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Gender Roles In The Great Gatsby

Decent Essays
In the 1920’s, women were objectified in society, yet began to show signs of independence by striving for equality between genders. In this time period described as the Roaring Twenties, women began to use their voice as they desired to live their lives how they choose. Written in the middle of the 1920’s, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a renowned author, displayed his perception of women attempting to prove their worth through his new book. One of the protagonists in the novel, Daisy Buchanan, challenges the gender barriers and threatens to paint a new image for women by choosing love over wealth. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays the modern woman's inability to obtain independence as they were perceived as incapable of making their own decisions and relied on traditional gender roles to guide their lives in order to achieve prosperity.
Throughout history, women were viewed as accessories to a man’s life and seen as incapable of making their own decisions. In the novel, Daisy Buchanan has a choice to marry either the wealthy and powerful Tom Buchanan, or her true love off at war, Jay Gatsby. After drinking to where she could not think clearly, Daisy received a letter from Gatsby and questioned her choices of marrying Tom, but when she sobered up in the morning, “the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan”(76). Fitzgerald uses the pearls to symbolize Tom’s wealth and by accepting the pearls as a token of
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