“Poor behaviour in women is never punished”. To what extent do you agree with this statement from your close critical study of The Great Gatsby, and show how your reading of The Virgin and the Gipsy has illuminated your ideas.
Dishonesty, an attribute portrayed in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is demonstrative of the hedonism and moral decay of society during the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Primarily illustrated through two socially unacceptable affairs, the author presents these traits through the actions of Jordan Baker, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jay Gatsby. Such flaws are additionally seen in the protagonist of D.H. Lawrence’s ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’, Yvette.
Jordan Baker, close friend to Daisy Buchanan and champion of many …show more content…
Intentionally deceiving her husband the moment he turns his back, Myrtle appears to have an inherently dishonest nature. She even goes as far as to claim she’s “go[ing] to visit her sister in New York”, an excuse which, had Wilson the inclination to check the veracity of her claims, would be easily discovered as a lie. Likewise, the “little Jewess” from “The Virgin and the Gypsy” elopes, leaving her previous husband, in favour of the Major. Bringing wealth to a man who is now poor, Mrs Eastwood-to-be is willing to suffer the rigours of divorce in order to be with the one she now loves. However Major Eastwood’s actions imply that he is only with her for the money. Myrtle, a wife living in the Valley of Ashes, perhaps pursues her relationship with Tom Buchanan in an aspiration to join his lavish lifestyle, by his side. Whilst the “little Jewess” seems to accept her husband has many shortcomings (most notably when he flirts with Yvette), Myrtle continues her unrealistic pursuit of her dream which ends in her destruction: she continuously tries to be with Tom, in the hope that he’ll choose her and they’ll marry one day, to such an extent that she dies when running out to meet him. Ironically, it is Daisy who kills her, thus dealing the ultimate punishment for Myrtle’s poor behaviour –
Dishonesty, an attribute portrayed in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is demonstrative of the hedonism and moral decay of society during the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Primarily illustrated through two socially unacceptable affairs, the author presents these traits through the actions of Jordan Baker, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jay Gatsby. Such flaws are additionally seen in the protagonist of D.H. Lawrence’s ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’, Yvette.
Jordan Baker, close friend to Daisy Buchanan and champion of many …show more content…
Intentionally deceiving her husband the moment he turns his back, Myrtle appears to have an inherently dishonest nature. She even goes as far as to claim she’s “go[ing] to visit her sister in New York”, an excuse which, had Wilson the inclination to check the veracity of her claims, would be easily discovered as a lie. Likewise, the “little Jewess” from “The Virgin and the Gypsy” elopes, leaving her previous husband, in favour of the Major. Bringing wealth to a man who is now poor, Mrs Eastwood-to-be is willing to suffer the rigours of divorce in order to be with the one she now loves. However Major Eastwood’s actions imply that he is only with her for the money. Myrtle, a wife living in the Valley of Ashes, perhaps pursues her relationship with Tom Buchanan in an aspiration to join his lavish lifestyle, by his side. Whilst the “little Jewess” seems to accept her husband has many shortcomings (most notably when he flirts with Yvette), Myrtle continues her unrealistic pursuit of her dream which ends in her destruction: she continuously tries to be with Tom, in the hope that he’ll choose her and they’ll marry one day, to such an extent that she dies when running out to meet him. Ironically, it is Daisy who kills her, thus dealing the ultimate punishment for Myrtle’s poor behaviour –