are inconsistent with his actions, “once in a while [he goes] off on a spree and makes a fool of [himself],” implying the immoral acts he committed (Fitzgerald 131).

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Daisy Embodies the Roaring Twenties In the novel The Great Gatsby, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald creates Daisy Buchanan to illustrate the traits that embodies the Roaring Twenties where people pursue material objects, is carefree and fickle, and lacks morality and virtue. According to history.com, “the most familiar symbol of the Roaring Twenties is probably the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said unladylike things, in addition to being more sexually free than previous generations” (History.com Editors). As one of the main characters in the novel, Daisy is young and beautiful and fits the description of a flapper.

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the roaring 1920’s is portrayed as a time of fame, glamor and excitement. It was the time women were finally able to explore and get influenced on the American culture. As the time went by, the life of woman had a significant change as they were capable of taking more positions in politics, have more control at home, and the workplace. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses women as characters to build the American dream by portraying the roles of women’s right, using flappers as an example of the development of personality and behavior, and lastly women’s opportunity to work. The role of women was also changing significantly because they had just been given the right to vote after the 19th amendment was accepted, and they were becoming more independent.

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1361 Words | 6 Pages

Explore the view Gatsby is to be pitied rather than admired Fitzgerald narrates ‘The Great Gatsby’ through the character of Nick Carraway, told ‘after two years’ of the tragedy’s occurrence. Throughout the novel he experiences both pride and distrust of Gatsby and so despite his promise to ‘reserve all judgements’, he is inevitably bias towards his friend. The novel opens with these conflicting feelings towards Gatsby as Nick shows him as pitiful, ‘it was what preyed on him’ and admirable with his ‘extraordinary gift for hope’. Gatsby is portrayed as both a victim and a man of brilliant aspirations.

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775 Words | 4 Pages

The book portrays women as corrupt, manipulative, and inferior. There are three main female characters in the book, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrthe. Daisy is portrayed as powerless in her own destiny. She says to Nick that she hopes her daughter will be a “beautiful little fool” because she believes that that is the best thing a girl can be in this world, and can’t run away with Gatsby because she is tied down to Tom, who won’t let her go. She is also portrayed to be unfaithful, easily wooed away from Tom by the handsome face of a past lover with a beautiful mansion and lots of money.

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428 Words | 2 Pages

In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Daisy is portrayed as a modern woman; she is sophisticated, careless and beautifully shallow. Daisy knows who she is, and what it takes for her to be able to keep the lifestyle she grew up in, and this adds to her carelessness and her feigned interest in life. In all, Daisy is a woman who will not sacrifice material desires or comfort for love or for others, and her character is politely cruel in this way. Daisy’s main strength, which buoyed her throughout her youth and when she was in Louisville, is her ability to know what was expected of her and feign cluelessness.

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1205 Words | 5 Pages

In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the significance of women's roles in different situations. From Daisy becoming an ultimate prize and objective of fuel, to the damsel in distress. Or be it Jordan coming across as an, elegant sports woman whom enjoys smoking, drinking and partying just like a normal figure in the story, or common male in the party scene within the novel's chapters. In some respects, Fitzgerald writes about gender roles in a quite conservative manner. Men work to earn money, for reasons of supporting the woman in the story.

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2397 Words | 10 Pages

The era’s “perfect woman”, Daisy Buchanan, is a bubbly, conflicted woman whose choice is between two men: her husband, Tom Buchanan, and her former lover Jay Gatsby. Since Daisy’s character was written in the 1920s, women’s characters were based on the traditional women of the time period, and many women then were still seen as objects and as less desirable than men. When Daisy is invited to Gatsby’s mansion, her first sight of him in many years upon seeing his expensive clothing, she is so overcome with emotion that she begins to weep “with a strained sound” and begins to “cry stormily” showing her true reaction to something as petty as material objects (92). She continues, claiming that

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878 Words | 4 Pages

Historians agree that feminism’s fate broke through in the 1920’s, yet this reformation of social justice was not been embraced by a majority of Americans. In this decade, women were finally allowed to vote, they cut their hair short, and rebelled against the norms of society; however, misogyny remained mentally within the community through media, politics, and even in literature. In 1925, five years after the flappers movement was initiated in America, F. Scott Fitzgerald published his most reputable novel: The Great Gatsby, where the misportrayal of women is apparent within the distinctive natures of his characters. Fitzgerald’s novel focuses on the complexities of American society and the struggles to attain dreams, all while enduring the

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Fitzgerald depicts the women of the novel as deceitful, sexual beings that are naturally subordinate to men through Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle. Daisy exemplifies the naturally inferior role of women relying on the wealth of men in their lives to take care of them. When Daisy talks about her daughter she claims, “a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”(21) establishing women’s subordinate role in which they are ignorant to the affairs of their husbands and expected to rely on their beauty to carry them through life. When Daisy is accused of infidelity with Gatsby in the hotel, Gatsby claims that Daisy is attracted to men of wealth and, “only married [Tom] because [Gatsby] was poor and she was tired of waiting for [him]”(137).

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