Fitzgerald and Women

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     As we further looked into the different lenses The Great Gatsby can be viewed through, the feminism lens stood out the most to me, and after I heard another person's opinions on Daisy's character, I started to wonder why F. Scott Fitzgerald went to such lengths to villainize his female characters, especially in The Great Gatsby and The Diamond as Big as The Ritz.

    Daisy and Kismine, two characters that held so much potential, were wasted because of Fitzgerald's discontent towards the "New Women" of the 1920s. Daisy had the potential to be an idol towards younger women, she could have guided them out of their confined lives and shown them that women have choices too. The same goes for Kismine, who is portrayed as the girl who has no value for human life, the young and rich girl whose tired of being rich. The failure to bring depth to these characters shows us Fitzgerald's views on women, and how he could possibly see them as prizes to be won by men. "[John] was critical about women. A single defect—a thick ankle, a hoarse voice, a glass eye—was enough to make him utterly indifferent. And here for the first time in his life he was beside a girl who seemed to him the incarnation of physical perfection"(Fitzgerald). Why were these men allowed to judge women all they wanted, but the female characters barely had any thoughts about the men other than their wealth?

    Throughout the story, the female characters who were consistently characterized to be despised are then "punished" in the end. Daisy is stuck in a marriage without love, Kismine and Jasmine lost their wealth, Myrtle dies, and Jordan is rejected. Why would Fitzgerald give all these women such horrible characters? Just to punish them in the end? 

    We still see women being portrayed as the shallow and downright "bad" character in media and pop culture today. Ads like the Mercedes car ad, where a woman is trying to order a burger in the library  claims that "Beauty is nothing without brains", or the cliched vamp character continues to drag women down in society's eyes. Should this be our norm?

 


    

Comments

  1. EvaNovember 21, 2021 at 7:41 PM

    The way you looked at the potential of Fitzgerald's female characters is wonderful. After reading this, I really started thinking more in-depth about how much injustice Fitzgerald performed towards his female characters and, through that, his female audience as well. Great thinking!!!

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