Gender Roles in Great Gatsby

1008 Words5 Pages
Women Influences in The Great Gatsby The 1920’s was a time period in which women began to gain their independence and detach themselves from the stereotypical ideologies that women are supposed to be proper and support the man whole-heartedly. During this time, known as the “Roaring Twenties” or the “Jazz Age”, it was acceptable for women to drink heavily and behave in an uncensored manner. The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald greatly demonstrated the difference between women before and after the “Roaring Twenties”/ “Jazz Age”. The three main female characters Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson all unique characters that have completely different roles in the novel and have a huge impact on how the story comes to its conclusion. Arguably the most influential woman in the novel is Daisy Buchanan as she is Tom’s wife and basically who the story is built around . Throughout the novel Daisy is perceived as the naïve and shallow persona of the three women, still living life as though the man holds the dominant role, and women were marked as unimportant. Through the series of events that occur, the reader is very much aware that Daisy knows exactly about all of Tom’s infidelities, but yet still tries to ignore them and pretend to herself that they do not exist. She does this pretending because she knows that Tom has money and power and she enjoys the benefits she receives from living in the wealthy lifestyle that he brings. From being married to Tom they had produced a daughter, Pammy, who is very rarely mentioned in the novel and as a result, one of Daisy’s only mentions of her daughter is to state that she is happy to have had a daughter for she can grow up to become a “beautiful little fool”.[Pg.92] With the mention of this statement it is obvious that Daisy feels as though the only hope for a woman to survive in this world is to be
Open Document