Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: Becoming Tom’s Anima Woman

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom live in elegant and prosperous East Egg on Long Island Sound. Though Tom can’t outrun his soccer days in New Haven, full of machismo and bravado and, as Nick describes it, always looking for “the dramatic turbulence of some unrecoverable soccer game,” Daisy languishes in the muggy summer heat of New York with little to occupy. her time or her thoughts. It is in this scenario that her second cousin Nick Caraway re-enters her life, taking up a position as a bond dealer in New York, and with him, also returning to her life, is her neighbor, Daisy’s impoverished ex-lover Jay. Gatsby, now a wealthy but illicit businessman. Earlier, Daisy had married Tom because, as she tells Gatsby, “rich girls don’t marry poor boys.” Early in their marriage, Tom began openly entertaining a series of lovers, even taking Nick on an excursion to visit his current amusement, Myrtle Wilson. Daisy is unhappy but relatively calm about it, playing “the little goofball”, a role that the women encourage feel resigned to. Tom recognizes Daisy’s need to maintain her life of comfort and pleasure surrounded by wealth and position, which makes it easier for him to control her. He abruptly cuts her off when he is no longer interested in listening to her; he criticizes her choice of words; he responds to her wishes with her contempt. Tom is conspicuously absent for the birth of their son, and a disappointed Daisy admits to Nick, “I’m glad she’s a girl. And I hope she’s a fool, that’s the best a girl can be in this world.” . a beautiful little fool.” Tom’s fatherly stance toward childish Daisy justifies his habit of “going on a spree,” but to win back his trust, he says he always comes back and that in her heart he loves her.

kill the mistress again

Gatsby becomes part of Daisy and Tom’s social circle, but when Tom accuses him of trying to steal his wife, a vicious argument ensues, and in a moment of rage and despair, Daisy leaves with Gatsby, driving his car. They pass Wilson’s garage, Tom’s lover Myrtle runs towards them and Daisy swerves into her, killing her instantly. Nick then watches Daisy and Tom through the window of his large East Egg mansion as they sit across from each other at the kitchen table. Says Nick, “There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy to the picture, and anyone would have thought they were conspiring together.” In Daisy’s artificial but protective world, Tom convinces Myrtle’s husband that it is Gatsby who was her lover and Gatsby who was driving the death car. A distraught George shoots Gatsby before turning the gun on himself. Daisy and Tom go on an extended vacation, and only Nick and Gatsby’s father attends the funeral. Tom proclaims his grievance to Nick over the loss of his lover Myrtle when he looks at the box of dog biscuits, but it is short-lived. Myrtle is expendable and her death, as well as Gatsby’s, are soon treated as just a remnant of their neglected past which, as Nick observes, they leave behind for other people to clean up.

Tom’s Anima Woman

Daisy manipulates her actions with Gatsby to be the woman he imagines, the one he’s imagined for five years. However, when she must face the risk of losing Tom and the lifestyle he represents, and even more so the risk of paying for the death of Tom’s lover, she once again settles into the role that reflects Tom’s soul. . Her compliance is the price she agrees to pay for security. She is not willing to give up the advantages she has with Tom, even if it means losing Gatsby’s romantic illusion. She can’t do anything else. She must be Tom’s childish Daisy who needs him, regardless of her dismissive treatment of her, and therefore Gatsby must die to restore their relationship, emotionally sick as it is. This soulish woman cannot find her own intrinsic worth when she has built a life totally dependent on materialism, the theme of much of Fitzgerald’s jazz-age writing.