Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Psychoanalytical Critique of The Great Gatsby

 

The common occurrence of these affairs has caused Daisy to expect them. When Tom tells her he wants to eat supper with a group of strangers at Gatsby's party, rather than with her, because he finds one of the men amusing, she immediately realizes that her husband is pursuing another women. She offers him her "little gold pencil" in case he wants to "take down any addresses," and "she looked around after a moment and told Nick that the girl was 'common but pretty'" (Fitzgerald, p. 112).
             It takes longer to see Daisy's fear of intimacy come out in the story, but when it does, it is just as intense as Tom's. Her faithfulness and her distress over Tom's affair with Myrtle, might suggest that she desires emotional intimacy with her husband. This appearance is demonstrated by Jordan's description of Daisy after her honeymoon reinforces this interpretation:.
             I'd never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she'd look around uneasily and say "where's Tom gone?" and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight (Fitzgerald, p.81).
             After, looking into the history of Tom and Daisy's relationship there is a completely different story portrayed about her love for her husband. It is obvious that Daisy didn't love Tom when she married him because she tried to call off the wedding the evening before when she'd received a letter from Gatsby. Her behavior after reading the letter suggests that she married Tom to keep herself from loving Gatsby; who she felt she had gotten too attached for her own comfort. Why else would she marry Tom, when she obviously preferred Gatsby? Three months after the wedding she suddenly seemed obsessively loving of her new husband.


Essays Related to Psychoanalytical Critique of The Great Gatsby