A Man’s Book: The Great Gatsby and Women

Abstract

Although Fitzgerald was convinced that The Great Gatsby was a masterpiece, and his finest work to date, he worried that its sales would be hurt by the lack of an ‘important woman character’ (Fitzgerald, 1963, p. 180). The narrator and the other main characters, Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, are, of course, men, and the women are defined and characterized primarily in relation to the men. As Fitzgerald himself put it, the women are ‘emotionally passive’ and the novel is ‘a man’s book’ (Fitzgerald, 1963, pp. 488, 173). Because of the strong growth of feminist criticism over the past two decades, it is interesting to re-examine these issues, and to determine the part they play in an overall assessment of the novel.