Feminist Look At The Great Gatsby

While examining the novel, I must consider patriarchal ideology in terms of the changing role of American women during the 1920s because most feminists have come to realize the importance of seeing how specific historical circumstances bring particular ideologies.

After discovering that his wife has a lover Tom Buchanan says "Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white". Tom’s assumptions are that the moral structure of society rests on the stability of the patriarchal family and that the stability of the patriarchal family rests on the conformity of women's Feminist criticism to patriarchal gender roles. However, the novel ridicules Tom's ideas via Nick's narration: "Flushed with his impassioned gibberish."

The novel abounds in minor female characters whose dress and activities identify them as incarnations of the New Woman, and they are portrayed as clones of a single, negative character type; shallow, exhibitionist, revolting, and deceitful. For example, at Gatsby’s parties, we see insincere, enthusiastic meetings Feminist criticism between women who never knew each other’s names, as well as numerous narcissistic attention seekers in various stages of drunken hysteria. Moreover, Nick makes a statement about women who came to Gatsby's parties with fake names, etc. by saying "We should not be too surprised, then, to hear Nick say, “Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply", implying that women don’t seem able to help it; perhaps it’s just a natural failing, like so many other feminine weaknesses.

The novel’s discomfort with the New Woman becomes evident, in a more complex fashion, in the characterizations of the main characters Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson. Despite their striking differences in class, occupation, marital status, personal appearance, and personality traits, these three characters are all versions of the New Woman. Their hair and clothing are very modern, and they don’t feel, as their mothers and grandmothers surely did, that they must behave modestly in public by avoiding hard liquor, cigarettes, and immodest dancing. In addition, all three women display a good deal of modern independence. Only two are married, and they don’t keep their marital unhap‑ piness a secret, although secrecy about such matters is one of the cardinal rules of patriarchal marriage.

Finally, all three women violate patriarchal sexual taboos: Jordan engages in premarital sex, and Daisy and Myrtle are engaged in extramarital affairs. That the novel finds this freedom unacceptable in women is evident in its unsympathetic portrayals of those who exercise it. Daisy Buchanan is characterized as a spoiled brat and a remorseless killer. She is so used to being the center of attention that she can think of no one’s needs but her own.

Jordan Baker is characterized as a liar and a cheat. Nick catches her lying about having left a borrowed car out in the rain with its top down, and apparently, she was caught cheating during a golf tournament, though she managed to get away with it under circumstances that imply the use of bribery or coercion.

Surely, the most unsympathetic characterization of the three is that of Myrtle Wilson. She’s loud, obnoxious, and phony, as we see in her violently affected behavior at the party in the small flat Tom keeps for their rendezvous. She cheats on George, who is devoted to her so she doesn’t even have the excuse Daisy has of an unfaithful husband and she bullies and humiliates him as well. She has neither the youth nor the beauty of Daisy and Jordan.