Feminist Criticism of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, gender roles are used in a conservative way. The men are to make the money, buy the house, pay the bills and for everything else. The women are there to be the typical “house wife” and have the men buy them things. In the 1920’s men were more dominant over women so the women didn’t really have a high spot in society if they weren’t married to a wealthy man, or if they weren’t a professional athlete or a performer (actress, dancer, etc…). Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker, and Daisy Buchanan are an example of women that get dominated by men and prove men had the main role in society but one of them proves that women don’t necessarily need a man. They all prove that women have power, just in a different

In the 1920’s, society underwent changes as the result of women's rights, prohibition, organized crime, and the infamous stock market crash of 1928. As women gained independant rights, men were furious about this despite the fact they had always been superior to women. In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby exemplify the treatment men had towards women in the 1920’s. Tom Buchanan, a prominent man who inherits his family’s wealth, is married to Daisy Buchanan, Tom takes advantage of his wife, by publicly taking other women out and treating them to his lavish lifestyle. Tom Buchanan will do anything to suppress his lovers to further the superiority he has over women. Fitzgerald’s use of Tom Buchanan

The novel’s key female character, Daisy Buchannan, represents the role of Tom’s shallow trophy wife who is idolized as the “ideal” individual within the consciousness of Jay Gatsby. Subsequently it was never Daisy’s knowledge or character type that attracted Gatsby; it was more based upon her wealth, “That was it. I 'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, [and] the cymbals ' song of it” (Fitzgerald, 99). Although Daisy is far from being flawless, Gatsby interprets

In "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he shows women, treated and presented as worse than men, and are rather disregarded and neglected by the male characters. Even Fitzgerald describes and creates the traits of the women in the book in a negative manner.

Today, our society is a very judgemental and economic status based society. I will be looking throughout 3 stories using the Marxist lens. We tend to think that we are all split up into different class mainly based on wealthiness, race, gender and ethnicity. People tend to think that the more money you have the more economic status and power you should have over lower class people. Marxists believe that a human’s ability to produce goods and services means people can move past the conflicts of a society that is divided into classes. “First class and coach land at the same runway at the same time.” The person who said this quote was steve jobs and I really loved it because it showed how the classes arent that different. People should not be treated any differently based on economic status and wealth.

Throughout literature women are often displayed as idealized characters. Women in the eyes of society are plagued with the stereotype of being kind, nurturing, and tender individuals while men are established as ambitious, assertive, and tough. However, when the time comes for women to possess the qualities of men and men of women, a turnaround of events can occur. Women were the individuals that then shape the males into their ending personna. Shakespeare's Macbeth, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby demonstrated the reversal of gender roles through portraying women as the instigator of the male character’s ultimate demise.

In The Great Gatsby, there are three major female roles who all show a variety of personalities and their importance fluctuates, yet they have a similarity. All of them have worse qualities than the male characters in the book. Nick describes Daisy, one of the women and his cousin, as “a coward” and says “you could see that she never intended to do anything at all”(FITZGERALD, 132). In the book she represents a typical image of “woman” as shy, weak, and sneaky.

Women in the 20th century, while changing, were still unequal and below those of men. In Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, he explores this and many other themes by telling the story of Jay Gatsby and his quest to rekindle past love with Daisy Buchanan, despite her being married with a child. Women throughout the novel are treated as lesser equals who contain no personal ideas or thoughts. Their purpose is to please the men in their lives. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows how women are less than men by being treated as possessions looking through the Feminist literary lens. This is shown through Daisy being a trophy and Myrtle as being mistreated.

Women were not equal to men during the era of the 1920’s. In “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald represents a negative, misogynistic, stereotypical view of the various types of women during the era of the 1920’s. During the that time, women were not portrayed in a positive light., By writing a book centered around that time period, it causes one to wonder the message Fitzgerald was trying to illustrate about women and what he was saying about society as a whole. Fitzgerald represents the view of women within the 20’s by depicting each character as a representation of the many stereotypes occurring within that era. The main characters Daisy, Myrtle, and Jordan each display pertinent roles within the story representing how women’s roles were

pg 35 just for the thought that she will be better seen by others if

Women, their rights and nothing less.” This is her point of view on the way women were

The Great Gatsby, and it gives us an insight into the gender roles of past WW1 America. Throughout the novel, women are portrayed in a very negative light. The author’s presentation of women is unflattering and unsympathetic. The women are not described with depth. When given their description, Fitzgerald appeals to their voice, “ she had a voice full of money”, their looks “her face was lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes, and a bright passionate mouth”, and the way in which they behave, “ ’They’re such beautiful shirts’ she sobbed”, rather than their feelings or emotions, for example, Daisy is incapable of genuine affection, however she is aimlessly flirtatious.

