The novels The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Their Eyes Were Watching God follow the lives of Jay Gatsby and Janie Crawford, respectively, exploring the depths of their love life and personal values. Wealth plays a big part of each story, however, with differing importance to the main characters. Janie is not materialistic, and cares not how much money she has, but whether she is happy or not. Gatsby, on the other hand, cares only about wealth and convinces himself he is in love with Daisy, equating financial success with love and happiness. Their class, the themes and materialism that is shown in the novels reveal the place of wealth in their lives, showing how commodification is either negative or positive.
Despite both Gatsby and Janie being stuck in a liminal space between lower class and higher class, they both react to that fact in completely opposite ways; Gatsby tries to climb to the next clique in vain to gain love, while Janie treats money and love as completely separate things, with love being more important than money. Throughout the novel, Janie strives to find love; meanwhile, her grandmother marries her off to an
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Janie, particularly with her husbands, is commodified and treated like an object; on the other hand, Jay Gatsby commodifies people, treating them as something he will gain from. Janie is treated as a worker by her first husband, Logan. He expects her to assist him with the farming work, even though she was married off to Logan to have someone to provide for her. Janie argues that she cooks dinner, so she shouldn’t have to help in the fields. Logan agrees, for a short time at least. He then sets off to buy her a mule so she can work, and then she runs off with Joe. Now, Joe treats her as a trophy wife and doesn’t allow her to do