Women In The Great Gatsby

The Roaring Twenties was an era full of extravagance, soul, and change. In 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, which gained women the right to vote. Although the women's rights movement was taking many strides during this period, women were still viewed as inferior to men. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan. Tom as well as Daisy are from old money, making them extremely rich and sophisticated while Jay Gatsby comes from new money. Jay Gatsby created himself to be exactly the person is today. From a young age, he set goals to further improve his life. Gatsby started his life in a small farm town in North Dakota, and ended it an a gigantic mansion only a short train ride from New York

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby Daisy Buchanan is an enigmatic, beautiful, and desirable women. She is the most desirable object in Gatsby’s world and a generic socially acceptable wife to Tom, which all in all makes their relationship very apathetic. Throughout the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows that neither of them care for each other’s emotional wellbeing. Early in the novel, Daisy comments to Tom, “That is what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a-”, to which Tom interrupts her by saying “I hate that word hulking… even in kidding”. This shows that Daisy does not object to upsetting Tom, which introduces the idea that they might not be in love. Then there is a phone call and Jordan Baker, Daisy’s best friend, who explains what the situation is to Nick Carraway by saying, “Tom’s got some woman in New York… She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?” This statement proves to us that Tom and Daisy are not in love. In the 1920’s it was socially acceptable for Tom, a rich white male, to have an affair which displays his superiority to Daisy. When Tom finds out about Daisy’s affair with Gatsby, he is enraged. Tom confronts them by saying, “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you count count me out… Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.” Tom’s anger and jealousy shows that it was not socially acceptable for women to have affairs, demonstrating the class structure of men and women. Tom and Daisy’s relationship was once jubilant and affectionate but over time they grew apart, resulting in their affairs. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses Tom and Daisy’s relationship to illustrate the hypocrisy of men in the