Women And Minorities In The Great Gatsby

Sharon Gless, a famous actress, once said, “Women and minorities have excelled beautifully in comedy, but very few women are the lead in a drama” (Gless). Indeed, before the Women Suffrage and Civil Rights Movement, women and minorities were often not respected and made fun of. Although many minorities were not respected and often viewed as subordinate, they were able to remain hopeful at American Dreams. For a long time, the American Dream was known as the “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" (Adams, 214). And yet, women’s and minorities’ American dreams were often barricaded by racial stereotype most of the time. Due to segregation de jure and de facto, they were not given opportunities to start; therefore, their …show more content…
In the nineteen twenties, most Americans wanted to relax and enjoy life after experiencing the terribleness of war during the World War I, but many women and minorities were not able to due to discrimination against race and class status. However, some women attempted to climb up the status ladder by having an affair with wealthy people. Myrtle Wilson from F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby is one of them. Although it is obvious to readers that Myrtle is unsatisfied because her husband, George Wilson, is poor, Myrtle claims that George tricked her to marry him because he “borrowed somebody’s best suit” to marry her without letting her know (Fitzgerald, 39). Hence, she dreamed for wealth, power, and social status. With his enormous amount of money and respectable reputation, Tom Buchanan seems to be the perfect target. In her secret apartment with Tom,