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Women In The Great Gatsby

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A member of the of the Mississippi House of Representatives once proclaimed “I would rather die and go to hell than vote for women’s suffrage” (Time-Life books). Despite contention, women were more independent in the 1920’s than ever before. They began going out and traveling alone, smoking and drinking, having affairs, and these once reticent laborers of the home transformed into careless revelers. “America's story between 1911 and 1920 is a jumble of contradictory emotions and ideals, of turbulence and optimism, struggle and progress” (Kara Blond). Women still act in a manner that no one would’ve even imagined less than a hundred years ago. However, for some the introduction of these newly liberated women was a terrible calamity. “Some” meaning the men of the day. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, women shattered the barrier that kept them well behaved and in the home. For some men, this was a fate worse than death.
Even dogs feel threatened and want to mark their territory, so it’s no surprise that men of the 1920’s also started to draw sweaty palms about the new ways in …show more content…
Take Tom for example. He looks down upon the idea of women who cheat: “‘I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out. . . .’” (Fitzgerald 130). He feels threatened by the way women are empowered and having affairs when that tended to be a more masculine thing. However, Tom himself is having an affair through his relationship with Myrtle. Tom feels the need to shame women for the very same thing he is doing himself if it means maintaining the illusion of having superiority. That isn’t all, however, as he is abusive to Myrtle as a means to exert power over her as

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