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Alex Sullivan

Mr. Pace

Honors Literature and Composition

December 21, 2022

Revisions of Passing: Women's Liberations Viewed Pessimistically in Fitzgerald’s The

Great Gatsby

The redefinition of gender roles in the 1920s was crucial to the evolution of women in

American society and was accurately, though cynically, demonstrated by Scott Fitzgerald in his

work, The Great Gatsby. By the 1920s, women had received new rights and opportunities which

included the right to vote, own property, and access employment opportunities. Despite these

liberations, Fitzgerald provides a pessimistic view of the female experience by portraying Daisy

and Jordan in The Great Gatsby, as women whose worth is based on materialism and their

traditional roles in society.

In The Great Gatsby, Daisy has an eccentric personality that guides her into developing

herself and having the courage to seize her independence to do everything of her free will.

Gatsby and Daisy flirted with each other to where they were going to extreme extents to hide

their relationship: “Daisy and Gatsby danced… Then they sauntered over to my house and sat on

the steps for half an hour, while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden” (Fitzgerald

105). As Gatsby’s roaring events are meant to attract Daisy, the opportunities that they have to be

alone together are vital to their growing relationship that builds upon the theme of never-ending

love as they are carefully planned and secretive. Not only does Daisy differ from the

stereotypical view of a woman, but she is also described by Juliet Conway, a journalist at the

University of Edinburgh, as being enticing and irresistible by comparing her to a mythological

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creature, which further enhances her allure and mysticism: “In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great

Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is compared to a Siren (an idea discussed in detail by Glenn Settle's

article ("The Siren Voice")” (Conway). Conway describes Daisy as a Siren, that she calls and

lures people with her voice and looks, that she is impossible to resist. Yet, even with Daisy’s

independence and spirited personality, she still falls into the stereotypical role of a woman, by

being silenced and being treated as an object. Tom talks about Daisy as being reckless and that

women, in general, are too independent in his perspective after he starts to catch on that there

might be a romantic relationship between the two: “‘By God, I may be old-fashioned in my

ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me’” (Fitzgerald 103). Fitzgerald uses

this to portray the men’s view on the new emancipation in society and how people, similar to

Tom, disapprove of women's new role in society. Not only does Tom fit the dominating male role

in the household, he influences or even intimidates Daisy but the pressure she is receiving from

both Tom and Gatsby was overwhelming and getting out of hand. “‘I won’t stand this!’ cried

Daisy. ‘Oh, please let’s get out’” (Fitzgerald 133). She eventually gets the courage to say

something as both Gatsby and Tom are speaking for her and making claims that she doesn’t

deem entirely true. Fitzgerald and Conway presents women like Daisy,in the 1920s, as someone

who is expected to be seen and not heard by her male counterparts. However, Fitzgerald presents

Daisy as being a strong woman who speaks her mind when she was in the middle of an argument

with Gatsby and Tom breaking the implied gender roles of the 1920s. Daisy symbolizes many of

women’s liberations and struggles in the 1920s and leads to society’s never-ending vicious cycle

in The Great Gatsby.

Similarly to Daisy, Jordan Baker had untraditional liberations and activities; however,

Jordan was pressured by Daisy to marry due to the traditions of society. As a young woman in
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the 1920s, Jordan Baker is far from her friend Daisy and takes on life with her approach. She

plays golf professionally plus she is also unmarried which was rare for the 1920s as she was not

a flapper. Nick is intrigued by the young woman he is being introduced to. Nick also describes

how she has no shame and does not match the feminine portrayal that his cousin Daisy

represents: “A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker

leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear” (Fitzgerald 14). He observes her and concludes that

she is an unshameful woman that will speak her mind in any situation even if it defies the

traditional silence of the woman's voice unlike Daisy who remains silent to appease the male

figures in her life. With Fitzgerald’s style of writing on Jordan Baker, many people have theories

that there is a lingering theme of sexuality that isn’t the main societal focus in The Great Gatsby.

