Ava Nillas Ms. Domingos English 10 Honors 12 May 2023 The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, The Great Gatsby, vividly illustrates the lavish, untroubled, and crazed life of the upper class in the 1920’s. Along with this, Fitzgerald portrays the roles of women and how they were viewed in the 1920’s through relationships and characters in the novel. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald enforces the 1920’s view that a women needs a man in order to survive in the patriarchal society by prioritizing wealth through the relationships between Gatsby and Daisy, Tom and Daisy, and Tom and Myrtle. At the beginning of the novel, it is established that the relationship between Daisy and Tom Buchanan is clearly male-dominated. Tom is described as a rough and strongly opinionated man,. Fitzgerald reflects Tom’s mental attributes through his actions and his physical traits, such as his muscular build and his sturdy frame. Contrasting with Tom’s aggressive and brutal personality, Daisy Buchanan is described as a delicate and alluring woman, “It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as …show more content…
When first introduced to Myrtle, it is known that she was utilizing Tom’s wealth for her own benefit in the scene where she uses Tom’s money to purchase a dog; which was a symbol of wealth. This is further supported when Myrtle explains that she had married her husband by mistake in the quote, “‘The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it” (Fitzgerald 26). In this quote, Myrtle reveals that if she had not known that her husband couldn’t afford his own suit, she wouldn’t have married him. These acts of character show that Myrtle is attracted to large fortune, like Daisy