Misogyny In The Great Gatsby

At first, the female characters in Fitzgeralds "The Great Gatsby" seemed to be rather dissimilar. Daisy was the angelic and innocent beauty, Jordan was the androgynous golfer, and Myrtle was the sensuous and vivacious seductress. One was from the holy heavens above, another from the sinful depths below, and the last from the neutral in between. Seems like a good balance, however, as the story progresses, we see more and more that the angle is a fallen one, and that the human is a demon in disguise. All three women in this novel use men in some form to get what they want. Looking at the depictions of the female sex in this novel, I believe that, yes, Fitzgerald was a misogynist.

Daisy is a careless siren who uses everything given to her by birth to win what she loves, namely attention,
As a direct result of her affair with Tom, she gets herself killed, which leads Wilson into shooting Gatsby, which obviously puts an end to the Gatsby and Daisy affair, the result of which leaves Nick disgusted and breaks it off with Jordan. Besides ruining the lives of everyone around her, Myrtle also meets the most tragic end of all the females in the novel. She is killed on impact in a gruesome car accident, while both Daisy and Jordan are at least left with the prospect of a fresh start. I believe this is because Myrtle is the most feminine of the three. Nick describes her as sensuous, and despite possessing no facet or gleam of beauty, there was an immediate perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering (28). If Fitzgerald was not a misogynist, then how could someone whose vice is simply being too much of a woman deserve an end as graphic as a left breast hanging loose like a flap (131)?This novel is certainly not one of happily ever afters, and I believe the fact that women are portrayed as the causes of all the tragedies within this novel is reason enough to proclaim Fitzgerald as a