And indeed, the next day she marries Tom "without so much as a shiver," showing her reluctance to question the place in society dictated by her family and social status. During Daisy and Gatsby's reunion, she is delighted by Gatsby's mansion but falls to pieces after Gatsby giddily shows off his collection of shirts.
This scene is often confusing to students. Why does Daisy start crying at this particular display? The scene could speak to Daisy's materialism : that she only emotionally breaks down at this conspicuous proof of Gatsby's newfound wealth.
But it also speaks to her strong feelings for Gatsby, and how touched she is at the lengths he went to to win her back. In Chapter 7, as Daisy tries to work up the courage to tell Tom she wants to leave him, we get another instance of her struggling to find meaning and purpose in her life. Beneath Daisy's cheerful exterior, there is a deep sadness, even nihilism, in her outlook compare this to Jordan's more optimistic response that life renews itself in autumn. That was it. I'd never understood before.
It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl.
Gatsby explicitly ties Daisy and her magnetic voice to wealth. This particular line is really crucial, since it ties Gatsby's love for Daisy to his pursuit of wealth and status. It also allows Daisy herself to become a stand-in for the idea of the American Dream.
We'll discuss even more about the implications of Daisy's voice below. I can't help what's past. During the climactic confrontation in New York City, Daisy can't bring herself to admit she only loved Gatsby, because she did also love Tom at the beginning of their marriage.
This moment is crushing for Gatsby, and some people who read the novel and end up disliking Daisy point to this moent as proof. Why couldn't she get up the courage to just leave that awful Tom? However, I would argue that Daisy's problem isn't that she loves too little, but that she loves too much.
She fell in love with Gatsby and was heartbroken when he went to war, and again when he reached out to her right before she was set to marry Tom. And then she fell deeply in love with Tom in the early days of their marriage, only to discover his cheating ways and become incredibly despondent see her earlier comment about women being "beautiful little fools".
So by now she's been hurt by falling in love, twice, and is wary of risking another heartbreak. Furthermore, we do see again her reluctance to part with her place in society. Being with Gatsby would mean giving up her status as old-money royalty and instead being the wife of a gangster. That's a huge jump for someone like Daisy, who was essentially raised to stay within her class, to make. So it's hard to blame her for not giving up her entire life not to mention her daughter!
To understand Daisy's role in the story and to analyze her actions, understanding the context of the s—especially the role of women—is key. First of all, even though women's rights were expanding during the s spurred by the ratification of the 19 th Amendment in , the prevailing expectation was still that women, especially wealthy women, would get married and have children and that was all.
Divorce was also still uncommon and controversial. So Daisy, as a wife and mother who is reluctant to leave an unhappy marriage, can be seen as a product of her time, while other female characters like Jordan and Myrtle are pushing their boundaries a bit more.
You can explore these issues in essays that ask you to compare Daisy and Myrtle or Daisy in Jordan—check out how in our article on comparing and contrasting Great Gatsby characters. Also, make sure you understand the idea of the American Dream and Daisy as a stand-in for it.
You might be asked to connect Daisy to money, wealth, or the American Dream based on that crucial comment about her voice being made of money.
Finally, be sure to read chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 carefully for any Daisy analysis! She doesn't appear in Chapters 2, 3, 8, or 9. Daisy definitely represents the old money class, from her expensive but relatively conservative clothing like the white dress she is introduced in , to her "fashionable, glittering white mansion" 1.
You can also argue that she represents money itself more broadly, thanks to Gatsby's observation that "her voice is full of money" 7. She also is the object that Gatsby pursues, the person who has come to stand in for all of his hopes, dreams, and ambition: "He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.
So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete" 6. Because of this connection, some people tie Daisy herself to the American Dream—she is as alluring and ultimately as fickle and illusive as the promises of a better life.
Some people also say Daisy stands for the relatively unchanged position of many women in the s—despite the new rights granted by the 19 th amendment, many women were still trapped in unhappy marriages, and constrained by very strict gender roles. For an essay about what Daisy represents, you can argue for any of these points of view—old money, money itself, the American Dream, status of women, or something else—but make sure to use quotes from the book to back up your argument!
First, we should note the obvious connection to sirens in The Odyssey—the beautiful creatures who lure men in with their voices. The suggestion is that Daisy's beautiful voice makes her both irresistible and dangerous, especially to men.
By making her voice her most alluring feature, rather than her looks or her movement, Fitzgerald makes that crucial allusion clear. He also makes it easier to connect Daisy to less-tangible qualities like money and the American Dream, since it's her voice—something that is ephemeral and fleeting—that makes her so incredibly alluring. If Daisy were just an especially beautiful woman or physically alluring like Myrtle, she wouldn't have that symbolic power.
