Essay On The Role Of Women In The Great Gatsby

The 1920s were a very important time, an era full of new style, an extreme increase of money, the beginning of new politics, prohibition, mass culture, the jazz age, and so much more that has changed the way we live life today. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”, women are often portrayed as careless and dishonest flapper girls. Not only were the 1920s the beginning of a new political and social change, but it was also the new beginning of the ‘New Woman’. The 'New Woman', was mainly portrayed as a Flapper, a more careless, younger “woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked” and embraced new fashions and new ideas that faced the traditional role of women (A&E Television Networks). Flappers and more traditional women in the 1920s started to increasingly maintain to the new concepts, such as personal choice and
Women started to wear more convenient clothing, so they could enjoy activities and stopped wearing longer skirts and corsets. Although, most of the majority of women kept their role as the traditional housewife, the number of working women in the 1920s increased by 25%. Most of the working women worked as white-collars in a workplace as secretaries, telephone operators, and sales clerks. Fitzgerald portrays the new role of women in “The Great Gatsby” as Flappers with Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. This representation of the role of women in Gatsby is accurately executed because Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker were portrayed as the traditional flapper girl. Although Daisy was a housewife, she still had most of the qualities that qualified to a flapper. In the end, Daisy Buchanan “vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby – nothing”, which shows that Daisy was fairly careless towards Gatsby’s feelings, and wanted to flow with the new role of women