Given Gatsby's obsession with Daisy and the lengths to which he has gone to win her, she seems a worthy paramour. As the story continues, however, more of Daisy is revealed, and bit-by-bit she becomes less of an ideal. Given that she is fully aware of her husband's infidelities, why doesn't she do anything about it? Because he has money and power and she enjoys the benefits she receives from these things, she is willing to deal with the affairs.
In addition, when she attends one of Gatsby's parties, aside from the half-hour she spends with Gatsby, she has an unpleasant time. She finds the West Egg nouveaux riches to be tedious and vulgar, an affront to her "old money" mentality.
Another incident that calls Daisy's character into question is the way she speaks of her daughter, Pammy. Later, in Chapter 7 when Pammy makes her only appearance, Daisy treats her like an object, showing her off for guests, suggesting Daisy's lack of concern for her child. Daisy's life revolves around Daisy, allowing Pammy in only when it's convenient.
Clearly, in real life Daisy isn't all the way Gatsby remembers — but blinded by his dream, he cannot see the truth. Although Daisy seems to have found love in her reunion with Gatsby, closer examination reveals that is not at all the case. Although she loves the attention, she has considerations other than love on her mind. First, she knows full well Tom has had affairs for years. Might this not motivate her to get back at him by having an affair of her own? Next, consider Daisy's response to Gatsby's wealth, especially the shirts — does someone in love break into tears upon being shown an assortment of shirts?
For Daisy and Gatsby too, for that matter the shirts represent wealth and means. Say 'Daisy's change' her mine! She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress and half an hour later when we walked out of the room the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months' trip to the South Seas.
In this flashback, narrated by Jordan, we learn all about Daisy's past and how she came to marry Tom, despite still being in love with Jay Gatsby. In fact, she seems to care about him enough that after receiving a letter from him, she threatens to call off her marriage to Tom.
However, despite this brief rebellion, she is quickly put back together by Jordan and her maid—the dress and the pearls represent Daisy fitting back into her prescribed social role. And indeed, the next day she marries Tom "without so much as a shiver," showing her reluctance to question the place in society dictated by her family and social status.
During Daisy and Gatsby's reunion, she is delighted by Gatsby's mansion but falls to pieces after Gatsby giddily shows off his collection of shirts. This scene is often confusing to students. Why does Daisy start crying at this particular display? The scene could speak to Daisy's materialism : that she only emotionally breaks down at this conspicuous proof of Gatsby's newfound wealth. But it also speaks to her strong feelings for Gatsby, and how touched she is at the lengths he went to to win her back.
In Chapter 7, as Daisy tries to work up the courage to tell Tom she wants to leave him, we get another instance of her struggling to find meaning and purpose in her life. Beneath Daisy's cheerful exterior, there is a deep sadness, even nihilism, in her outlook compare this to Jordan's more optimistic response that life renews itself in autumn.
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl.
Gatsby explicitly ties Daisy and her magnetic voice to wealth. This particular line is really crucial, since it ties Gatsby's love for Daisy to his pursuit of wealth and status. It also allows Daisy herself to become a stand-in for the idea of the American Dream. We'll discuss even more about the implications of Daisy's voice below. I can't help what's past. During the climactic confrontation in New York City, Daisy can't bring herself to admit she only loved Gatsby, because she did also love Tom at the beginning of their marriage.
This moment is crushing for Gatsby, and some people who read the novel and end up disliking Daisy point to this moent as proof. Why couldn't she get up the courage to just leave that awful Tom?
However, I would argue that Daisy's problem isn't that she loves too little, but that she loves too much. She fell in love with Gatsby and was heartbroken when he went to war, and again when he reached out to her right before she was set to marry Tom.
And then she fell deeply in love with Tom in the early days of their marriage, only to discover his cheating ways and become incredibly despondent see her earlier comment about women being "beautiful little fools". So by now she's been hurt by falling in love, twice, and is wary of risking another heartbreak.
Furthermore, we do see again her reluctance to part with her place in society. Being with Gatsby would mean giving up her status as old-money royalty and instead being the wife of a gangster. That's a huge jump for someone like Daisy, who was essentially raised to stay within her class, to make. So it's hard to blame her for not giving up her entire life not to mention her daughter! To understand Daisy's role in the story and to analyze her actions, understanding the context of the s—especially the role of women—is key.
First of all, even though women's rights were expanding during the s spurred by the ratification of the 19 th Amendment in , the prevailing expectation was still that women, especially wealthy women, would get married and have children and that was all.
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. The day before her marriage she drank and she cried when she received Gatsby's letter which shows some regret, but the next day she feels content about the marriage.
Daisy is characterized as a shallow, careless, and at times, a cheerful person. However, she is not as ignorant and fun-loving as she portrays herself to be. In reality, she might be slightly misunderstood. She is stuck in a marriage with her husband, Tom, who cheats on her with his mistress Myrtle Wilson who is the wife of George B Wilson. The Great Gatsby Wiki Explore.
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