Assess Fitzgerald’s Negative Portrayal of the Female Characters in the Great Gatsby
Assess Fitzgerald’s negative portrayal of the female characters in The Great Gatsby.
To what extent do you find similarities in Wharton’s portrayal of women in The Age of Innocence?
The Great Gatsby contains three main female characters: Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker. They are interpretations of Fitzgerald’s presentation of women; two are examples of The Flapper, who Rena Sanderson in The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald describes as the image of a spoiled, self-centred, and fun-loving young woman. She also explains that The Flapper embodied “individualism, rebellion, and liberation”, and Daisy and Jordan display these three traits. They are also examples of the post-war “New Woman”. The third female protagonist, Myrtle Wilson, is in contrast to the two other women. She is older, sensual and lower class. It could be argued that there are several ways in which the female characters are portrayed in a negative and disapproving way.
Each of the three female characters is observed and judged differently in The Great Gatsby and each has a different role; Daisy Buchanan is a wife, Myrtle Wilson is a mistress, and Jordan Baker is an independent woman. They all show individualism, rebellion, and liberation, for example Daisy’s affair with Gatsby is her way of rebelling against her husband and the trapped feeling of her life. Jordan shows individualism as she is single, and is a sportswoman in a male dominated occupation. They are varieties of the post war “New Woman”, who wore shorter hemlines and had bobbed hair. Myrtle Wilson’s affair with Tom Buchanan is her liberation from her uneventful and lower class lifestyle.
Not only the main female characters are portrayed with criticism in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald also indicates disapproval of the superficial women at Gatsby’s parties. For example he describes “enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names” and “a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest
To what extent do you find similarities in Wharton’s portrayal of women in The Age of Innocence?
The Great Gatsby contains three main female characters: Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker. They are interpretations of Fitzgerald’s presentation of women; two are examples of The Flapper, who Rena Sanderson in The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald describes as the image of a spoiled, self-centred, and fun-loving young woman. She also explains that The Flapper embodied “individualism, rebellion, and liberation”, and Daisy and Jordan display these three traits. They are also examples of the post-war “New Woman”. The third female protagonist, Myrtle Wilson, is in contrast to the two other women. She is older, sensual and lower class. It could be argued that there are several ways in which the female characters are portrayed in a negative and disapproving way.
Each of the three female characters is observed and judged differently in The Great Gatsby and each has a different role; Daisy Buchanan is a wife, Myrtle Wilson is a mistress, and Jordan Baker is an independent woman. They all show individualism, rebellion, and liberation, for example Daisy’s affair with Gatsby is her way of rebelling against her husband and the trapped feeling of her life. Jordan shows individualism as she is single, and is a sportswoman in a male dominated occupation. They are varieties of the post war “New Woman”, who wore shorter hemlines and had bobbed hair. Myrtle Wilson’s affair with Tom Buchanan is her liberation from her uneventful and lower class lifestyle.
Not only the main female characters are portrayed with criticism in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald also indicates disapproval of the superficial women at Gatsby’s parties. For example he describes “enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names” and “a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest