Gender In The Great Gatsby

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One of the predominant social biases in the 1920’s was gender. People had very defined expectations of men and women, and this attitude is reflected in the novel. The very language of The Great Gatsby is sexist, written in such a way that women fade into the background. The first time women are present in the novel is when Nick visits his old college friend, Tom Buchanan. Daisy, Nick’s cousin and Tom’s wife, and Jordan, Daisy’s friend and a famous tennis player, are lounging on a couch when Nick walks into the room. He says, “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon”(Fitzgerald p8). The sentence is written in passive voice, making the couch the subject of the sentence and reducing the women to mere objects (Froehlich p87). …show more content…
In stark contrast, Jordan Baker, the tennis player, is described as masculine, suggesting that she is not able to be both feminine and successful. The only way that 1920’s society was able to accept a successful woman was by comparing her to a man (Froelich p87). However, society still had certain expectations of Jordan because she was female, and it was easier for her to always wear a mask to protect herself from the world. When Nick realises who Jordan is, he says, “I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach”(PG#). The fact that she looks so similar relaxing at a friend’s house and after posed photoshoots suggests that she is always “posing,” in a sense (Fitzgerald p18). As a famous female in the 1920’s, she can’t afford to let her real self through. In American society in the 1920’s, women are not treated equally, either fading into the background or renouncing their
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