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Zelda Fitzgerald's Treatment Of Women In The Great Gatsby

656 Words3 Pages

Fitzgerald used positive characteristics from his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, and negative characteristics from his first love, Ginevra King, as stimuli for the character of Daisy. His blend of the two women lead Daisy to be portrayed as a man’s ultimate downfall, much like Fitzgerald felt these two women were for him. Fitzgerald describes King as “the first girl I ever loved and I have faithfully avoided seeing her up to this moment to keep this illusion perfect” (Mangum). Fitzgerald’s wish to keep his fantasy in perfect condition correlates to Gatsby’s wish to immortalize Daisy in the goddess-like position his mind created for her. Fitzgerald shows similar emotions through the character of Gatsby when he says, “There must have been moments …show more content…

Fitzgerald, likewise, had problems with distinguishing between the two, leading him to falsely equate wealth to love in both his affair with Ginevra King and his marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald. Before Zelda and F. Scott were married, Zelda broke off the engagement due to Fitzgerald’s financial instability. Fitzgerald successfully won her back with the success of his first novel, This Side Of Paradise (Banach). In doing so, Fitzgerald shows that he, too, is wealth-obsessed, as he associates his wife’s love and his eternal happiness with his financial success. In The Great Gatsby, prosperity is frequently linked with happiness. As Banach explains, “Fitzgerald’s own lifelong pursuit of wealth and fame suggests that he found [it] persuasive” (19). Since Fitzgerald was so interested in this idea, he used it as the main goal for his female characters. Materialism, class movement, and the necessity of economic prosperity were all deemed imperative personality traits in Fitzgerald’s novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s real life connections to his text display his opinions on a woman’s behavior altered by the corrupt society she lived in, whether it be by an elite carelessness, class refusal, or blatant materialism. The Great Gatsby showcases women as greedy, selfish, and unhappy, a reflection of the women in Fitzgerald’s life. Fitzgerald’s courage

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The Moral Decay of the Materialistic Although F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby debuted in 1925– before the Great Depression– it serves as a prophetic exemplification of the the material excess of the 1920s that drowned out signs of the coming Great Depression. The book’s plot follows the bootlegger Jay Gatsby as he pursues his old love Daisy Buchanan through flaunting his new extravagant lifestyle, mainly by throwing ostentatious parties. Yet, in the end, Daisy chooses her unfaithful husband Tom over Gatsby. Through Fitzgerald’s use of wealthy, materialistic characters, he comments on the effect of the material excess of the roaring twenties: moral corruption.

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby,” Daisy Buchanan struggles to free herself from the power of both Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, whom both use their wealth and high standings as a way to dictate power over and impress others. Fitzgerald purposely develops Daisy as selfish and “money hungry” character when she chooses Tom, a rich man, over Gatsby, a poor man (who she was in love with), which establishes her desire for power that she never achieves.

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Have you ever wondered what the stereotypes of women were in the 1920’s? Well, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, there are three different types of stereotypes for women. In this book, a man named Nick Carraway moves near a billionaire who goes by the name Gatsby. Gatsby hosts many parties which include many different types of people, such as gold diggers, golden girls, and the new women. Throughout this book, Nick gets to meet all three types of these girls, and gets to spend time with them.

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It has long been said that money can’t buy happiness, but still people continue to use it’s acquisition to try to make themselves happy. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the title character struggles with this realization. The book is set in New York during the ‘Roaring 20’s’, a time famous for its parties and lavishness. The book examines the attitudes toward money within the upper particularly through the lense of the new-money title character, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby dedicated his life to the acquisition of money with the goal of eventually acquiring the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan.

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Scott Fitzgerald’s depiction of women in The Great Gatsby readers see women are prepared to emerge into the modern way of life, but society is not ready for the new nontraditional image of

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Although this figure, Gatsby, experiences an intensely intimate relationship with Daisy, his emotions reside on the side of extreme obsession rather than genuine affection. Desire plays a pivotal role in the development of the characters in the novel, showing Fitzgerald’s seminal message

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‘Do you know?’ ‘He’s just a man named Gatsby’” (Fitzgerald 47-48). When he and Daisy finally reunite and rekindle their affair, she once again chooses Tom and abandons Gatsby, and he is once again just a single man, living alone with his thoughts, with no one to share his life with besides himself: “’Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,’ she admitted in a pitiful voice, ‘It wouldn’t be true’” (Fitzgerald 133).

