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Attitudes Of Women In The Great Gatsby

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A New Perspective At a young age, many Americans are told that in order to be successful they must achieve certain goals such as becoming married or going to college. This alters the American mentality towards the roles men and women in society; expectations of the ideal life are embedded into people’s minds. The relationship between men and women appears numerous times in American literature such as “The Story of an Hour” and “The new Anti-Feminist Campaign”. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan live unique lives that display the attitudes of women during the 1920s. The expectations of women changed in the 1920s and gender relations play a major role in America, because it lead to changes regarding society’s view on suffrage and marriage. …show more content…

In the short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Mallard reevaluates life after learning about the death of her husband, revealing the way women felt towards marriage. Mrs. Mallard feels enslaved to her husband; however, after his death, she is ecstatic because she had developed a hatred towards him (Chopin). The traditional role of women was to bear children and serve their husbands. Women are expected to live this way with very little allowance for variation. In The Great Gatsby, Jordan Baker drinks alcohol at parties where men are present (Fitzgerald 54-55). Drinking in public, especially with men, was previously an unthinkable act. Much like Jordan, many women in the 1920s began to escape a life of servitude and live more

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