Fear of Intimacy in Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

In the meantime, Daisy meets Tom, who has money and marries him instead, thinking it would make her happy. Then she finds out he is cheating on her with Myrtle, but doesn’t leave Tom due to the comfortable lifestyle he had given her. At this point we can see how Daisy is extremely disillusioned because she’s fooling herself, thinking she could be happy due to all the money Tom had, even though she refers him as “...a brute of a man...”(Fitzgerald 12). Daisy also says that she's happy to have a baby girl. ”and I hope she’ll be a fool-that's the best thing a girl can be in this world a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17) which also referring her life

Daisy is actually a very weak person. This is probably due to all the physical and mental abuse she has suffered by her husband. She allows him to have complete control over her and order her around as if she were a small child. In a way, she seems to like that Tom is in control because she never has the burden of making decisions. Because of Tom?s finances, Daisy never is in need of anything. She likes living a life of luxury and appears to be quite happy with her situation. While she may not like the concept of her husband cheating on her, she would never consider leaving him or getting a divorce because of what society would think of her. It is Daisy herself that chooses to remain in a loveless marriage.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896. He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and his parents were both born in Maryland and Irish. You could say he grew up very lower middle class. Fitzgerald’s views of relationships began at an early age. It was interesting because many of his best books came from the idea that women & men relationships is just a game with one person ending up being a winner. He claimed to forever have a jazz-age attitude that would stick with him for life, and it worked. F. Scott Fitzgerald died December 21, 1940 at the young age of 44.

‘Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly...It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it…. High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl….”(Fitzgerald 127). Daisy only cares about what other people can do for her. She wants everything to come to her quickly. When Gatsby leaves for the war, she seems to forget about him and when Tom comes around, she just marries him. She could have just waited patiently for Gatsby to come back and show her loyalty to him, but she changes, like the seasons change. Her voice also has a seductive charm to it as well: “Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat. "These things excite me so," she whispered. "If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I'll be glad to arrange it for you...I'm giving out green−.”(110) She acts like a completely different person then when she talks in front of Tom. This shows her rebellious streak against Tom as he is already cheating on her. Tom is a domineering spouse who wants complete control of the women in his life.This, however, doesn’t justify her cheating on him. Daisy

“She never loved you, do you hear he cried. She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me (Fitzgerald 139)”. Tom is married to Daisy (Lisca). Even though daisy is marring Tom, Daisy has feeling for Gatsby (Lisca). Tom and Daisy relationship is wrong because they are married. People may say that Tom and Daisy does not love each other. When it was

     Daisy falls for the same shallowness that Gatsby does. She doesn’t love Gatsby for who he is—she does like him for his personality, partly, but it’s mostly because he has the money now, and is therefore much more qualified to be with her. Daisy really doesn’t want to be with Tom, for example, “I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband” (p. 76) Jordan says, on how Daisy felt after marrying Tom. She wanted Gatsby. Or rather, she wanted to have a nice husband that would be a caring, rich gentleman. And Gatsby fills that idea up perfectly.

Daisy throughout the novel was part of a failing marriage, specifically her husband affair with Myrtle. In the beginning of the novel, Daisy did not know she had an option to get out of her marriage, and could live a happier life with Gatsby. When Daisy first learned of Tom’s affair, she seemed embarrassed not for him but herself, considering this was not the first time Tom has had an affair and

Desire: As It Relates To Works of Fiction featured in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, Religion and Philosophy

Daisy Buchanan has a similar lifestyle to Tom, she’s wealthy ‘voice is full of money’ and always wore ‘white’ symbolising her purity and wealth. However as a woman of a higher class, there not much she can do in her ‘shallow life’, as she has the money but doesn’t know how to plan events ‘what do people plan?’. This shows that she is not content with her knowledge and understanding of life therefore even with money she isn’t ‘happy’. This leads her to ‘have an affair’ with an ex-lover whom she so adored before she married Tom ‘I did love him once – But I loved you too’. In the novel, Daisy only every seeks true love when she’s with Gatsby but ‘a rich girls don’t marry poor boys’, so due to this social difference between them, she knows the only place she will ever have security is with Tom. Tom describes their affair as a ‘presumptuous little flirtation’ because to Daisy, she knew she was never going to marry Gatsby but to Gatsby it was just never

