Myrtle's Portrayal Of Women In The Great Gatsby

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The women in the novel are too shallow for our sympathy or admiration A character that can be described as being wholly shallow is Myrtle. We learn that she ‘lay down and cried’ after finding out her husband Wilson ‘borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in.’ Myrtle is distraught after finding out her husband is not rich nor a ‘gentleman’, as he made little effort on their wedding day. In the broader scheme of things, this should not matter; however Myrtle seems fixated on this and concludes from this one situation that their marriage is doomed. The suit can be seen as being representative of Wilson – he will always be reliant on others to survive in his sorrowful world, as seen when Wilson is close to begging Tom not to sell the car elsewhere. Myrtle despises…show more content…
She sits with Daisy aimlessly gossiping and laughing and poises herself ‘as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.’ This creates quite a snobbish image of Jordan. Proof of this is given later when we find out she was involved in a scandal concerning her cheating in golf tournament. Jordan is so shallow she cheats her way to the top. She ‘instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men’ in the fear they may reveal her secrets and tarnish her image. The reader finds it hard to sympathise with a woman like Jordan as she is always described as being ‘hard’ or ‘jaunty’, which also reflect her ‘dishonest’ personality. Contrastingly, Jordan can be seen as the ‘new woman’ of the novel, a character the readers should admire. She represents a focused and cunning woman who, like men in the novel, does what she must to achieve her success. Like previous characters, it is hinted that Jordan also uses her femininity, ‘to satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body’, showing the reader that maybe the biggest weapon women had was their

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