“A Love Story: Myrtle Wilson in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby” refutes popular critical belief that The Great Gatsby is not a love story. It stipulates that the book is a love story, but that of Myrtle Wilson rather than Daisy. Unpacking the common view of Myrtle as a vulgar woman who seeks Tom Buchanon for his money illustrates the rampant hypocrisy and gender inequality in 1920s American society. A character analysis of Myrtle explores the right of women to be sexual and shows that this is a quality which society will ultimately seek to downplay or destroy. This paper suggests that the common assumption that Myrtle sees Tom only as a meal ticket denies her capacity as a woman to experience romantic or sexual desire and contrasts this assumption with her gruesomely detailed death scene, highlighting the double standard hovering around women in the 1920s (and now). This section delves briefly into disability studies to explore how crudely detailed descriptions of Myrtle’s body go from being a way to sexualize her to ostracizing her once her looks become incongruous with accepted standards of beauty.
About the presenterDestiny Cornelison
Destiny Cornelison is earning her Master of Arts in English Literature from Georgia College and State University. Her current research focuses on representations of the “other” in long nineteenth century British literature.