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|b Fitzgerald claims to a friend that "the whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money. This theme comes up again and again because I lived it" (Quoted in Turnbull, 150). Later he met Zelda Sayre (1900- 1948), at first she rejects him in the same way as he reflects it through Gatsby's economic failure to marry Daisy Buchanan in 1917. Later on Fitzgerald and Zelda get married and they enjoy together fame and fortune in which he reflects his own experience through his novels. \ Throughout American literature women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. The twenties were a time of change in the views of women. Fitzgerald's women are beautiful, enchanting, and hollow. A fair example in The Great Gatsby is Daisy Buchanan, she is a portrait of the American women of her class. According to Fitzgerald's conception of America in the 1920s, she represents the moral values of the aristocratic East Egg set. She also represents the paragon of perfection, for she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy. She is a beautiful young woman who is fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Her prattle reveals that she is of little substance. Her character is empty. She is an object of wonder, and she represents the beauty of the world. She symbolizes Fitzgerald's wife Zelda. Like Zelda, she is in love with money, ease, and material luxury \ Daisy Buchanan is Tom's wife, she is Nick Carraway's cousin, and he is Tom's college friend. They live in East Egg. She is from Louisville. The life of the Buchanans is comfortable and secure, they like it the way it is. "They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together" (The Great Gatsby, 12). Nick is fascinated by the charm of the Buchanan's house for it is "a cheerful red-and- white Georgian Colonial mansion" (ibid). He is also fascinated by the beauty of Daisy, for he considers her as a Fragonard goddess in the "bright rosy colored space" (ibid, 14), of its drawing room. Also the way Daisy apologizes to Nick when he enters her house and it is too hot for her even to struggle up off the sofa. She says "I'm p-paralyzed with happiness" (ibid, 15). Later on Nick feels comfortable while he is around Daisy and Tom for dinner, he tells her. "You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy". "Can't we talk about crops or something" (ibid, 19). Nick is later informed about Tom's betrayal and that he has a mistress. Daisy imagines herself as "sophisticated", and she is. She aims at showing herself to be hardened to her way of life. "Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. ‘Sophisticated- God, I'm sophisticated!’" (ibid, 24). She feels disillusioned and unhappy
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