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Patriarchy In The Great Gatsby Essay

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Gender essay We live in a world where people refuse to believe in gender equality, especially in the 20’s when men were the providers and we? We were just girls, raised to be housewives. Books like The Great Gatsby support this viewpoint of old morally driven values. Fitzgerald portrays misogyny a lot in the book, by the way the female characters are portrayed and how they’re treated unequally by the males in the book. Daisy and Myrtle are the main females of The Great Gatsby, although with different status. they’ve both experienced some type of inequality and misogyny from their male partners. In the great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses Myrtle and Daisy to represent the patriarchy in America during the 20s. Myrtle is one of the main female side characters, …show more content…

Tom’s wife, Daisy, also experiences inequality from both Tom and Gatsby. Especially during the climax of the book, where Tom and Gatsby spoke for Daisy to show their dominance over Daisy, which pressured her to break down! As you can see in ( chapter 7, page 130) it states ” “ your wife doesn’t love you” said Gatsby. “ she never loved you she loves me “ “ in this sentence, gatsby tells Tom that daisy never loved him even though daisy never confirmed that statement! And in response to gatsby Tom degrades daisy in (page 131 ;paragraph 7) by saying “ she does though, the trouble is sometimes she gets foolish idea in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing “ as you can see instead of disagreeing with gatsby, instead he brings out a problem in daisy causing her to mentally break down in (page 132), where she states “ oh you want to much” she cries to gatsby. I love you now— isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” This sentence shows deep emotion about how Daisy feels about the whole situation. But Tom and Gatsby refuse to listen to her, which shows patriarchy and resembles the 20’s in America where the husband spoke for the women and the women didn’t have a

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She carries her full figured self to attract the eye of her lover. Myrtle is a foolish girl believing that the only reason Tom does not leave Daisy is because she is Catholic, which is far from the truth. “And I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head.” (Fitzgerald 36) Myrtle plays dumb when it comes to Tom having an interest in her when they first met on the train.

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Tom was envious that Gatsby was receiving all the attention from Daisy. Even though Tom and Gatsby were both very wealthy and successful, Daisy has always loved Gatsby. Gatsby wanted Daisy to even tell her husband she never loved him. Gatsby says “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth–that you never loved him–and it’s all wiped out forever” ( Fitzgerald 132).

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Have you ever read The Great Gatsby, and if you have, have you ever analyzed it? Personally, I have specifically analyzed the female characters in The Great Gatsby, and the author's message to the readers about feminine power. Daisy, Myrtle, and Jordan are the three main characters in The Great Gatsby and they make up the majority of the story. Fitzgerald’s, the author of The Great Gatsby, message to the readers about feminine power is that women are better off without a man. This is his point of view because he believes that a man will drag a woman down, and she won't be able to reach her full potential.

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In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays women in an extremely negative light. The idea Fitzgerald gives off is that women are only good for their looks and their bodies and that they should just be a sex symbol rather than actually use their heads. He treats women like objects and the male characters in the novel use women, abuse women, and throw them aside. I believe that Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle are prime examples of women in The Great Gatsby being treated poorly.

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In "The Great Gatsby" characters like Daisy and Myrtle portray the restrictive gender roles throughout the 1920's. Revealing that these characters are limited to live to their full potential, Fitzgerald ultimately supports the restraints of the patriarchy. He presents Daisy as a “good girl” and Myrtle as a “bad girl”, eventually leading them to the same future of relying on a male figure. Daisy conforms to the restrictive gender roles of the 1920’s, while also challenging the limits of these roles. Female roles are defined as obedient, fragile, and oblivious.

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The relationship between Daisy and Gatsby and the events surrounding it are very indicative of the aforementioned sentiment. When they first meet, they did love each other, but their social class’ separated each other, physically and mentally. Daisy didn’t want to marry a man who came from rags and is a general nobody, she wants to marry someone who is wealthy and inherited money. That’s why she married Tom. He had money and social status, but he was arrogant and abusive.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, is full of themes of wealth, love, and tragedy. Also during the time this book was written, women’s suffrage had begun, so women were taking their first steps towards equality with men. The three main women characters in the novel: Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker, all have things in common but can be vastly different; they reflect the view of women in the early 20th century. The Great Gatsby portrays the characters Daisy, Myrtle, and Jordan as stereotypes of women during the 1920s, seen in their behavior, beliefs, and their ultimate fate.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, is full of themes of wealth, love, and tragedy, as well as a subtle but powerful representation of gender. During the time this book was written, women’s suffrage had begun, so women were taking their first steps towards equality with men. The three main women characters in the novel - Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker- all have things in common but can be vastly different; they reflect both man and society’s view of women in the early 20th century. The Great Gatsby portrays the characters Daisy, Myrtle, and Jordan as stereotypes of women during the 1920s, which is shown through their behavior, beliefs, and ultimate fates and their personalities display both powerful and potentially harmful stereotypes of women at this time.

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For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold. In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald presents the female characters using the gender roles in the 1920s to suggest that because Myrtle rejects the gender standards, she faces failure whereas Daisy fulfills the gender expectations, is submissive to maintain stability in life. Fitzgerald presents the female character of Daisy Buchanan as submissive women through repetition and oxymoron to portray how she values traditional gender norms. Fitzgerald introduces the scene of delivery of Pammy through Daisy’s perspective to show the struggle of female gender in society.

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Myrtle is accustomed to living an underprivileged life where feminine power engulfs her, but Tom is too egotistical to allow Myrtle to speak with such authority to him. Similarly, Gatsby’s need for assurance from Daisy pressures her into revealing to Tom that she never loved him (Fitzgerald 132). Deep down, Daisy knows that she truly did love Tom once, but Gatsby’s assertiveness and persistence drives her over the edge to telling Tom that what the two of them shared meant nothing to her. Daisy’s attribute of being a pushover is revealed immensely because she refuses to stand up for herself. Daisy is used to enabling Tom to constantly control all aspects of her life, and that leaves her powerless in society.

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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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