This document discusses the roles and significance of the female characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. It analyzes the portrayals of the emancipated women at Gatsby's parties, the stable wives of East Egg, Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker, and Daisy Buchanan. Key points made include that the female characters represent emancipated women, women in transition, and repressed women seeking freedom, and examining them through a feminist perspective reveals their importance to understanding the novel.

1. Fitzgerald’s Females
Whilst working on the novel,
Fitzgerald wrote:
“…the book contains no important
woman character”

2. So why are the women important to
our reading of the novel?
 If we think about the novel from a feminist
perspective, the female characters become
crucially important..
 They could represent emancipated women,
women in transition, and women who are
desperate to be free yet are still essentially
repressed.
 Today we’ll consider the women characters and
their roles/readings in groups..

3. Emancipated Women
 New social and sexual freedom
 Opposition to Tom Buchanan’s ‘old paternalism’ which
subordinates women and objectifies them (although he is
happy to have a sensual affair with Myrtle, ironically) – as
readers we condemn his double standards, and Nick, as
narrator, requires us to do this.
 Nick’s ideals of womanhood differ on in degrees to Tom; he
rejects Jordan on the grounds of her moral inadequacy and
indifference, but the concealed source of antagonism seems
to be her masculine traits: she is androgynous, more of a boy
than a ‘lady’.
 The covert theme of the status and identity of women runs
throughout the novel yet is never openly raised by Nick as the
narrator or Fitzgerald as an author.

4. Nick’s narration of women
 Nick makes a strange comment about the ethical
standards of women; referring to Jordan Baker,
he makes the reader an accessory to his way of
thinking by the use of the pronoun ‘you’:
 ‘Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame
deeply’
Nevertheless he does judge Jordan and throw her over.
Daisy, however, is permitted to survive within this ideology
– though at the price of her freedom.
Feminist critics have argued that the novel exhibits hostility
towards women, ‘not dead Gatsby but surviving Daisy is
the object of the novel’s hostility and its scapegoat’
(Fetterley, 1977)

5. The bigger picture…
 Whilst the sensous and sensual allure of women
is a major feature of the novel, there is hostility
toward the ‘new woman’ making her appearance
in post-war society.
 Daisy’s ethereal beauty requires the connivance
and protection of men to maintain it (and
metaphorically, the equilibrium of pre-war gender
roles), whatever the cost to her moral identity, and
Tom, Nick and Gatsby are all accomplices to this.

6. The parties are full of emancipated
women…
 They are drunk and drift through the party, ‘gaudy
with primary colours, and their hair bobbed in
strange new ways’.. ‘girls were putting their heads
on men’s shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way
[…] swooning playfully backwards into men’s
arms, even into groups, knowing that someone
would arrest their falls’.
 They are emancipated yet they depend on the men – they
are enjoying the new freedom, which can break down
class barriers on such occasions they should choose, yet
they too are made to constitute a harem, following the
dominant male.

7. Wives – the stable ones?
 Belonging to the stable East Egg world, the wives
and their marriages are put under strain by
Gatsby’s West Egg parties:
 At the first party there are the jealous wife who hisses ‘like
an angry diamond’ at her husband, and the two indignant
wives of ‘deplorably sober men’ who finally have to be
carried ‘kicking into the night’.
These vignettes are presented with clear irony – light at first
but later with a more sombre tone:
“’he’s a bootlegger’ said the young ladies, moving
somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. ‘One
time he killed a man […] . Reach me a rose, honey, and
pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass.’

8. The men constitute the world, the
women merely its mistress…
 The rumours about Gatsby are clearly ludicrous, but it is all a
matter of indifference to them whether this is so or not. The
reference to a rose is echoed in Nick’s reconstruction of
Gatsby’s last moments, when he ‘found what a grotesque
thing a rose is’. The girls’ connection with the fragile offerings
of Gatsby’s garden, a rose or crystal glass, intensifies their
callousness. Their new freedom merely makes blatant their
complete lack of concern.
 Catherine, Myrtle’s sister, seems to be one of these. In her
brief appearances she is implicated in lies and gossip, and so
truth seems of little concern to her.

9. Myrtle Wilson
Fitzgerald infers that women like her need to be tamed:
 p.130 – [Michaelis] was almost sure that Wilson had no
friend: there was not enough of him for his wife.
 p.112-3 – ‘…he heard Mrs Wilson’s voice, loud and
scolding, down-stairs in the garage. “Beat me!” he heard
her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little
coward!”
 ‘The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the
corners, as though she had choked a little’ – irony – she
had a big mouth and now it’s ripped open – like she
deserved it.

10. Jordan Baker
Dishonesty in women, ‘hiding’ from social convention
 “I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there
isn’t any privacy.” p.43
 Nick on Jordan: “I wasn’t actually in love […] the bored
haughty face that she turned to the world concealed
something…” p.50
 “She was incurably dishonest” p.50
Her arms and limbs are described as ‘golden’ early on, then
‘brown’ later – perhaps duller and less attractive as Nick
decides not to pursue her.
 “Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a
moment in mine..” – trying to be feminine but covering up her
strange masculinity – full of deception, ‘covering up’

11. Daisy Fay/Buchanan
 p.123 – ‘…Daisy was young and her artificial world was
redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery…’
 ‘…she wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the
decision must be made by some force […] that force took
shape in the Spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan.’
Falseness of her relationship with Gatsby:
 ‘…Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note: “I certainly am
awfully glad to see you again”p.72
 ‘At [Gatsby’s] lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower
and the incarnation was complete’. p.92