Femininity In The Great Gatsby

The 1920s were a decade of vanity and prosperity, a time in which society began to move away from the past and where the seeds of modern America were sowed. This decade saw an America where women began to liberate themselves from the oppressiveness of traditional gender roles, where young men returned home after the Great War, where new forms of entertainment such as sports became popular and where the practice of bootlegging rose as a response to prohibition. It was during the 1920s that the rise of consumer culture started as new technologies such as the moving assembly line and new business strategies such as the merging of companies into trusts began to be used. It was also during this time period that the standard of living of common Americans …show more content…
These observations were illustrated by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his book The Great Gatsby. The book revolves around its narrator, a young bondsman from Chicago named Nick Carraway, who moves to Long Island and is suddenly involved in the affairs of his wealthy neighbor, Jay Gatsby, whose love interest in Nick’s married cousin, Daisy, drives him to act in impetuously. Throughout the story, Fitzgerald’s depiction of complicated love affairs, lavish parties, and complex emotional situations make a statement about the zeitgeist of the decade. In his book, Fitzgerald criticizes the shallowness of the 1920s and the way in which the prosperity of the decade created a thin golden lining on top of a society where vanity and carelessness led society to live a morally reproachable lifestyle, and he does so through the illustration of his character’s emotional distresses, his portrayal of the carefree life led by the wealthy and his depiction of the dishonesty of …show more content…
This is voiced by Nick when he meets Tom Buchanan, his cousin’s husband, shortly after Gatsby was killed by a man named George who believed his wife (who also happened to be Tom’s mistress) had been killed by the Gatsby. Upon meeting each other, Nick confronts Tom about his involvement in Gatsby’s death. After Nick asks this, Tom admits to having lied to the George, persuading him that Gatsby was responsible of his wife’s death. When Nick hear this he starts thinking about the lack of morals in both Tom and Daisy. He thinks to himself “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed things and creatures and the retreated back into their money [...] and let other people clean up the mess they made” (Fitzgerald 179). In this instance, Nick voices his discontent about the way in which both his cousin and her husband feel as though they have the power of stepping over people simply because their monetary position allows them to not have to worry about the consequences of their actions. Nick’s anger deepens even more because he realizes the way in which people with power, such as Tom, rub their problems on other people and then walk away without feeling a thing (much in the same way in which he rubbed his troubles with George on Gatsby and then did not