Fitzgerald's heroine, Daisy Buchanan, in The Great Gatsby is a typical product of the American society of the1920s. Formerly, before the Age of Jazz, it would have been highly unlikely for a woman of her social class to behave as freely and boldly as she does.
Daisy is in love with Gatsby and marries a very wealthy man when she feels Gatsby has abandoned her. She is forced to choose between devoted love and secured and well-to-do living and she decides in favor of the latter. The consequences of this choice are not particularly enjoying. She finds her life boring and treats it with sardonic attitude.Much worse than that, her husband is unfaithful and hardly bothers to hide it. She is passionately in love with Gatsby when he returns, but cannot bring herself to leave her husband, although she will not say that she never loved him.
Part of the explanation for her behavior can be found in the position of women at the time. To understand that position, we need to look a moment at the women's movement in the early twentieth century. This movement entailed granting women the right to vote and acquiring of particular self-confidence and independence.Daisy feels that she has right to demand what she desires while on the other hand she does not do anything to realize her desires.
Fitzgerald's heroine matches the image of attractive, destructive parasite. Readers may observe author’s hostility toward the women he creates. Thought Daisy is described as a charming woman, she reveals inconstancy and shallowness of her nature. When she was a young girl, she was extremely popular among the military men billeted near her place. One of those officers was the main character Jay Gatsby.
Gatsby was the one who succeeded to win Daisy’s heart, and when he departed to participate in military operations she promised to wait for him, but eventually did not keep her promise. Nick gives her characteristic of a light-headed woman who relies exclusively on money: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . .
.”Daisy's economic position is very important to her attitude to men in this novel, and Gatsby's worship of Daisy is closely tied to his attitude toward money. Gatsby in Chapter 7 says that Daisy's voice is "full of money. " Gatsby is attracted to Daisy because she is rich, but at the same time he has no designs on her wealth. He will not try to win her again until he has wealth of his own. It is important to remember that Daisy is a sort of financial prisoner.
Her lifestyle depends on Tom's money. She has no real way of making money on her own.Gatsby has money, but his wealth, like his whole future, is precarious. But here again the issue is not simple.
A woman might marry for money and status, but might it also be true that money and status make the man himself attractive? Fitzgerald once said that money and "great animal magnetism" were the most important things in attracting women. He also said that the next most important things were good looks and intelligence and that he got the "top girl" by using those. There is a very strong bond between Tom and Daisy. It is up to a reader to decide what it is.
