Viewing gender imprisonment on the shoes of female characters in the novel 'The Great Gatsby': A Feminist Approach

Abstract

The author F.Scott Fitzgerald's characters in the novel are introduced to the readers in such a way that each character has his/her own flaws as well as wit, this article views the characters of the novel as a reflection of the American Jazz age culture. The article also highlights why the characters strive for the 'American dream' and why the dream was not accomplished. The paper examines how the novel is male centric and how it bestows women as mere beings of ornamental significance and inferior to men. This paper brings out how women in literature were portrayed with the motive of "the role models which indicate what constitutes acceptable versions of the feminine and legitimate female goals and aspirations" (Barry 117). The novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ is viewed through the lens of feminist theory, it was detected that women characters Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson are the two important characters who were tyrannized by the patriarchal society and in the same light Tom Buchanan is depicted as the main patriarchal subduction. The paper shows how few women react to the prototype of the 'New women' and the struggles they faced to disobey the rules of society according to Simone DeBeaviour’s saying "one is not born but becomes a woman"