The Great Gatsby And A Lost Lady Analysis

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady have been captivating readers for almost a century. However, many readers have failed to see a hidden connection between the two novels. In fact, Fitzgerald wrote to Willa Cather “to explain an instance of apparent plagiarism.” He wrote that he had been reading A Lost Lady when he wrote The Great Gatsby and noted the similarity in description between Cather’s Mrs. Forrester and his own Daisy Buchanan. The resemblance between the two characters is apparent when focusing on their beautiful features and their manipulative natures. Daisy Buchanan and Marian Forrester share not only their beauty and influence but also their charisma and lack of independence by displaying such qualities on several occasions. …show more content…
Forrester and Daisy are known for their beauty. Marian Forrester, a Californian woman with “blue-black hair” and “beautiful eyes [which were] dark and full of light [and] set under a low white forehead [with] arching eyebrows,” was strikingly beautiful (Cather 26, 94). She used her beauty to give herself a “bewitching” appearance with a gaze that could “pierce [even] the thickest hide” (Cather 26). Everyone in Sweet Water knew of Mrs. Forrester’s elegance, and quite a few women were envious of her. Similar to Mrs. Forrester, Daisy possessed a beauty that enchanted men such as Jay Gatsby. She had a “face [that] was sad and lovely” with “bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth” (Fitzgerald 9). When Gatsby reunited with Daisy after five years, he was still enamored by her beauty. All those years, Gatsby could have fallen in love with another woman, but instead, he remained infatuated with Daisy. Mrs. Forrester and Daisy are both very attractive women, which contributes to their captivating personalities and highlights a similarity between the