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Femininity In The Great Gatsby

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The roaring twenties, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, represent the past historical modernization of a male subjugated social system. The Great Gatsby is a love story, mystery, and a social commentary towards the American Life. This story explores the journey for happiness and wealth through the American Dream, and shows how idealism, dysfunctional relationship, and corrupt occur during the Jazz Age. The Great Gatsby, however, is not the story about a woman’s journey for happiness and improperly shows the representation of females during 1920. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby shows the historically male dominated social system through women being portrayed as shallow beings, which are dominated by men, and seen as erroneous …show more content…
At one point in the tale, Tom's mistress riles him up by bellowing, "Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! Shouted Mrs. Wilson. 'I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai-' making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand." (Fitzgerald 37) This quote explains the acceptance of domestic abuse; it also causes the woman to appear just as wrong as the man. Even though we never see Tom become violent towards his wife, there are hints of his unbridled physicality when Daisy reveals the bruise upon her finger, although Daisy exclaimed it was an accident, caused by Tom. Furthermore even if he isn’t physically abusive to his wife, he is still psychologically abusing his spouse with his countless affairs with a woman named Mrs. Wilson; which inflicts pain to Daisy. However Fitzgerald specifically chooses Myrtle to irritate Tom who injures her in the process, where it shows how women are senseless to men’s emotions. Mrs. Wilson’s affair with Tom had continued throughout a long period of time, and whether or not her husband George Wilson knew of the affair in the beginning is unknown. Even though she married someone of lower social status, she still talks about the “low orders” as she is isn’t one of them: "I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders… (Fitzgerald, 69) It was because of the affair with Tom, she began to develop feeling for Tom in the process and simultaneously lie to her husband George Wilson, that she lost feelings for him. However even though she began living a more accommodated life, she also began emotionally abusing her husband explaining him how “she choose wrong” or “you’re not the one”. What this shows is how Fitzgerald wanted to represent women during the Jazz Age as dishonest and

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