Roles Of Women In The Great Gatsby

The roaring twenties were a time where the role of women in society was rapidly changing and becoming more modern. In his novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes three different kinds of women found in this society. Joanna Luft, Susan Hegeman, and Ruth Prygozi have written about the kinds of women found in the 1920’s. Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle’s roles as the trophy wife, flapper girl, and gold-digger, showcase the changing female role in society in the 1920’s. Daisy Buchanan is a trophy wife. Daisy forced herself to marry for wealth and security, rather than wait to marry her true love. “The price she pays is her love for Gatsby more than or instead of Buchanan, her decision to marry is an act of weakness, impatience, and dishonesty. In marrying Buchanan, Daisy sacrifices Gatsby, her true love and, in that sense, her proper husband, to expediency and her own insecurity,” (Luft 87). Because her own intentions for the marriage were materialistic, selfish, and not out of love, Daisy can only expect to find herself an object in a loveless marriage with Tom. Daisy understands her situation as a trophy wife, and she hopes that her young daughter will learn to live in this way so …show more content…
Daisy Buchanan is a trophy wife who has little independence in her life. Jordan Baker is a flapper girl, who embodies both masculine and feminine traits to express herself. Myrtle is a seen as an object, she wants to believe that she means more to Tom. Although women were given the right to vote, a statistical study of the 1920 election found that not all women exercised their new right. Women were given professional opportunities which led to advancements in social personal trends like smoking, drinking, birth control, premarital sex, and contempt for older values. With all of the social advancements since the 1920’s, women have made much progress economically, politically, and