Social Norms In Daisy's Story

The narrator compares her beauty displaying regrets to children having to children departing from playing outside in the evening. Daisy is a beautiful girl that Nick becomes instantly star-struck in; however, the reader knows that her personality kills this star-struck from the phrase, “then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret.” Her personality is compared to “like

Social status often establishes one 's credibility and integrity within a society. The power that social status has, encourages people to heavily focus on it. With this focus on social status ever pressing, one’s identity often gets intertwined with and reliant on their place in the hierarchy of society. People become fixated on one idea they have of a person in a certain social class, that anybody who breaks out of specific stereotypes may often cause anger amongst others. In the short story “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor, the main character, Mrs. May, is obsessive about the way others perceive her and her place in society. Mr. May’s identity is so strictly tied to her desire to get to a higher social class and her notions how society

Society looks at daisy as if she is weak and deserves to only serve her husband. They believe she should do what she is told and obey her husband and family’s wishes. Daisy is the ideal woman of wealth through society's eyes in

Daisy knows that she is marginalized. When her daughter was born, she claimed that, “the best thing a girl can be in this world [is] a beautiful little fool” (17). It can be argued that this statement is actively perpetuating the substandard roles of women in the 1920s. However, Daisy is limited in her power, and she knows this. She wants her daughter to be protected. Daisy is not happy in her marriage. She is surrounded by wealth and affluence, but her husband is cheating on her and she does not want to be in the marriage. But, she has to act the fool. She cannot cause a

Fitzgerald expresses the corruption of the American dream through the use of characterization of different characters. Daisy is one of the few

In Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” and Edith Wharton’s “The Other Two,” the narrators each disclose the complications of their party’s social formalities during circumstances within their own society. In both short stories, Winterbourne and Waythorn try to figure out their adored ones character and motives but for different reasons. In “Daisy Miller,” it’s noticeable that Mr. Winterbourne ends up longing for Daisy Miller as he tries to fully categorize the character she’s carelessly ruining. While in “The Other Two,” the narrator examines a society of how a married couple, Waythorn and Alice, adjust to an awkward

Daisy, the narrator’s cousin and object of Jay Gatsby’s affections, utters this to Nick in private after he brings up the wellbeing of her daughter. Here, Daisy is not only alluding to her poor marriage, but the treatment of women during the epoch. She begins with, “I hope she’ll be a fool,” attracting readers with word choice. “Fool” does not refer to stupidity, but rather ignorance of surroundings, giving the said person a false feeling of happiness. With the word, Daisy agrees with the age-old saying, “Ignorance is bliss,” and firmly wants her daughter to be joyful even if it means she must sacrifice awareness.

Daisy, like her husband, is a girl of material and class at heart, and Gatsby being her escape from a hierarchist world. Daisy has just grown up knowing wealth, so in her greedy pursuit of happiness and the “American Dream” Myrtle Wilson died, Gatsby's heart and life were compromised, without claiming responsibility on her part. Daisy was “by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville...” (116) Jordan says, describing early affections between Daisy and Gatsby. She goes on to say, “...all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.” (116) . Daisy was a fancied girl who has Gatsby tied around her finger, Jordan explains that he was looking at Daisy “...in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time...” (117). Daisy, abusing Gatsby’s love for her uses it to create security and protection, greedily and selfishly allowing him to take the fault. While Daisy’s beautiful, alluring traits turn her into an innocent, naive flower, she plays the ultimate villain.

Daisy illustrates the typical women of high social standing; her life is moulded by society’s expectations. She is dependent and subservient to her husband. She is powerless in her marriage.

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.

In one of the most iconic lines of all time, Daisy Fay, in reference to her young daughter, advocates a particular mould for the 20th Century American debutante:

Another aspect of Fitzgerald's criticism of the American dream is Gatsby's desire to gain the love of Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby's object of affection and his "holy grail" (Fitzgerald 160). Daisy on the outside is beautiful, pure, and seemingly perfect. Nick Carraway describes her as wearing white clothes and driving a white car. Her name itself is a white flower. But in actuality, she is as false and shallow as the rest of the society (Lathbury 20). The narrator Nick comments about the foul nature of Daisy and Tom Buchanan who were Americans living in the superficial world of the 1920's:

Daisy confides in Nick that she believes “the best thing a girl can be” is a “beautiful fool” which shows us that Daisy is unhappy with the shallow society of the 1920’s. This comment shows the reader’s that Daisy isn’t shallow and empty; she dislikes the impersonal nature of the people around her and wants her daughter to be a “fool” so she doesn’t notice it. This shows that Daisy does have morals and feels strongly for the people close to her. An aspect of Daisy’s character that could suggest that she is immoral is the possible promiscuity associated with her voice. Nick refers to an excitement in her voice that “men found difficult to forget” which

James' manipulation of appearances in Daisy Miller as well as other character's notions of these appearances provides us with a novella of enigmatic and fascinating characters. Daisy, the most complicated of these ambiguities, is as mysterious as she is flirtatious. James gives her a carefully constructed enigmatic quality that leaves the reader wondering what her motivations were and who she truly was. He structures the novella in such a way as to stress the insights that the supporting characters provide into Daisy's character, weather accurate or erroneous. Despite their questionable reliability, they allow James to make commentary on both European and American cultures and social class.

 The society Daisy faces daily demands standards very different from those of present day society.  In the beginning of the novel, the role of women is confined to that of housewives.  Daisy lives in an era where women are expected to make the best of things and not ask for much for themselves.  She fulfills her duties as a woman in this society by cooking, cleaning and presenting a good image of herself.  Daisy never knows her mother and has no real role models. She manages to follow her guardian’s example in certain aspects of how a woman should act.  Daisy’s roles in society are mostly those of “daughter of,” “wife of,” and “mother of.”  This conveys Shields’ true message in the novel, that “Human beings are defined as much by the things that don’t happen to them as by the things that do, and part of what Shields is doing here is honouring the restricted life, declaring that attention must be paid to the lives of women like Daisy” (Fitzgerald 19).  Daisy is not truly seen as an individual until later in life.