The Feminist Lens Of The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Today, girls have dozens of new ways to be appealing to modern society. From taking a little trip to the doctor’s office for a new face and body, to displaying a fake persona on social media for thousands of strangers to adore. Take it back to almost 100 years ago, in the roaring twenties, and social standards have not really changed. Women still struggle to become how society deems as “perfect”. Sadly, Daisy Buchanan, a woman living in the twenties, stresses through the same exact society standards that modern girls struggle with. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s infamous novel, The Great Gatsby, describes character Daisy Buchanan through use of imagery as a woman who is overwhelmed and stressed due to the impossible expectations and standards of

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

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.

Since society has existed, women have been known as different from men. For the longest time, women have been known as the “weaker sex” when compared to the male. There purpose, especially in the olden days is to obey and please the men. However nowadays there seems to be a more equality between the two genders. But even today discrimination between male and female takes place all over the world. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, you can see a lot of discrimination between the two sexes. The story takes place in the 1930’s and it has a bad view on women, they just got the right to vote for presidents, mayors, and senators. However most men thought that the women should only stay home and raise children, that they should not be involved in politics, and their ideas were not valuable. Women were treated as “house slaves” at times when all what they did all day, every day, was work around the house trying to improve the living for their husband and kids.

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.

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.

Though the Great Gatsby is a male dominated book, there are a few women who have great influences. Daisy Buchannan is the main female character, having romantic relations with both Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. Myrtle Wilson is a woman who is married to a hardworking man, but she remained unfaithful throughout the length of the novel. Lastly, Jordan Baker is probably the least mentioned woman but had an equally important role as the others. Fitzgerald used the development of the three women to further the plot and theme of the book and show the treatment and role of women in that society at that time.

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

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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.

The pervasive male bias in American literature leads the reader to equate the experience of being American with the experience of being male. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the background for the experience of disillusionment and betrayal revealed in the novel is the discovery of America. Daisy's failure of Gatsby is symbolic of the failure of America to live up to the expectations in the imagination of the men who "discovered" it. America is female; to be American is male; and the quintessential American experience is betrayal by woman. Fetterley believes that power is the issue in the politics of literature. Powerlessness characterizes woman's experience of reading not only because

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”

Women roles have drastically changed since the late 18th and early 19th century. During this time, women did not have the freedom to voice their opinions and be themselves. Today women don’t even have to worry about the rules and limitations like the women had to in this era. Edna in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin and Nora in “A Doll House” by Henrik Ibsen were analogous protagonists. The trials they faced were also very similar. Edna and Nora were both faced with the fact that they face a repressive husband whom they both find and exit strategy for. For Nora this involved abandoning her family and running away, while Edna takes the option that Nora could not do-committing suicide. These distinct texts both show how women were forced to