Daisy's beautiful voice is also interesting because this is a very chatty novel—there is a lot of dialogue! But Daisy is the only character whose voice is continually described as alluring. There are a few brief descriptions of Jordan's voice as pleasant but it can also come across as "harsh and dry" according to Nick 8. This creates the impression that it doesn't really matter what she's saying, but rather her physicality and what she represents to Gatsby is more important.
That in turn could even be interpreted as misogynistic on Fitzgerald's part, since the focus is not on what Daisy says, but how she says it. This question might seem quite simple at first: Daisy is sticking to her prescribed societal role by marrying and having a child, while Jordan plays golf, "runs around town" and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to marry. Daisy is conservative while Jordan is an independent woman—or as independent as a woman could be during the s.
Case closed, right? Not quite! This could definitely be the impression you get at the beginning of the novel, but things change during the story. Daisy does seem to contemplate divorce, while Jordan ends up engaged or so she claims. And even if Jordan is not currently engaged, the fact she brings up engagement to Nick strongly hints that she sees that as her end goal in life, and that her current golf career is just a diversion.
Furthermore, both Daisy and Jordan are also at the mercy of their families: Daisy derives all of her wealth and power from Tom, while Jordan is beholden to an old wealthy aunt who controls her money. They don't actually have control over their own money, and therefore their choices.
So while Jordan and Daisy both typify a very showy lifestyle that looks liberated—being "flappers," having sex, drinking alcohol which before the s was seen as a highly indecent thing for a woman to do in public , and playing golf in Jordan's case—they in fact are still thoroughly constrained by the limited options women had in the s in terms of making their own lives.
One argument Daisy supporters people who argue she's misunderstood and unfairly vilified by certain reads of the novel make often is that we don't really know Daisy that well by the end of the novel.
Nick himself admits in Chapter 1 that he has "no sight into Daisy's heart" 1. And readers aren't the only people who think this. Fitzgerald himself lamented after the novel failed to sell well that its lack of success was due to the lack of major, well-developed female characters.
In a letter to his editor, Fitzgerald wrote : "the book contained no important woman character, and women control the fiction market at present. In any case, I think our best glimpse at Daisy comes through the portion narrated by Jordan—we see her intensely emotional response to hearing from Gatsby again, and for once get a sense of how trapped she feels by the expectations set by her family and society. So, unfortunately, we just don't see much of Daisy's inner self or motivations during the novel.
Probably the character who knows her best is Jordan, and perhaps if Gatsby were from Jordan's point of view, and not Nick's, we would know much more about Daisy, for better or worse. Although she loves the attention, she has considerations other than love on her mind. First, she knows full well Tom has had affairs for years.
Might this not motivate her to get back at him by having an affair of her own? Next, consider Daisy's response to Gatsby's wealth, especially the shirts — does someone in love break into tears upon being shown an assortment of shirts? For Daisy and Gatsby too, for that matter the shirts represent wealth and means. When Daisy bows her head and sobs into the shirts, she is displaying her interest in materialism.
She doesn't cry because she has been reunited with Gatsby, she cries because of the pure satisfaction all his material wealth brings her. He has become a fitting way in which to get back at Tom. When Tom and Gatsby have their altercation at the hotel in Chapter 7, Daisy's motivations are called into question: Her inability to deny having loved Tom speaks well for her, but at the same time, it suggests that her attachment to Gatsby has been purely business.
Tom also knows that after Daisy realizes Gatsby is not of their same social circles, she will return to Tom for the comfort and protection that his money and power bring. Although Daisy's true self comes out more and more each time Nick encounters her, her final actions help show what she has been really made of. When she hits and kills Myrtle Wilson, and then leaves the scene, readers know as poor Gatsby still does not that she is void of a conscience. Perhaps all that white that has surrounded her isn't so much purity although Gatsby, of course, would see it as such , but perhaps the white represents a void, a lack as in a lack of intellectualism and a lack of conscience.
To Daisy, Myrtle is expendable. She is not of the social elite, so what difference does her death make? To add insult to injury, as if she hadn't betrayed Gatsby enough already, she abandons Gatsby in his death. Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity, as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby.
She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Read an in-depth analysis of Daisy Buchanan. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him.
He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation. Read an in-depth analysis of Tom Buchanan. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth. Read an in-depth analysis of Jordan Baker.
Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire. Read an in-depth analysis of Myrtle Wilson. George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom.
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