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Amber Drew
Turner
American Literature
11 March 2016
Women in The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was both written and takes
place in the 1920s. The novel mainly focuses on the male characters, such
as Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, and Tom Buchanan. However, there are
several female characters who may not be in the constant limelight, but are
still very much explored. Each of the three main women, Daisy Buchanan,
Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker have their differences, but also their
similarities, one of which being how they are presented in the novel.
Fitzgerald depicts women in a negative fashion, with mainly destructive
characteristics and damaging to those around them.
Daisy Buchanan is the wife of Tom Buchanan and ex lover of Jay Gatsby
and is considered to be a woman of high status vain and manipulative. This
is shown as she says All right...Im glad its a girl. And I hope shell be a foolthats the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool (16).
From this, we can infer that she acts like a fool as well, whether or not she
truly believes that she is a fool or not is not answered, but Daisy obviously
wants people to perceive her that way, which shows a bit of her manipulative
personality. Daisys vanity is shown as she says just after the previous

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statement, Ive been everywhere and seen everything and done
everything...Sophisticated - God, Im sophisticated (16). Daisy is speaking
so highly of herself, and in another way, almost talking down on other who
have not seen all of what she has seen, almost implying that she is above
others for just that mere reason. Fitzgerald is painting Daisy, a woman, in a
very negative light, giving her almost only traits that are unfavorable which
eventually leads to multiple characters deaths.
Contrary to Daisy, Myrtle Wilson lives in a much more dingy town and
is considered to be more loud and two-faced. Myrtles loudness is illustrated
when she begins to shout at Tom Buchanan Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!...Ill say it
whenever I want to! Daisy! (30). This leads to Tom breaking Myrtles nose
and it highlights not only the fact that she seems to be loud and not know
when it is a bad time to mention something, but also seems to convey
Fitzgeralds feelings about women speaking out of place. Myrtle shows how
she is lying and two-faced when the narrator says that With the influence of
the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality
that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive
hauteur (25). At this point in the novel, Nick, Tom, and Myrtle are all
together in an apartment and Myrtle has changed her clothing yet again.
This evidence shows how she had completely changed from when she was in
front with her husband, becoming nearly an entirely different person that

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shocks Nick. The author is presenting Myrtle as a loud and lying woman,
which helps lead her to her own death.
Jordan Baker, like Daisy, is considered to be of high class, however, she
is portrayed as a liar and a cheat in golf and in her life. Jordan is shown to be
a cheat as Nick recalls ...the story about her that had eluded me that night
at Daisys. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly
reached the newspapers a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a
bad lie in the semi-final round (46). This quote points out Jordans
dishonesty and her knack for cheating in golf, though this seems to fade into
her life as well. Jordan is seen to be nearly cheating in life as Nick says
Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men...because she felt
safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought
impossible. She was incurably dishonest (46). Fitzgerald implies that she
avoids any confrontation where she may be on a lower plane that the people
around her, causing her to live a lie around those who she feels better than.
Fitzgerald continues to show women with negative traits as their most
prominent characteristics.
As one can see, the three main women in the novel, Daisy, Myrtle, and
Jordan, all have differing personalities and even classes, but they all have in
common that they are all shown in a negative light with bad characteristics.
Through this, Fitzgerald suggests that women cause problems and are
overall of poor morals and are even harmful. For the time the novel was

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written it would make sense that this was the way F. Scott Fitzgerald felt, and
therefor how he portrayed women in The Great Gatsby.