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Society's Expectations In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

826 Words4 Pages

Women conflicting with society’s expectations in The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a classic novel set in NY, during the roaring 20s. The novel tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who throws extravagant parties to win back Daisy Buchanan, his long lost lover. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, the narrator who claims to be unbiased and honest, Fitzgerald invents the female characters Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle. Daisy stuck in a loveless marriage, Myrtle a working-class woman who desires to climb the social ladder, and Jordan a professional golfer with a sort of narcissistic personality, all go against the societal expectations of women in the 20’s. In Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, each woman's …show more content…

Daisy finds herself in conflict with society's expectations of women in the 1920s due to her messy marriage. She puts on an act of being a loving wife to Tom and is expected to be a loving mother to their daughter. But Daisy is aware of her husband’s disloyalty in their marriage yet chooses to stay with him because it gives her an easy life and ticket to the upper class society. “That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a… (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch 1, Page 13)”. This quote shows Daisys potential regret but acceptance of the terrible man she married. After Gatsby arrives years later into her life, Daisy is faced with a new conflict. Daisy negotiates this conflict by trying to have the best of both worlds for a while. She continues to be with Tom but also has an affair with Gatsby. When faced with the choice of staying with Gatsby or returning to Tom, she …show more content…

Jordan is a professional golfer who is financially independent and doesn't want to pick one man. Woman in the 1920s were typically obedient housewives yet, Jordan refused to conform to societal expectations. She continues to pursue her career and doesn't commit to a relationship, despite Nicks interest. Furthermore, her non-conformity leads many to believe she is a deceitful and dishonest person. Ironically, Nick almost admires her dishonesty, viewing her in a way most people did not. Jordan navigates her struggles of being a controversial woman figure in the 20s by partying and speaking her mind. In chapter 3, while at one of Gatsby’s grand parties, she says, “I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” This quote proves Jordans strong personality, and how she was unbothered by societies pressure to be

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1051 Words | 5 Pages

Tom hurls accusations at Gatsby and chastises him for an affair, while he too does not respect the marriage with Daisy that he tries to defend. Jordan tries to tout her morality, claiming to act like a lady, but her record does not support that, as she cheats. ”She is incurably dishonest. She was not able to endure being at a disadvantage,” (63). Daisy crafts her likeness to the purity and fragility of a rose, which the others believe as her true identity.

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Jordans description demonstrates that not only was Tom’s association with Daisy posed as a positive for Tom. Although Tom’s personality greatly differs from Daisy. This further implies that Daisy’s contrast to the wild, rich and young crowd Tom exposed her to did not alter her golden girl persona. Tom’s association to Daisy insinuates that Tom and his wife are sophisticated, have great status and symbolizes wealth. Nick and

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846 Words | 4 Pages

Nick says, “For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker… I was flattered to go places with her, because she was a golf champion, and everyone knew her name” (46). This reveals that Jordan is a very strong and assertive person. Jordan, unlike Daisy, rose to the top of the social ladder on her own without the help of a man. Jordan being a very skilled golfer, which for women was not a popular job at the time, shows her confidence and determination to separate herself and question the normalities of civilization. This ultimately puts Jordan in a better stance to compete in society.

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To break down this quote, Nick said this about Jordan because unlike Daisy, she has goals and priorities in life and looks towards the future. Whereas Daisy is stuck in the past and lives in this illusion of reality. Another great representation of Jordan’s character is when she is with Nick at Gatsby’s party, as stated here, “She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she’d take care of me in a minute” (Fitzgerald 42). This quote clearly shows that Jordan is assertive and is confident. Back then, it wasn’t as common for girls to be confident, so again she breaks the idea of what a female should look and act like.

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There are many reasons why Nick would like or dislike each one of these stereotyped woman. Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker are examples of the key differences in each stereotyped women. Daisy Buchanan is Nick Carraway’s cousin, and Tom Buchanan’s wife. Out of the three stereotypes, Daisy Buchanan is a “golden girl”, for the reason that he has a powerful amount of money, and she talks and acts like

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600 Words | 3 Pages

In chapters four and five the author further characterizes Daisy through her fixations and joy in the extravagancies of men. Jordan and Nick discuss Daisy’s past life and her marriage to Tom. After Daisy’s family rejected Gatsby due to his lack of wealth, she looked elsewhere for an eligible bachelor that her family accepts. Jordan explains the circumstances of the marriage to Nick saying, “‘In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before’” (Fitzgerald 50).

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This harsh reality of sexism and the corruption of femininity is further maintained in the article “FEMALE POWER IN THE GREAT GATSBY” by; Gretchen Danielle Fischle when he states, “She is only able to bask effortlessly when she is talked about in relationship to the men around her…Daisy and Jordan both rebuke societal expectations and assert their power, but are hemmed in because of the overwhelming suppression of patriarchal discourse” (26). The effects of a woman living in a man’s world limit women from showing there power and femininity, the inequality of genders is a common recurrence within both Fitzgeralds and Hurston’s novels. Janie is forced to put on a false character of who she really is. Throughout the whole book Janie was with men that treated her wrong and did her bad. They always had Janie doing what they wanted her to do she could never do.

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529 Words | 3 Pages

The Roaring Twenties, known as the decade of the 1920s in the Western World, consists of dramatic changes in social values. The cultural differences between the 1920s and the Victorian era changes people's behavior, where they become more free-will, youthful and carefree, despite of being more conservative before. People are more open-minded and found satisfaction through the “open pursuit of sex, money, and booze” (Berman 53) as they suggest their wealth and status in the society. New York City had become one of the cities where materialistic wealth has become the key of happiness and the standard to judge people's success, further leading Americans to pursue each other in a negative, acquisitive way. Through the different scenes and characters of the famous novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores how the society twisted the original idea of

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Daisy shows her struggles with the social status of women through her daughter and relationship with Tom. Jordan proves that being a “new” women of the 1920s comes with a price of judgment and accusations of dishonesty. Myrtle seeks to become a member of the

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The Roaring Twenties Have you ever wondered what the stereotypes of women were in the 1920’s? Well, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, there are three major different types of stereotypes of women. In this book, a man named Nick Carraway moves near a millionaire who goes by the name Gatsby. Gatsby hosts frequent parties which include several different types of people, such as gold diggers, golden girls, and the new women. Throughout this book, Nick gets to meet all three types of these girls, and gets to spend time with them.

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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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He refers to her as “this woman” when he describes how she “rushed out at [them];” his attitude towards this person he just ran over was less than of her being a human being and more like she was some stray animal destined to be roadkill. Between these three characters, they are all part of a web that was the vision of women in the 1920s. In a particularly powerful interaction between Daisy, the typical, submissive, beautiful woman; and Jordan, the accomplished, defiant and trouble seeking woman; we see these two personas mingle on an extremely hot summer day. Daisy is whining and crying about how she sees no future in the unbelievable heat, showing her strong tendency for overreaction and her inability to see beyond now. Jordan, however, replies to her, saying to Daisy to not be “morbid” and that “life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall”, showing her progressive

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2397 Words | 10 Pages

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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1476 Words | 6 Pages

Jordan is a professional golfer and is seen as a symbol of the new, modern woman of the Roaring Twenties. However, she is also limited by the expectations of the men in her lids, including her male

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430 Words | 2 Pages

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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