Why Is Marriage Important In The Great Gatsby

Marriage in the modern world is seen as the union of two people in love into formal partnership. When people decide to get married it’s almost certainly because they believe their love is genuine. In the 1920’s and years after it wasn’t uncommon for women to get married not based on love, but on financial stability and societal placement. These marriages were often pushed by the bride's parents and societal expectations for a woman to find a man to support her. The expectation of a women needing to find a man in the early to mid 20th to survive was very insulting, but in most cases true. Often, women were unable to live on their sole income due to the fact that few people highered women over men and on the off chance they did, the pay was much less. This inability to live alone caused

Scott Fitzgerald is a novel based in 1920’s New York perfectly exemplifies the thoughts and emotions that lead to a woman’s decision to marry for financial reasons through the character Daisy. When Daisy was young she was in love with a poor soldier named Jay Gatsby, but was engaged to a wealthy man named Tom Buchanan. Prior to the wedding Daisy was having second thoughts, but ultimately picked money over love. Daisy in this novel represents women of the early 20th century and the decision that many of them had to make. While The Great Gatsby helps understand the process of picking money over love through a narrative, it does not show the effects on a nationwide scale. However, a New York Times article titled Falling Marriage Rates Reveal Economic Fault Lines by Andrew Yarrow shows that from the 1920’s to the 1960’s the average percentage of households that were married was 67.9% and from the the 70’s to modern day the percentage is 55.5%. These numbers reveal a trend between gender equality and the percent of married households. As time went on more jobs and opportunities were open to women, which lead to a decrease in married households by a humongous