Jordan’s unique personality and untraditional ways lead Maggie Froehlich, an associate professor

of English, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State, to believe that Fitzgerald is

portraying Jordan not as just masculine, but as gay, leading into froehlich’s theory that,

Recognizing the intentionality behind Jordan's invisibility and indistinguishability from

other women and understanding it as a self-conscious pose--a form of passing--reveals
some of what I would like to argue are the novel's heretofore undiscovered core concerns:
intersections between racial and gender transgression, queer politics and practices of the
closet, and the ways patriarchal capitalism constructs gender and sexuality. The character
of Jordan Baker then--whose affectation of "whiteness" Fitzgerald underscores
throughout the novel--embodies the conflation of simultaneously developing discourses
on race, sex, and gender. Ironically, the fact that her queerness is most often overlooked
proves that her strategies for "passing" in the novel are successful (Froehlich).

This theory adds to the hidden theme of sexuality in The Great Gatsby shown by Jordan’s

abnormal character. This also shows society’s gender roles at the time and how Daisy was

pressuring and forcing Jordan into marriage with Nick to have a traditional female role in

society. Jordan is delighted to see Nick and states, “‘I thought you might be here,’ she responded

absently as I came up. ‘I remembered you lived next door to—’” (Fitzgerald 42). As Nick is
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relatively new to the neighborhood, Daisy tries to set him up with Jordan and as Daisy attends

the parties, it becomes more obvious what she is scheming. Women in the 1920s were told to see

marriage as a privilege and it was their duty to provide the family with children. However, due to

some of the independent freedom that women found in society, “An increasingly high divorce

rate seemed to point to this conclusion; indeed, from 1914 to 1928, the number of marriages

ending in divorce climbed from one in ten to one in six” (“A Changing Society”). The liberations

of women helped break the norms of society but at the cost of long-lasting relationships. Even

though Jordan was the most peculiar woman in The Great Gatsby by breaking the norms of

society she was shown by Fiztgerald and Freohlich to be pressured by others to accept a

traditional role in society. Fitzgerald used Daisy as the traditional woman in The Great Gatsby to

be married and follow the feminine standards of the 1920s, the polar opposite of Jordan. He

usedJordan as a prime example of the rising generation of women in the 1920s who were

pressured to be more feminine and get married as they were breaking the barriers of women’s

roles in society.

While the liberations for Daisy and Jordan in The Great Gatsby were revolutionary, they

succumbed to society’s ideals and expectations, for women to remain behind the scenes, taking

care of the household while men worked. Which is an extremely pessimistic view of the

happenings in society for women during that particular time. Women, in The Great Gatsby, were

characters that poorly represented the variation and power of women during the 1920s. The

liberations for women in the 1920s helped set up the rights that women have today and let them

integrate into the working society plus have a say in decision-making. Since the beginning of

time, women have been held to different standards than their male counterparts that extend

beyond the pages of the novel.

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Work Cited

"A Changing Society." Roaring Twenties Reference Library, edited by Kelly King

Howes, vol. 1: Almanac and Primary Sources, UXL, 2006, pp. 75-93. Gale In Context:

U.S. History,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3448000014/UHIC?u=mlin_n_newhigh&sid=bookmark-UHI

C&xid=198162f6. Accessed 21 Dec. 2022.

Conway, Juliet. "'To Hell with Women Anyway': Flirtatiousness and Male

Entitlement in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises." The Hemingway Review, vol. 40, no.

2, spring 2021, pp. 23+. Gale Literature Resource Center,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A665915517/LitRC?u=mlin_n_newhigh&sid=bookmark-LitRC

&xid=03a6404d. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, et al. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, an Imprint of Simon &

Schuster, Inc., 2020.

Froehlich, Maggie Gordon. "Jordan Baker, Gender Dissent, and Homosexual Passing in

The Great Gatsby." Children's Literature Review, edited by Jelena Krstovic, vol. 176,

Gale, 2013. Gale Literature Resource Center,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420110010/LitRC?u=mlin_n_newhigh&sid=bookmark-LitRC

&xid=c407ca7e. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022. Originally published in Space Between, vol. 6,

no. 1, 2010, pp. 81-103.

"Women's Rights Movement." Gale U.S. History Online Collection, Gale, 2022. Gale In

Context: U.S. History,

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link.gale.com/apps/doc/TZAMED702370643/UHIC?u=mlin_n_newhigh&sid=bookmark

-UHIC&xid=3ac2a583. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022