Gender Inequality In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is often referred to as the great American novel; a timeless commentary on the American Dream. A dream that defines success, power, love, social status, and recreation for the American public. It should be mentioned that this novel was published in 1925, which is a time when the American public had recently experienced some significant changes, including women’s suffrage, which had only taken place 6 years prior to the publication of this novel May of 1919. The women of this era had recently acquired a voice in politics, however, the social world does not always take the same pace as the political world. F. Scott Fitzgerald developed female characters that represented both women in their typical gender roles and their

Gender discourse is an important issue in this novel to know the prevailing state of the women of the Jazz Age and their position in the contemporary society. We find gender differences among people through their physical and psychological development, behavioral pattern. The author presents female characters in a way that we find not only the dominance of male over female, but also the rise of women relating to their social status, economic freedom, and the choice of their relationship.

“World War I, which ended in 1918, dramatically altered the Western World and the countries that participated in it” (Johnson and Johnson 282). The United States saw these effects through changes in the role of women as the image of a flapper became prevalent and women gained suffrage. In the novel The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan was portrayed like a flapper, and both she and Myrtle Wilson looked to gain more independence from their husbands. Unlike Daisy and Myrtle, Jordan Baker was not seen as a typical woman for the time, because she was unmarried and an athlete. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby to reflect the changing role of women in the 1920s.

What does Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby at a party and Kim Kardashian at a club both enjoy? They both love attention and short, flashy clothes. No matter what decade it is, people, women especially, dress according to what the setting is. However, what a person chooses to wear, whether appropriate for the occasion or not, could cause mixed responses from other people. Society has set the standard for what is acceptable for a particular occasion, so now people will look to the television to see what to wear for a night out with friends.

Women have been consistently marginalized and devalued throughout history. In The Great Gatsby, the characterization of women is limited to how the men in their life utilise them- a trophy wife, prize, and paramour. These women are not allowed to develop independently; their importance is dictated by the men in their life. F. Scott Fitzgerald is not bringing awareness to the inequality of women in the Roaring Twenties, but perpetuating it through the lack of characterization the women undergo.

Her actions are viewed as foolish, creating the stigma around women, and though Daisy does not see herself as a fool, surprisingly she expresses that “the best thing a girl can be in this world [is] a beautiful little fool (Fitzgerald, pg 17).” Yet, Daisy is not a fool; she is merely a victim of her environment which is influenced by gender, money, and status. This leads to Daisy having no power or control over her own life and feeling as though women can only be “beautiful fools” as stated earlier.

Parties, flappers, jazz, alcohol, and change are all ways to define the boisterous, extravagant era known today as the Roaring Twenties. Women especially set the stage for transforming society, as they broke tradition and advanced into the world. They earned money for themselves, became independent, and were able to voice their opinion with the freedom to vote. F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the emerging woman and her willingness to break free from social standards and create her own customs in The Great Gatsby. Daisy, a submissive woman, relies on her husband Tom’s money to provide happiness, yet rebels and has an affair with her true love, Jay Gatsby. Jordan Baker mirrors the pretentious and irresponsible flapper personality and challenges gender roles by pursuing a career in golf. Lastly, Myrtle Wilson, an outsider, participates in an affair with Tom Buchanan, yet falls into his trap of violence. All three of these women imitate similar personalities of women in Fitzgerald 's own life. Daisy mirrors Fitzgerald’s unrealistic dream, Ginevra King, and his wife, Zelda, while Jordan resembles Fitzgerald’s friend, Edith Cummings, as they both pursued the career of golf and propelled themselves into society as independent women. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the contrast between the expectations of women’s behaviors before and during the 1920s, while focusing on the emergence of the “new woman” and the new freedoms of women in relation to the

One of my favorite books is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It tells the story of a young man living life in the roaring twenties. Although, he doesn't seem to realize the world whizzing past him, outside of his egotistical self. Throughout the book, a main point that has stood out to me is the sexism against women. In the twenties, women were considered more like “objects” that only had few purposes, some of the characters live up to these standards of the time, while others go against them.

The Great Gatsby takes place in the summer of 1922. Nick and Gatsby live in West Egg, Long Island and Daisy and Tom live on East Egg. Daisy and Tom are old money like the rest of East Egg. East Egg is more fashionable than West Egg and the people are wealthier and are upper class citizens. They looked down on the people living in West Egg.

