Why Is Jordan Important In The Great Gatsby

In Bad Driving: Jordan's Tantalizing Story in "The Great Gatsby", Veronica Makowksy made a strong point that Fitzgerald has made Jordan a limited character and needs to be a more relevant character in The Great Gatsby. I disagree with these points as Jordan is a problematic character and Fitzgerald portrayed her to the audience specifically in this way and made many points that show this. Makowsky tries to state that the reason Jordan is like this is because of the discrimination against women, and if she were more prominent in the book, she would not be as much of a judged character.

Veronica Makowsky, explains how Jordan, the self-centered, dishonest rebel, should have a bigger role in the great gatsby, as she is just like Gatsby because

Jordan has a corporeal presence in the novel as well as an evocative if sketchily presented past, that in some ways resembles Gatsby's. Even if Gatsby and Jordan both have similar backgrounds, that does not mean that they are comparable in importance. Makowsky states that “She is often readily dismissed as part of " rotten crowd", (Gatsby 162), that Nick repudiates at the end of the novel”. At the novel's end, Nick ends up acting like Jordan and shutting her out because he believes he is better than her and doesn't need to be around her. I think that Jordan in this novel is portrayed as a new woman in the 1900s time period. She is more self-centered, boyish, and dishonest. This does not portray the right feminism ideal as this essay, Veronica writes is mainly about how Jordan needs a bigger role in the great gatsby to show how iconic of a character she is. I disagree with this statement because Jordan is not the ideal woman and readers should not be looking up to her. On page 39 Nick makes this comment, “She was incredibly dishonest.”, “At her first big golf tournament, there was a row that nearly reached the

This is a normal thought for this time period as women in the 1920s had few rights and strict standards, but for Makowsky to say that Jordan and Daisy are limited by their gender when it is clearly stated in the book that Jordan is a troublemaker and a dishonest woman, is a stretch in my opinion. I do not think that her gender is the aspect that limited her fully, I think that her personality as a person has limited her in life aspects. This is shown whenever Nick reveals that she had cheated in her first-ever big golf tournament, as well as when he says she is incredibly dishonest. These comments were made when Nick first met her, showing the reader that Jordan is known around Long Island as dishonest. In conclusion, I think that Makowski is wrong when she states that Jordan and Daisy are limited by their gender. Even though the 1920s were a time that women had no rights or freedom, Jordan is a dishonest person in general and that is pointed out many times by Nick and Fitz