Critical Research Paper: First Draft
The Female Characters in The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a historical novel. The author employs a narrator, Nick Carraway, to allow insight into the upper class society of New York during the early 1920s. Socially, women enjoyed enormous changes during this era as hem lines shortened replacing long skirts and corsets, hair was bobbed to resemble a more masculine style, and women attained the right to vote. Women, predictably, responded in a variety of ways to these changes: some continued to exist only in their relation to men, and some used the changes to their own advantage. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses his three main female characters, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle, to reflect women …show more content…
She thoroughly displays uniformity throughout the story and remains drearily soporific. Her main function is to support the character of Daisy. This becomes evident in the introductory scene of these two female characters as Nick describes them displayed together on a “completely stationary” sofa with Jordan being “completely motionless” (Fitzgerald 8). The first word she proclaims is followed by a yawn as if to mitigate any sense of reversal of her assigned role. Jordan and Daisy, both, are bored and removed from any resemblance of reality while cocooned in their upper class ‘egg’. Jordan, nonetheless, is a successful professional golfer: a sport traditionally dominated by males. Even her name, Jordan, cannot be clearly identified as female. Her physical characteristics of “a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet” are clearly male (Fitzgerald 11). In order to be the financially independent, morally liberated sports woman she is, Jordan emulates the behaviors she observes from the men who encompass her world: lying, cheating, and engaging in corruption when necessary to ensure material and worldly success at all costs. She wittingly cheats in a golf tournament and is described as being “incurably dishonest” and unable to “endure being at a disadvantage” by Nick (Fitzgerald 58). She reflects masculinity as depicted in the character of Tom Buchanan who also displays athleticism, financial motivation, and deception (Moyer 5). However, Jordan seems ambivalent about this traditionally unfamiliar female role when she accuses Daisy of being a “low, vulgar” girl for displaying open sensuality with Gatsby (Fitzgerald 116). Jordan, paradoxically, seems to yearn for male protection when she “leans back jauntily” in Nick’s arm. (Fitzgerald 79) The color white, used as a symbol throughout the novel to
The Female Characters in The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a historical novel. The author employs a narrator, Nick Carraway, to allow insight into the upper class society of New York during the early 1920s. Socially, women enjoyed enormous changes during this era as hem lines shortened replacing long skirts and corsets, hair was bobbed to resemble a more masculine style, and women attained the right to vote. Women, predictably, responded in a variety of ways to these changes: some continued to exist only in their relation to men, and some used the changes to their own advantage. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses his three main female characters, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle, to reflect women …show more content…
She thoroughly displays uniformity throughout the story and remains drearily soporific. Her main function is to support the character of Daisy. This becomes evident in the introductory scene of these two female characters as Nick describes them displayed together on a “completely stationary” sofa with Jordan being “completely motionless” (Fitzgerald 8). The first word she proclaims is followed by a yawn as if to mitigate any sense of reversal of her assigned role. Jordan and Daisy, both, are bored and removed from any resemblance of reality while cocooned in their upper class ‘egg’. Jordan, nonetheless, is a successful professional golfer: a sport traditionally dominated by males. Even her name, Jordan, cannot be clearly identified as female. Her physical characteristics of “a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet” are clearly male (Fitzgerald 11). In order to be the financially independent, morally liberated sports woman she is, Jordan emulates the behaviors she observes from the men who encompass her world: lying, cheating, and engaging in corruption when necessary to ensure material and worldly success at all costs. She wittingly cheats in a golf tournament and is described as being “incurably dishonest” and unable to “endure being at a disadvantage” by Nick (Fitzgerald 58). She reflects masculinity as depicted in the character of Tom Buchanan who also displays athleticism, financial motivation, and deception (Moyer 5). However, Jordan seems ambivalent about this traditionally unfamiliar female role when she accuses Daisy of being a “low, vulgar” girl for displaying open sensuality with Gatsby (Fitzgerald 116). Jordan, paradoxically, seems to yearn for male protection when she “leans back jauntily” in Nick’s arm. (Fitzgerald 79) The color white, used as a symbol throughout the novel to