Divorce was also still uncommon and controversial. So Daisy, as a wife and mother who is reluctant to leave an unhappy marriage, can be seen as a product of her time, while other female characters like Jordan and Myrtle are pushing their boundaries a bit more. You can explore these issues in essays that ask you to compare Daisy and Myrtle or Daisy in Jordan—check out how in our article on comparing and contrasting Great Gatsby characters.
Also, make sure you understand the idea of the American Dream and Daisy as a stand-in for it. You might be asked to connect Daisy to money, wealth, or the American Dream based on that crucial comment about her voice being made of money.
Finally, be sure to read chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 carefully for any Daisy analysis! She doesn't appear in Chapters 2, 3, 8, or 9. Daisy definitely represents the old money class, from her expensive but relatively conservative clothing like the white dress she is introduced in , to her "fashionable, glittering white mansion" 1.
You can also argue that she represents money itself more broadly, thanks to Gatsby's observation that "her voice is full of money" 7. She also is the object that Gatsby pursues, the person who has come to stand in for all of his hopes, dreams, and ambition: "He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star.
Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete" 6. Because of this connection, some people tie Daisy herself to the American Dream—she is as alluring and ultimately as fickle and illusive as the promises of a better life. Some people also say Daisy stands for the relatively unchanged position of many women in the s—despite the new rights granted by the 19 th amendment, many women were still trapped in unhappy marriages, and constrained by very strict gender roles.
For an essay about what Daisy represents, you can argue for any of these points of view—old money, money itself, the American Dream, status of women, or something else—but make sure to use quotes from the book to back up your argument!
First, we should note the obvious connection to sirens in The Odyssey—the beautiful creatures who lure men in with their voices. The suggestion is that Daisy's beautiful voice makes her both irresistible and dangerous, especially to men. By making her voice her most alluring feature, rather than her looks or her movement, Fitzgerald makes that crucial allusion clear. He also makes it easier to connect Daisy to less-tangible qualities like money and the American Dream, since it's her voice—something that is ephemeral and fleeting—that makes her so incredibly alluring.
If Daisy were just an especially beautiful woman or physically alluring like Myrtle, she wouldn't have that symbolic power. Daisy's beautiful voice is also interesting because this is a very chatty novel—there is a lot of dialogue!
But Daisy is the only character whose voice is continually described as alluring. There are a few brief descriptions of Jordan's voice as pleasant but it can also come across as "harsh and dry" according to Nick 8.
This creates the impression that it doesn't really matter what she's saying, but rather her physicality and what she represents to Gatsby is more important.
That in turn could even be interpreted as misogynistic on Fitzgerald's part, since the focus is not on what Daisy says, but how she says it. This question might seem quite simple at first: Daisy is sticking to her prescribed societal role by marrying and having a child, while Jordan plays golf, "runs around town" and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to marry.
Daisy is conservative while Jordan is an independent woman—or as independent as a woman could be during the s.
Case closed, right? Not quite! This could definitely be the impression you get at the beginning of the novel, but things change during the story. Daisy does seem to contemplate divorce, while Jordan ends up engaged or so she claims. And even if Jordan is not currently engaged, the fact she brings up engagement to Nick strongly hints that she sees that as her end goal in life, and that her current golf career is just a diversion.
Furthermore, both Daisy and Jordan are also at the mercy of their families: Daisy derives all of her wealth and power from Tom, while Jordan is beholden to an old wealthy aunt who controls her money. They don't actually have control over their own money, and therefore their choices. So while Jordan and Daisy both typify a very showy lifestyle that looks liberated—being "flappers," having sex, drinking alcohol which before the s was seen as a highly indecent thing for a woman to do in public , and playing golf in Jordan's case—they in fact are still thoroughly constrained by the limited options women had in the s in terms of making their own lives.
One argument Daisy supporters people who argue she's misunderstood and unfairly vilified by certain reads of the novel make often is that we don't really know Daisy that well by the end of the novel. Nick himself admits in Chapter 1 that he has "no sight into Daisy's heart" 1.
And readers aren't the only people who think this. Fitzgerald himself lamented after the novel failed to sell well that its lack of success was due to the lack of major, well-developed female characters. In a letter to his editor, Fitzgerald wrote : "the book contained no important woman character, and women control the fiction market at present. In any case, I think our best glimpse at Daisy comes through the portion narrated by Jordan—we see her intensely emotional response to hearing from Gatsby again, and for once get a sense of how trapped she feels by the expectations set by her family and society.
So, unfortunately, we just don't see much of Daisy's inner self or motivations during the novel. Probably the character who knows her best is Jordan, and perhaps if Gatsby were from Jordan's point of view, and not Nick's, we would know much more about Daisy, for better or worse.
The Great Gatsby would probably much less memorable with a happy ending, first of all! Sad endings tend to stick in your mind more stubbornly than happy ones. Furthermore, the novel would lose its power as a somber reflection on the American Dream. After all, if Gatsby "got the girl," then he would have achieved everything he set out to get—money, status, and his dream girl. The novel would be a fulfillment of the American Dream, not a critique.
The novel would also lose its power as an indictment of class in the US, since if Daisy and Gatsby ended up together it would suggest walls coming down between old and new money, something that never happens in the book. That ending would also seem to reward both Gatsby's bad behavior the bootlegging, gambling as well as Daisy's the affair, and even Myrtle's death , which likely would have made it less likely Gatsby would have caught on as an American classic during the ultra-conservative s.
Instead, the novel's tragic end feels somewhat appropriate given everyone's lack of morality. In short, although on your first read of the novel, you more than likely are hoping for Gatsby to succeed in winning over Daisy, you have to realize the novel would be much less powerful with a stereotypically happy ending.
Ending with Daisy and Tom as a couple might feel frustrating, but it forces the reader to confront the inescapable inequality of the novel's society. Let's address some common questions about Daisy and her motivations, since she can be challenging to understand or sympathize with. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. How does Nick Carraway first meet Jay Gatsby? Why did Daisy marry Tom? Why does Gatsby arrange for Nick to have lunch with Jordan Baker?
How does Tom find out about the affair between Gatsby and Daisy? How does Gatsby make his money? Or at least lust. Jordan clues us in:. If he left the room for a minute she'd look around uneasily, and say: "Where's Tom gone? She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. This doesn't sound to us like a girl living "high in a white palace.
What we learn from this is that Daisy isn't just a frivolous rich girl—or, she wasn't always. She has a deep capacity for love, and she wants be loved.
Or maybe she didn't marry the wrong guy; maybe she just likes to think that she did. One of the things Gatsby and Daisy share is an idealized image of their relationship, a rose-colored view makes everything in the present seem dull and flat in comparison.
Though the Daisy of the present has come to realize that more often than not, dreams don't come true, she still clings to the hope that they sometimes can. And to Daisy, most of this trouble comes down to one fact: she's a girl.
In her mind, women or girls—Fitzgerald never uses "women" when he could use "girls" need to be foolish. They need to be as careless as Nick ends up thinking that she is, because the world is cruel to women. When her child is born, she tells Nick, she weeps: "'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money.
Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car.
Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely , but not of sustained loyalty or care.
She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. Ace your assignments with our guide to The Great Gatsby! SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook.
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