Fitzgerald's Portrayal Of Women In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, is a hesitant reconstruction of a male dominated social system. This book explores the quest for happiness and wealth through the American dream and depicts dysfunctional relationships, idealism, materialism, and corrupt values during the Jazz Age. The Great Gatsby is a rags to riches story of a man in pursuit of his dreams. The Great Gatsby is not the story of a woman’s pursuit of happiness and does not offer a good female representation of a 1920’s woman. In Fitzgerald’s piece, women are reduced to mere objects through characters like Tom and Gatsby who glorify and manipulate Daisy. This misconceived perception of women is created through Fitzgerald’s interpretation of a 1920 woman’s role in society
The narrator of this text, Nick, reveres the methods Gatsby uses and assists him in pursuing his hopeless quest for Daisy’s requited love. Although Nick is judgmental of Tom, Nick is also a guilty bystander who witnesses most of Tom’s crimes against women. Nick is just as guilty as Tom in his mistreatment of women for supporting his patriarchal values by not standing up for the women being mistreated. All of the characters in this text are complex characters but the only voice we ever hear is Nick, a male narrator, who is drawn to feminine men. Women cannot even capture Nick’s attention and he is the source of all of our information. The narrator is already anti-feminist in his attraction to male characters with a few feminine qualities, how are the women in this text supposed to be justly represented if they are being scrutinized by a narrator who clearly sees no value in them? “It is Jordan’s hard, jaunty body that initially attracts Nick, along with her masculine personal qualities-her self-assurance and careful control over her emotions” (Kerr, 418). The only details we get about Jordan from Nick are the ones showing she is similar to men. Most of the women in this text, especially Daisy, have an enchanting power over men but they are being held captive by men like Daisy’s husband, dominant masculine figures, who once again offer them no justice. Kerr writes, “Fitzgerald was fond
Gatsby spends his entire life seeking acceptance of his relationship with Daisy but never validates her as a person. Daisy is merely an object to him, a goal. Gatsby desperately reaches to obtain Daisy, not just her affection but her as a possession. The revealed consequences of trying to break free from male dominated morals reaffirm that women who seek to shatter traditional social structures tread on dangerous waters. Kerr writes that a fear many writers possessed when Fitzgerald’s piece came out was that, “popular culture [was] dominated by women [and] fast becoming the major form of artistic expression in the modern world, appropriating the audience and diminishing the market for serious art. Fitzgerald himself attributed the disappointing sales figures for Gatsby… [Reviewers said that] the book contained ‘no important woman character and women control the fiction market at present” (Kerr,