Tom drained Daisy of all her independence the instant they tied the knot and agreed to conform to a typical marriage. He takes advantage of this situation and not only abuses his control over Daisy, but manipulates her to completely depend on him. Daisy has always been used to someone telling her what to do, and her relationship with Tom is no different. She is not a whole person without him to the point where even, “If he left the room for a minute she’d look around uneasily and say: ‘‘Where’s Tom gone?’ and wear the most abstract expression until she

To begin, Daisy never wanted to marry Tom in the first place as she was always in love with Gatsby. "She is afraid to be out of Tom's presence because other feelings will overwhelm her” (Lathbury 28). Daisy did marry Tom but was scared to leave him during the marriage because she did not want to let her feelings of love for Gatsby to overwhelm her. Daisy knows deep down in her heart her true love for Gatsby. She knows that she never loved Tom as much as she loved Gatsby. Daisy never stopped loving Gatsby when she married Tom, she does not want to leave Tom and have to deal with her true love as she will not know how to explain herself to Gatsby for marrying Tom. Daisy is afraid to face Gatsby, her true and only love, so she tries to keep all her feelings locked inside. Gatsby and Daisy both know that deep down they have always loved each other and no one else. Daisy does not want to cause any issues in her life so she decides to stay with Tom. Daisy should

When they first got married, the love that existed between Daisy and Tom appeared to be true. However, as their marriage progressed, realities including Tom’s multiple affairs depreciated Daisy’s love for Tom and her tolerance for their marriage. Tom’s affairs drove Daisy to start flirting with Gatsby. However, at the end of chapter 7, it started to become clear that Daisy was going to remain with Tom, rather than Gatsby. Gatsby tells Daisy that he wants her to say that she never loved Tom, but she struggles in doing so. When Gatsby says he wants to speak to Daisy alone, she responds, “Even alone I can't say I never loved Tom...It wouldn't be true." (133) This truly hurts Gatsby because she knows Tom will not take care of Daisy they way he would and that he just isn’t good enough for her. Whatever there was between Gatsby and Daisy seems to be coming to an end and Gatsby’s “presumptuous little flirtation is over.” (135) Tom and Daisy’s carelessness to their struggling marriage resulted in the unhappiness and heartache of

On Daisy’s wedding day she shows how she still loves Gatsby even with Tom by her side. In chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby Daisy shows her love for Gatsby. “She wouldn’t let go of the letter , she took it into the tub with her and squeezed it into a wet ball and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw it was coming to pieces.” (Fitzgerald 76) The letter that Daisy had received was from Gatsby . Daisy crying in the tub clutching onto a letter that Gatsby had sent to shows how she is still in love with Gatsby and that Tom does now satisfy her need for gatsby’s love. Gatsby has stopped Daisy from living a blissful life with Tom by intervening the way that he did. “ Gatsby’s inability to appreciate that in the intervening years Daisy could have had an emotional life.”(Parkinson) Daisy couldn't resist the love from Gatsby even though she could have had a better and happier life.

In the novel it states, “Of course she might have loved him just for a minute,when they were first married…” This detail shows that she didn’t actually love Tom, she only wanted him because he was a good match for her. In the novel it also states, “Your wife doesn’t love you, said Gatsby. She’s never loved you. She loves me.” Furthermore, “I never loved him, she said, with perceptible reluctance.” This detail shows that Daisy knew that she didn’t love him for years but, instead, she choose to keep up the lie until she reconnected with

When Tom claims that Daisy actually does love him, he suppresses her opinion by putting words in her mouth to aid his argument. Tom perceives the need that he must speak for his wife as if she can not speak for herself. Also, Tom claims that Daisy obtains “foolish ideas,” and that she “doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He implies that she is crazy and it is understandable that she fools around because of that. This reflects the misogynistic views men had towards women in this time period as they silenced women with their opinions to prove their