Theme Of Feminism In The Great Gatsby

Anti-feminism is a repeating theme in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The narrator, Nick Carraway particularly develops this by how he describes women and his interactions with them. Throughout the story, women are not only portrayed as inferior to men, but the novel establishes undesirable attributes as innate feminine characteristics. Therefore, The Great Gatsby represents an anti-feminist culture because it illustrates male characters as independent and dominant while depicting female characters as inferior and subordinate. A prominent illustration of anti-feminism in The Great Gatsby is the substandard expectation for women’s morals. Often, descriptions of a woman’s personality are used purely to reveal disreputable characteristics. …show more content…
Throughout the story, women are often depicted as having material worth and their value changes according to their interactions with men. For instance, when Nick discusses why Gatsby desires to be with Daisy, he explains that “it excited him too that many men had loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes” (158-159). In this description, Daisy lacks physical attributes, and she morphs into a mere object with some amount of worth; she is blatantly equated to an article whose fluctuating value is reliant on men as if she is a stock at Probity Trust. Likewise, the theme of objectifications re-surfaces when Nick comes over and Jordan and Daisy are on the couches. Nick describes how the women appeare to be carelessly floating until “there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows…the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor” (11). Though more subtly, the women are again depicted as objects. Despite their free appearance, the scene represents the stifling culture of anti-feminism. Tom has such minimal respect for the women that before he even speaks, he deflates them out of their reverie, as if he must symbolically lower the

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