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Gender Inequality In The Great Gatsby

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2.2.2. Hostility in The Great Gatsby
That the novel shows certain hostility towards women is seen also in other female characters of the novel, namely Jordan Baker and Myrtle Willson. According to Parkinson, every time when the women of The Great Gatsby make an effort to move outside the social conventions of their class and all three suffer for it (92):
Myrtle Wilson is ripped open and destroyed; Jordan Baker seems to have lost not only her integrity but also her femininity and Daisy is tempted three times to break out, but each time is easily dissuaded, and returns to her captive position, retaining it finally through the collusion of Gatsby and Nick, who do not reveal that she was driving the car that night but was unable to control the powerful vehicle (92).
Myrtle Wilson and …show more content…

Therefore, she is punished as a scapegoat of the novel and while Gatsby rises in the eyes of the readers in the end of the novel, Daisy falls. From the feminist point of view, female characters in Fitzgerald fiction are punished because they are stepping outside of their and entering the male sphere. To show their role in the man’s world, they are dehumanised and presented like symbols, which in the end might be interpreted as that they are important as much as men give them importance. The ultimate dehumanization of female characters in Gatsby is seen in their embodiment of the American Dream. Female characters are dehumanized because they are used as of men’s desire, men’s world and men’s Dream. The Great Gatsby, therefore depicts “the new social and sexual freedom” enjoyed by women through the lives of Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker and Myrtle Wilson who are “the focus [of both] romanticism and the moral indignation. They are symbols and are seen as objects which speak to the still unstable role of women in the society” (Fetterley

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