Women in the Great Gatsby

Nick Carraway says “Dishonesty in a woman is never a thing you can blame deeply” In light of this comment, discuss how Fitzgerald presents the female characters in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses the characters of Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker and Myrtle Wilson in his novel, ‘The Great Gatsby,’ to portray his view on the changing morals and nature of women in 1920’s America. At a time surrounding the height of decadence and hedonism after the First World War, it is inevitable that the females in the novel do not take on subordinated, traditional femininities but Fitzgerald portrays them in a much more assertive, yet negative, way, layering their personalities in a manner that suggests each of them is corrupted in some aspect. Written from Nick Carraway’s point of view, the novel portrays his view of women drawn from his own opinions, and despite Nick claiming to be ‘one of the few honest people [he] has ever known”, he does not always “reserve judgement” as he says he does. His statement “dishonesty in a woman is never a thing you can blame deeply” concerning Jordan Baker’s cheating, portrays her character in particular as one who is merely misled or even unaware of her own flaws, yet it is obvious, through Nick’s account, that she has wittingly cheated in her golf tournament. This suggests that Nick wishes to subtly overlook the flaws in the women of the novel at the beginning, as he has a “slightly obsessive compulsion to clean things” such as fellow character’s moral flaws up, as critic Tony Tanner believes. In a way this reflects the society’s reluctance to truly blame women for their changing characteristics throughout the twenties. Even so, Fitzgerald also uses Nick’s viewpoint to demonstrate how truly careless and female characters are, as, even though he is not omniscient, he quickly realises that each woman has something to hide or a fault and at the end of the novel he makes direct remarks about each female. Fitzgerald uses the