Women In The Great Gatsby Essay Example

F.Scott Fitzgerald’s Novel, The Great Gatsby, is an exceptional novel that exhibits how women were seen in the 1920s. Fitzgerald demonstrates how women were seen in the 1920s by having multiple women being major characters in the story. Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan baker are the three important women that Fitzgerald uses in the novel.

Daisy Buchanan, also known as Tom’s wife, is a captivating character that has many traits of her own. She may look like an elegant girl but deep down she is very spoiled, materialistic, needy, and prideful. Daisy is very spoiled because she gets what she wants and complains when she does not. Let’s just say she is a brat. The readers are very aware of how she is seen as being a brat because on her wedding day she threw away a necklace that is worth SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS today. “… Pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. … in a waste- basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the strings of pearls.”(Fitzgerald 82). Even though she could be considered one of the biggest brats in the novel she is also very materialistic and needy. When she was over at Gatsby’s house and he threw shirts on his bed she cried, “ ‘They’re such beautiful shirts’,she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds.’It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such-beautiful shirts before’” (Fitzgerald 99). If  Daisy’s past is unknown then the readers would not comprehend why that is an example of her being materialistic and needy. In the past Daisy told Gatsby that poor boys don’t marry rich girls, so when he threw his fancy shirts on the bed she started to expand her “love” to Gatsby. She realized that he was rich, so that's why crying over the shirts shows that she is materialistic and needy. That also shows that she is prideful because she couldn’t marry Gatsby because he wasn’t rich. That's why she married Tom because he was rich not because she loved him. 

Myrtle Wilson, also known as Tom’s mistress, is a character with very ridiculous character traits. Just like Daisy, she loved Tom’s big wad of cash. Even though she was married to George Wilson, a poor garage owner, she loved Tom and shunned Daisy. During the Novel the readers enroll that Myrtle is very bossy, poor, bold, uneducated, and one of the most exceptional gold diggers in the whole novel. She and her husband are poor and live in the Valley of Ashes. She is considered bossy because she tells people what to do, just like when she told her husband, “ ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down'” (Fitzgerald 29). Myrtle told George, her husband, to get chairs even though she could have got chairs herself. Situations like that lead the readers to believe that she is bossy. Myrtle is absolutely bold when she leaves her house to go see Tom. She really revealed her boldness in the novel when she said, “‘ Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! … I’ll say it whenever I want to!’ ” (Fitzgerald 41). She aired boldness talking about Daisy, around Tom because he could leave her at any moment and she knows that Daisy is his wife so he could hurt her if she said something that wasn’t nice about Daisy.

Jordan Baker, is considered to be the magazine hottie in the novel. She is a very vicious popular girl that gets her way every time. She is an excellent athlete but she is also dishonest, nosey, self-centered, and the biggest stuck up woman in the whole novel. We know that she is a sasifying athlete because the narrator said that “… she was a golf champion and everyone knew her name” (Fitzgerald 63). The next sentence tells us when she cheated in golf which makes her dishonest. “… She had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round” (Fitzgerald 63). Jordan is also very nosy because she is always in everyone’s business.

In conclusion, Scott F. Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, tells a story of the American Dream and how even some dreams are unreachable. Also it has many female characters that sell how women were seen negatively in the 1920s. Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan baker are the three important women in the novel that Fitzgerald uses to show that women were seen negatively in the 1920s.