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The Great Gatsby Patriarchy Analysis

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“Bad girls” violate patriarchal sexual norms in some way: they’re sexually forward in appearance or behavior, or they have multiple sexual partners. Men sleep with “bad girls,” but they don’t marry them. “Bad girls” are used and then discarded because they don’t deserve better, and they probably don’t even expect better. They’re not good enough to bear a man’s name or his legitimate children. That role is appropriate only for a properly sub‑ missive “good girl.” The “good girl” is rewarded for her behavior by being placed on a pedestal by patriarchal culture.However , patriarchy objectifies both “bad girls” and “good girls.” That is, patriarchy treats women, whatever their role, like objects: like objects, women exist, according to patriarchy, …show more content…

However, there are countless women in the novel who we see at Gatsby’s parties “whose dress and activities identify them as incarnations of the New Woman, and they are portrayed as clones of a single, negative character type: shallow, exhibitionist, revolting, and deceitful. ”( Tyson122).These women do not exist as individuals and function only as decorative items as is seen in reference to a character named McClenahan who always attends Gatsby’s parties with four girls “They were never quite the same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. ”(text 68).It hardly matters who attends the party with McClenahan as long as they are …show more content…

in Turnbull 197). After the novel failed to achieve the commercial success he so much desired he wrote: “Women do not like it. They do not like to be emotionally passive.” (ibid. 507) Fitzgerald consciously gives them secondary roles in the story, which keeps with the traditional view that women do not have a voice. Though these women have tremendous effects on men, which are often detrimental, they are portrayed as “mere complements” to the men(Mardsen). Daisy, though loved and deeply sought after by Gatsby, is used mostly to complement him or her husband Tom

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