Although she seems childlike and innocent, Daisy Buchanan is anything but. Daisy asserts herself as a wife more than once. However, she lures men to her to get what she wants, particularly her relationship with Gatsby. Ultimately she chooses what she wants.
Daisy was born into wealth just as Tom was, and she is determined to keep the status quo even if it means she must deal with Tom’s brutal treatment. Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story, describes the couple as “careless people who smashed up things and creatures and retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness (180)” (Sutton 37). Neither of them seems to really care about much around them except the money that allows the lifestyle they maintain. Neither of them is faithful to one another. Daisy asserts herself as a wife however. This behavior is illustrated at a party they attend:
Besides being irritated with each other's flirtatious behavior, Daisy and Tom are both disdainful of the other's potential lover: Daisy describes the woman Tom pursues as "common but pretty" and sarcastically offers him a pencil to write down the woman's address (107) (Sutton 37).
More than once there are instances where Daisy interferes with Tom’s relationship with Myrtle. The most dramatic instance was where it is Daisy runs over and kills Myrtle. Although it was an accident, Daisy allows Gatsby take the blame for Myrtle’s death; and stands by Tom, as Sutton illustrates: “whereas Tom and Daisy and their marriage survive, Gatsby is killed for running over Myrtle--something Daisy did--and for being Myrtle's lover--something Tom was.”
Daisy lures men to her, and it doesn’t happen by accident. She is seen as an unattainable, beautiful thing to be obtained. Settle points out that Nick describes her voice as “full of money” and at times “glowing and singing.” (115). The problem is that she lures them to destruction much like she did with Gatsby:
Gatsby's own devotion to her has a permanence that Daisy cannot live up to, yet Gatsby seems committed to an idea of Daisy that he has created rather than to the real woman she is. Daisy's changeability is not at fault in Gatsby's failure. Although she is careless in the way that people like Tom are careless in their wealth and treatment of other people, Daisy is naturally not able to renounce time itself in the way Gatsby does in order to meet him again in the past (Hermanson).
She and Gatsby met five years before when he was a military officer going off to war. At that time she had given her word that she would marry him, but she broke her word and went to marry Tom who saw her as the ultimate trophy wife. She even received a letter from Gatsby the day before her wedding and she almost called it off, but ultimately she married Tom. When she and Gatsby are later reunited, she does have an affair with him. For Gatsby it is a chance to win Daisy back according to Sutton: “He wants Daisy to tell Tom Buchanan that she never loved him; he wants her to "obliterate four years with that sentence" and then marry Gatsby "just as if it were five years ago (116)” (103).
Ultimately, Daisy rejects Gatsby and stays with Tom.
Daisy is an ideal to the men who define her in this story. Her character however is not simply an aging, empty headed debutante as her portrayal would suggest. She is pragmatic and subtlety asserts herself and her wealth- a product of the jazz age.
Bibliography
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print
Sutton, Brian. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Explicator 59.1 (Fall 2000): 37-39. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 157. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
Sutton, Brian. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The Explicator 58.2 (2000): 103. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
Hermanson, Casie E. An overview of The Great Gatsby. Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
Settle, Glenn. Fitzgerald’s Daisy: The Siren Voice. Literature (1985) : 115. EBSCO. Web. 28 Nov. 2011
