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Hemingway's and Fitzgerald's Modern Woman

 

            Hemingway and Fitzgerald were keen observers of the changes in women's behavior and they worked enthusiastically to reflect the female's point of view in their novels. The Victorian Era which ended in late 1800s, enforced male dominance and female dependency which led to the inequality between genders. During that period the public and economic world was led by men. On the contrary, women ran the domestic sphere and they had to involuntarily accept that their place was in the home. Typically, women were not allowed to be educated outside of the home and they were expected to serve their husbands, and be the ideal Victorian Women society expected them to be. By the end of this period, women had abandoned their traditional gender roles and in continuance their public power rose. This essay will explore the "Modern Women" which are represented by different female characters in the three classic works, and it will focus on the idea of the "flapper" women, who they were and what they symbolized. Fitzgerald and Hemingway used the narrative point of view to present the important roles of female characters through a central male consciousness in their fiction. This is a way to analyze the evolving women/men relationships, which were certainly influenced by the war and were continually fluctuating between different states due to these changes. The end of the war established a new lifestyle for Americans which initiated an era in which materialism set the tone of the society. .
             In The Great Gatsby we have the protagonist Daisy Buchanan who is described as a lovely, beautiful, irresponsible, spoiled lady, who has shift to a self-fashioning female and is completely dependable on men. The men around her compete with each other to seduce women with their continuously increasing fortune. The novel leaves a disappointing impression because of the behavior of the vague characters who have lost touch with any sort of morality, but through their behavior and thoughts we can define the culture of the 1920s.


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