On the Three Female Characters in The Great Gatsby了不起的盖茨比人物分析

On the Three Female Characters in The Great Gatsby

20111151121 中国青年政治学院外语系潘思岑1.General introduction

The "American dream" is a unique cultural phenomenon in American history, also is a everlasting theme in American literature. Fitzgerald, most good at writing about "American dream", is a genuine author born under American culture and the "American dream". Fitzgerald is outstanding in literary circles in the United States along with Hemingway, Faulkner. The Great Gatsby is the representative work of Fitzgerald, published in 1925. By describing the protagonist Gatsby pursuing the American dream, achieving the American dream and eventually becoming a kind of sacrifice during the process of the American dream, the novel critically reflected the corruption, erosion and the strong criticism of the American society under the a flashy, bright and exciting surface. This work has been praised as the most profound contemporary American novel, which has been recognized embodiment of creative thinking and artistic style of Fitzgerald. The author himself also acknowledges that the novel is his conscious artistic achievement from creative thinking. It is Gatsby, as one of Fitzgerald protagonists in the novel, who has been a typical figure in the world literary gallery and recorded into the western literary classic(114).

In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald exquisitely and accurately depicts the “jazz age”. The three important female images are particularly impressive: Gatsby's dream lover, Daisy Buchanan from a noble family, Daisy's girlfriend, also a golf player Jordan Baker, and Tom Buchanan's mistress Myrtle Wilson. As for Jordan Baker who always keeps skeptical for the world, “there are only people just pursuing and being

pursued, also the busy and leisure in the world.”(107). What leads to the decay and parasitic values for life of these women, we think, is the era they live in. In the novel "The Great Gatsby", Fitzgerald created 3 different female characters with different social class, different culture background, different personality temperaments. But they share an important thing in common that they live depending on man and try their best to realize their life value from the pursuit of men. This suggests that the decadent parasitic life style and consciousness of these female characters in the field reflects the female psychological structure and ethics of the "jazz age".

As Malcolm Cowley, an American literary critic, states that Fitzgerald has been infatuated with money when he was young, but then he broke the pale with luxurious life and got poisoned by money. So he has a profound understanding of the value of money and can vividly depicted a …romance of money‟for upper class(3). Admittedly, from his own experiences and feelings in the book Fitzgerald focuses on the performance of the American tragedy and the tragedy of the times.

2.Daisy Buchanan

Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful and young rich woman, was Nick's cousin, and was also Gatsby's lover. Gatsby won Daisy's heart with a handsome gentleman image, and they fell in love. Daisy promised she would always wait for him. In fact, Gatsby was in love with Daisy on purpose, that is, he wanted to satisfy his vanity to be in love with such a beautiful girl, and once he get Daisy's heart, he felt dull. He even once wanted Daisy to end the relationship with him. As the result of war, they were separated. This made Daisy feel the invisible pressure. Just like other millions of