Daisy grew up spoiled due to the vast wealth she obtained from being ‘old money’, which caused her to become selfish and self-centred. Daisy had become selfish to the point that she has an expensive and materialistic desire or want. When Gatsby shows Daisy his mansion, she gazed in awe as “she admired […] the gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils […] and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate.”(Fitzgerald,97) Daisy, all along, does not have feelings for Gatsby, but more for his money and expensive possessions, as she revealed her true self during Tom and Gatsby’s argument. Daisy is selfish even if money was not involved, as she does not feel grateful for Gatsby taking the blame for her killing Myrtle Wilson. For instance, when Nick tells Gatsby about Mrytle dying, Gatsby replies “’Yes,’ he said after the moment, ‘but of course I’ll say I was.’” (Fitzgerald, 154) When Daisy cried in Gatsby’s mansion, she was crying about her actions in killing Myrtle, meanwhile she does not care about Gatsby’s act of chivalry. Furthermore, Daisy takes advantage of Gatsby by taking Tom along to Gatsby’s party, when Daisy was personally invited to essentially go alone. When Gatsby saw Tom appearing to his party, Gastby with a light temper has a conversation with Tom. He says “I know your wife’, continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.”

From the feminist criticism, everything seems somehow related to everything else. Feminism is involved in any given field cannot be cordoned off. Marxism, however, ignored the position of women which is strange as its key concepts are the “struggle between social classes and the blinding effects of ideology”, it might have been employed to analyze the social situation of women. Feminism saw clearly that the widespread of negative stereotyping of women in literature and film constituted a formidable obstacle on the road of true equality causing the men to act exploitative, denigrating and repressive in their relations with women. The Feminist criticism displays that independent women are either a “seductress or dissatisfied shrew”. They either use their sexuality or they are bad tempered and aggressively assertive which doesn’t give a very positive view. Dependent women are viewed as the “cute but helpless or self-sacrificing”. They lose something in order to help someone else which received appraisal. The “Great Gatsby” is an example of negative stereotyping, what the Feminism fights against. The “Great Gatsby” is about the adventures of Nick Carraway in East/West Egg and his perceptions about the people there, especially the women (Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle). The women represent the negative stereotyping of women; Daisy the “cute but helpless” and Myrtle the “Unworldly, self-sacrificing angel” representing the typical stereotyped woman and Jordan the “Dissatisfied shrew”

These principles are not reflected in the relationship that Tom shares with his wife, Daisy. They were visibly unequally matched for each other with Tom primarily marrying Daisy because she displayed the characteristics of a perfect trophy wife, a status symbol. She was “the golden girl”(96) and when others see Daisy by his side, it reminds them that he is rich enough to be desirable to such a woman. Tom Buchanan was a man who valued appearances, appearances that he hoped anyone outside of his home would idealize. His “wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position” (120) flattered Daisy when he asked for her hand in marriage. As a symbol of their engagement and of his dominance over her, Tom had sent Daisy the string of pearls which were similar to a slave’s chains [Froehlich1]. This marriage was founded on wealth and ownership, because Tom never attempted to get intimate with Daisy who he saw as a possession, rather than an equal. The lack of love caused distance to grow between them, leading Daisy to have an affair with Gatsby. Yet, when Tom learned of their relationship, he showed no fear because she was not going to leave him for someone who would have “to steal the ring he put on her finger”(106). Marriage, to Tom, was an economic exchange where people are bought with wealth and beauty. However, Tom’s materialistic urges could never understand that love cannot be bought like a possession, because he aimed to profit from relationships and in the process, objectified