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In today’s duplicitous society, men often pursue the “perfect woman”. This woman is construed to be; fit, provocative and ravishing. However, in greatly distinguished American novel, The Great Gatsby, the men have strayed from stalking women for their looks. Instead, Gatsby chases Daisy to achieve her as a prize of his bounty and any affection Gatsby demonstrates toward her, is simply to appease to her sense of status and wealth. The author F. Scott Fitzgerald, exhibits Gatsby’s these feelings for Daisy through the clever usage of connotation, symbolism and metaphors.

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In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald characterizes the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values. One of the major themes explored in this novel is the Hollowness of the Upper Class. The entire book revolves around money including power and little love. Coincidentally the three main characters of the novel belong to the upper class and throughout the novel Fitzgerald shows how this characters have become corrupted and have lost their morality due to excess money and success and this has led them to change their perspective towards other people and they have been portrayed as short-sighted to what is important in life. First of all, we have the main character of this novel, Gatsby who won’t stop at nothing to become rich overnight in illegal dealings with mobsters such as Wolfsheim in order to conquer Daisy’s heart.”

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, is full of themes of wealth, love, and tragedy. Also during the time this book was written, women’s suffrage had begun, so women were taking their first steps towards equality with men. The three main women characters in the novel: Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker, all have things in common but can be vastly different; they reflect the view of women in the early 20th century. The Great Gatsby portrays the characters Daisy, Myrtle, and Jordan as stereotypes of women during the 1920s, seen in their behavior, beliefs, and their ultimate fate.

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The Corruption of The American Dream in The Great Gatsby In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates society in the 1920’s and the desire for the people with in it to achieve the American Dream, which embodies the hope that one can achieve power, love and a higher economic/social status through one’s commitment and effort. The novel develops the story of a man named Jay Gatsby and his dream of marrying what he describes as his “golden girl”, also known as, Daisy Buchanan, his former lover. Fitzgerald explores the corruption of the American dream through the Characters; Myrtle, Gatsby and Daisy.

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“I hope she’ll be a fool--that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, beautiful little fool”(Fitzgerald 17). This line, stated by Daisy, accurately demonstrates the perception of women during the 1920s. Women were seen as objects and deemed incapable of intelligent thought. In The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays women based on similar stereotypes from this time period. Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jordan Baker are all prominent female characters in the story whose behaviors and actions, although different, showcase the common desires and struggles of women at the time.

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1909 Words | 8 Pages

An important theme in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the corruption of morals because of wealth. It doesn’t matter if one comes from old or new money, wealth will corrupt the morality of even the humblest. The first example of wealth corrupting morals is in the indifference to infidelity between the married Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson. The next example of wealth corrupting morals is seen in Jordan Baker’s actions to keep her luxurious lifestyle. Third, Jim Gatsby’s pursuit of wealth lead to the corruption of his morals.

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773 Words | 4 Pages

The Great Gatsby Greed can ruin a person’s life. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows this in his classic novel, The Great Gatsby, a sad love story about the rich title character, Jay Gatsby, and his obsession to win back the love of the now married Daisy Buchanan, his former girlfriend. The extravagant lifestyles of Gatsby and the wealthy socialites who attend his parties lead to lost dreams and wasted lives. These men and women are absorbed by material pursuits. In Jay Gatsby’s case, all the money in the world could not replace what he truly desires, Daisy.

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What Makes a Woman? In the age of the Roaring Twenties everyone was embracing a carefree, post- war lifestyle. Women began challenging social norms, becoming independent, promiscuous, and overall breaking free of the control of men. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald decides to place women in a more in a more male-dependent role in The Great Gatsby in which they embody negative qualities of women in the 1920s.

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