Gender Roles In The Great Gatsby

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Gender roles and equality as portrayed in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. The Great Gatsby takes place in an exciting, new stage in American history, just before women were given the right to vote, their rights to work and they had newly gained freedom they had never had before. Women started getting careers that were once only for men to work developing their freedom and expressing their opinion more. Even with all these new changes the women in the novel are still interpreted to being superior by men, being made to be submissive and obedient. The men are not yet accepting the movement that is occurring around them and are still controlling and dishonest, in particular to the women depicted in the novel. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. and I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.'"' This paragraph pulled from The Great Gatsby demonstrates how children are seen as innocent, whilst women are still being seen as inferior. The inferior status of women was also passed onto children; this was very common in social…show more content…
Gatsby pursued Daisy through his wealth which is the opposite of Tom who spent his marriage with Daisy ignoring her so that he could live his lifestyle of wealth and luxury without her being a distraction. This quote does exemplify the fact that women were once seen as A prize that could be won. Even after they were ‘won’ Men would still remain inferior and control women, what they did, how they were seen and who they associated with. All that Gatsby wanted was Daisy’s love, buying the house across the bay so that he could get closer and be able to see her green light whenever he wanted her
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