One of the most prominent masterpieces in American literature, without any doubt, is the great novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. This is a novel that combines many elements from the cultural and social reality of the United States in the 1920s. Also, it portrays the clear gender differences between men and women during this time. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the gender roles of women during the 1920’s and how they are depicted in The Great Gatsby, as such, it is based on the female characters in The Great Gatsby. To begin, it’s helpful to examine the life and work of this great writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose life and his relationships with women, are reflected in many aspects of the story.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born into a wealthy family on September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was a furniture manufacturer, and his mother, Mollie McQuillan, was the daughter of a wealthy businessman from the same city in Minnesota. However, the wealthy status of the family changed in 1898, and the main source of support for the family became the money that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mother had inherited from her father (Adam 10).
In 1911, F. Scott Fitzgerald was sent to the Newman School, which was a Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey. There, he was introduced to well-known literary figures. From this early part of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrated a love and a passion for literature and writing. In fact, throughout high school, he worked for the college humor magazine, “The Princeton Tiger.’’ At other times in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s academic life, he got poor grades, and illness forced him to leave school. As a result, he never graduated from college (Adam 10).
In 1917, he enlisted in the army and fought in World War I as a second lieutenant. Later, in his personal life, he met and fell in love with Ginerva King, a wealthy