The Transformation Of Women In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about societal difference between men and women the 1920s. Throughout the novel this theme is played through our main characters: Tom, Myrtle, and Daisy. Fitzgerald uses the possessive relationships between these characters to enlighten the reader about women’s social ranking. He demonstrates how men were able to control women by making them feel inferior. The author describes the importance of social class for women in the 1920’s through the possessive and ultimately destructive relationship of Tom and Myrtle.

Women were not considered important in the early 1900’s, or weren’t considered a part of a plan. Women were in society only to please men and cook and clean for them, take over the children and do the laundry. They weren’t meant or it wasn’t appropriate for them to have opinions or make an impact on society. Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan baker are three distinct sort of women in the Great Gatsby that help see the different views of women and their power and what they choose to do with it. Many argue that women are women, there is nothing special or unalike about them. But these three women separate society into the classes that it has in that day, poor, mediocre, and rich.

     Jordan Baker, Daisy's friend, is portrayed by Fitzgerald as a masculine figure. One of the first things we find out about this woman is the fact that she is a professional golf player. Nowadays, we don't find anything unusual about this, but, in the twenties, it was quite unusual to

Women cut their hair short to show their equality to men and wore short dresses to express their freedom. Along with their new looks, women began to go to large, wild parties. ‘“..he gives large parties…And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”’ (Fitzgerald, 49, 50). At this part of The Great Gatsby, Jordan is expressing her preferences about parties, thus explaining the fact that women attend parties. In the novel, Jordan is seen as one of the most independent women who did what she wanted. She is the more notable female character who acts like a flapper.

From the beginning of the book we can see that women, in general, in the book are portrayed as naive,brainless, and that they are able to be easily manipulated. At first we notice this with how Daisy is described. And then followed up with how Myrtle is described. Miss Jordan Baker is an exception due to the fact that she doesn't have a significant part in this story. Daisy is described as sensitive, materialistic, and she also believes mostly everything that is said to her.

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.

The 1920s is a decade of many advancements. Women change the style of their hair and clothes as well as the way they act. Along with the personal changes, the 1920s has economic changes. Everyone buys houses and cars and spends their money on everything they want. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the values and goals of the characters give the theme that money is a powerful object that affects the personalities of people.

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

Feminist Perspective Passage: “‘Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. ‘She’s never loved you. She loves me.’ ‘You must be crazy!’ Exclaimed Tom automatically.

Fitzgerald depicts women as self-absorbed, selfish and/or dishonest through the three characters of Daisy, Myrtle and Jordan. They have other qualities as well but those are the three traits that have the biggest role in the way this story takes place. Daisy is so obsessed with herself she can’t afford to think about anything else. Myrtle is so obsessed with having more she becomes blinded to the things she does have. Jordan is so obsessed with making herself be seen as perfect she no longer knows how to do it without cheating. These flaws that each of these women have represent every other women in America during the 1920’s whether they had the same traits or not. Fitzgerald simply captures what life was like during an era in history where

In the later novel Fitzgerald fully explores the modern woman’s symbolic significance in an era of disintegration. Demonstrating that in the modern world “personal identity resides in the perception of others” (Prigozy, “Introduction,” The Great Gatsby, xxxiii), the book suggests that a woman has no identity except in the eyes of her beholder. One reviewer did not think that The Great Gatsby was “a book to be read by the reader who believes the American girl to be the ideal girl of the twentieth century. We wonder if the author is as cynical as he paints his characters” (Bryer, Critical Reception, 195).And according to Fitzgerald himself, he “dragged” the book “out of the pit of [his] stomach in a time of misery.” As he reminded Zelda, when he wrote the novel in 1924 there was “no one believing in me and no one to see except you + before the end your heart betraying me and then I was really alone with no one I liked” (Correspondence, 239).

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.

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”

Looking at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby through a feminist perspective, it’s apparent the text supports and challenges the assumptions of a patriarchal society. Interrogating this text with a critical feminist viewpoint reveals the men and women appear to be victims of social and cultural norms of the 1920s, which were firmly entrenched. However, some of the characters attempt to redefine these, especially the women in order to renegotiate the gender norms. Jordan resists social pressure to conform to feminine expectations and, despite Daisy and Myrtle living more traditionally, they are both willing to have affairs. The female characters approach feminism in a multitude of ways, representing different layers of narrative voices through a time of a feminist movement.