Class, Money, and Women in The Great Gatsby

In the decades leading up to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, American social mores underwent momentous changes.  A new ruling class emerged, one whose status and power derived not from respectable ancestry, but from enormous wealth and its display.  Conspicuous consumption, the accumulation of goods to flaunt the fortunes of the purchasers, was born.  So was a new American dream, which promised that anyone, from any background, could achieve status and wealth, either through industry or marriage.  By Fitzgerald's time, this new American dream had produced Astors, Carnegies, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and a host of pampered, bejeweled wives and mistresses.  The new American dream, however, had a brutal dark side.  Fitzgerald explores that dark side in his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, in which he exposes the ugly truth beneath the gilded surface of society:  the desire for money and social status has the power to destroy personal authenticity, particularly the personal authenticity of women.

In Daisy Buchanan, the woman for whose love the novel’s title character attains his vast wealth, one sees the new American dream's power to deform the values of women.  Daisy and her ilk value wealth and social superiority in men, above any other qualities.  In fact, to Daisy, wealth and social superiority excuse a host of sins, such as her husband Tom's infidelity.  As The Great Gatsby begins, we learn that "Tom's got some woman in New York" (19).  His infidelities, in fact, date to soon after his and Daisy's marriage:  taking a nighttime drive shortly after his honeymoon, he "ran into a wagon...and ripped a front wheel off his car.  The girl who was with him got into the papers" (71).   Daisy's private humiliation thus became public.  Despite this, however, she still chooses Tom over Jay Gatsby, who has completely reinvented himself for her, and whom she may still love.  With Tom, after all, Daisy can continue to enjoy wealth, privilege, and the status conferred by his wealth and their marriage.  In fact, after Gatsby's murder, she disappears without even "a message or a flower" (154) for the funeral.

The attractions of Tom's wealth and status have an even more destructive effect on Myrtle, his mistress.  Unlike Daisy, who was born to money and social status herself, Myrtle is the vulgar wife of Tom's mechanic.  Her efforts to ape the dress and mannerisms of her lover's social class transform her natural life-force and sensuality into a grotesque caricature.  "The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in [her natural environment] was converted into impressive hauteur.  Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment" (31), until at last she ostentatiously bemoans "the shiftlessness of the lower orders" (32), as if having forgotten that, when not with Tom, she belongs to those lower orders herself.  Nothing seems to matter to her as much as him.  Even after he breaks her nose for presuming to speak the name of his wife--for daring to place herself on Daisy's level--she clings to him, with ultimately fatal results.  Her death by a luxury automobile driven by her high-class rival is a telling, and tragic, image.

As different as their fates are, Daisy and Myrtle share some important similarities.  Significantly, both women have flower names, perhaps indicating their primarily decorative roles both in society and Tom's life.  Daisy’s and Myrtle’s lives are dominated by society's demands on women to be ornamental according to the money-mad, class-conscious standards of the time:  Daisy spends most of her time entertaining her and Tom's friends, while Myrtle goes to great lengths in Tom's presence to transform herself into a hostess equally as impressive.  Finally, both are willing to endure shame and abuse in order to remain with Tom.

Tom Buchanan himself offers nothing but wealth and status.  Towards Daisy, he is not only unfaithful, but also dismissive, as, for instance, when he declares all his guests Nordics but only "after an infinitesimal hesitation...included Daisy with a slight nod" (17).  Later on, even after learning of Daisy and Gatsby's old love and Gatsby's demand that Daisy leave Tom, Tom only says, "She gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn't know what she's doing" (118).  Knowing his power, he can take her loyalty for granted.  All he bothers to offer her--and all it ultimately takes to keep her--is the promise that he will "take better care of [her] from now on" (118), a phrase which suggests a fresh outpouring of gifts and luxury.  Myrtle, meanwhile, endures Tom's contempt and violence for the occasional illusion of being his flaunted property.  It is, tragically, her obsession with continuing to be Tom's property that drives her out onto the street on the dark night of her death.  Thus, the desire to enjoy Tom's wealth and status destroys both women.  It compels Daisy to sacrifice the prospect of a loving relationship with an adoring man for a life of neglect, humiliation, and infidelity, and it drives Myrtle to an untimely death.

In the fates of Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, therefore, Fitzgerald illustrates the crushing power of the craving for wealth and social status.  Tom Buchanan's hold over both women derives specifically and solely from his aura of wealth and power.  In our own times, when the media laud conspicuous consumption and modern celebrities’ rags-to-riches tales of fame and fortune, the lessons of The Great Gatsby still hold true.  It would be worthwhile for all of us to remember the sacrifices Daisy and Myrtle made to be close to money and power; we must all remember that all that glitters is not gold.

Edition cited:  Fitzgerald, F. Scott.  The Great Gatsby.  New York, NY:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.