The portrayal of women in The Great Gatsby Essays -- English Literatur

The portrayal of women in The Great Gatsby Since the concept of society exists, women have been classified differently from men. Women have always been the "weak sex", which is meant to obey and please men. This has changed and now there is a relative equality between sexes, but surprisingly, the image of women only started to change significantly in the last 100 years, and even in this century discrimination still takes place. In the 1930's society had still a very primitive view of women, even if they had acquired rights such as the right to vote, this had just occurred in the 1920's. Most men still had the thought that women should only stay home and raise children, that they should not be involved in politics, and their ideas were not valuable. From the start of the book we can see that women in the book are portrayed, as naà ¯ve, brainless and that they can be easily manipulated. We first notice this with Daisy's description, and then Myrtle's, Jordan is kind of an exception, but she doesn't have much of a significant part in the story. Daisy is described as sensitive, materialistic, and she believes in everything she hears. I think that the fact that she is blonde is because of the popular saying that "blondes are stupid". Throughout the book we can see that as a matter of fact daisy is the image of what is supposed to be a high class women, she is not too bright, aware of her prettiness, and style "sophisticated god I'm sophisticated" daisy, pg 18 and thinks that the world revolves around her, and she hardly does anything by herself, Daisy isn't totally in control of her own life, as she hasn't got the courage to change What she is unhappy with, in fear of the public opinion, With Daisy the autho... ... or emotions. By giving such superficial information about them the reader gets the idea that they are foolish, and not too bright. Neither of them has a really important role in the plot, or is fundamental in crucial times of the story. They don't participate with ideas. Daisy is Gatsby's dream, for all he lives and she is portrayed as an "unreachable jewel" almost as an object, something that does not exist, and will never be reached. Definitely women have a secondary role in the book, the narrator is a man, important phrases are said by a man, and It's men who are described deeply, the whole story spins around them. In the 1930's it was a common idea to think women had a secondary l role in life, maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald had this ideology, or he was trying to reflect society as accurately as possible, and for this reason he put women on a second plan.