Over the past centuries and through to our present day; gender roles have been a controversial topic discussed by both men and women. Gender roles have been a highly debated topic, including marriage, employment, parenthood, and citizenry. In fact, gender roles have somewhat changed, and somewhat remained the same. One may ask. How have marriage roles changed over time? Has employment changed between the two genders? Have the positions that the parents take over time evolved or remained stable? These questions can be guided through; Source A (The Great Gatsby), Source B (Our Deportment of the Manners, Conduct, and Dress of Refined Society) and Source C (The speech from Emma Watson). These sources create tension and make disagreements because of

The narrator, Nick is grouping together the women of the party and describing their persona all in the same way. The men of the party are comforting them, as they are providing protection and masculinity to the “swooning” and “puppyish” women. The women are following the social norm/stereotype that men must be their protectors because they are such frail beings and must be accompanied by a man. These societal standards were represented through the specific character, Daisy Buchanan and her actions throughout the novel. Daisy has intentional ignorance of her husband, Tom’s multiple affairs showing her lack of empowerment and fear of disrupting the gender roles. The woman was meant to be the housewife, caring for the children, and staying home. Daisy believes women should not be intelligent and applies these expectations to her own daughter: "I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right, ' I said, 'I 'm glad it 's a girl. And I hope she 'll be a fool—that 's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 116-118). It is evident that Daisy was disappointed by the gender of her baby, and thinks little of what a woman can be in

In his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chronicles a story of complicated relationships between a group of men and women as they go about their lives in New York during the “roaring 20s”. Narrated by character Nick Carraway, the story exposes and endorses gender based stereotypes as the characters attempt to achieve their American dream. In 1920, women were granted the right the vote, which was a substantial step forward in the equal rights movement for women. Yet, even during the twenties, women still struggled to find an equal place in society and were often blocked from having the same chances of achieving the American dream as men. In the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald not only exposes sexist values of the time, but

Never has there ever been a more novel with so much gender inequality. The inequality is taken to a completely different level, girls and guys should be equal in all areas. They should not be treated differently in any manner, but the guys are super, girls are considered objects to men, and girls have to rely on their man for whatever they wanted.

F. Scott Fitzgerald tackles numerous grave themes in his renowned novel The Great Gatsby, one of the most prominent being sexism and the disparities of gender equality in the 1920s. The novel tells the story of several upper class men and women navigating prohibition and their own personal drama in their otherwise almost wholly uneventful lives. Every character, regardless of their gender, ends up dead, alone, unhappy, or some combination of the three by the end of the story. But as with most literature, the journey is paramount in comparison to the destination. The way Fitzgerald frames the outcomes of each character varies significantly based on their gender. It is not as simple as “all of the men continue without consequences and get the girl while all the women are either hit by a car or stay in unfaithful marriages” or vice versa. No one gets an entirely, or even mostly, favorable ending. It is instead the reason why one’s finale is inauspicious that must be examined. Men are nearly exclusively characterized in older fiction as being aggressive doers; they are the ones that the story is about and they drive their stories forward. Women, on the other hand, are passive reactors; they are the secondary plot devices to be used to propel the story forward. The men of the novel end up miserable because of things that happen to them, while the women of the story have cheerless conclusions because of actions they took that actively landed them in that place. The Great Gatsby

For example, Tom in regards to Nick and Jordan believes Nick should “look after her… and [that] the home influence will be very good for her" (Fitzgerald 19). It’s easily assumed that many men during this time would believe Jordan to be a very undesirable woman as she’s incredibly dishonest and independent. Tom thinks that if she were to find a nice, honest man like Nick and were to settle down she’d be bred into a proper woman and housewife. Tom thinks women should be domesticated and bound to the home, and doesn’t like anyone who fits out of the norm. Jordan is a “new” type of woman, and her close relationship to Daisy is meant to show the sharp contrast in the attitudes towards both women. For the most part, Fitzgerald writes Daisy as if she’s on a pedestal, the perfect woman, while Jordan is often called out for her flaws and criticized for her behavior. Fitzgerald’s favoritism towards Daisy over Jordan, and the way other characters perceive the two is a representation of the perception of what women should be during the time opposed to what they actually are. In addition, when Daisy had her child and it was born a girl, she was happy and hope she would grow to be “a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy wanted her daughter to be an oblivious woman because she herself had realized how cruel and unfair the world she lived in was, especially to women. Daisy had every