Skip to main content

How does George Wilson treat women in The Great Gatsby? What quotes prove this?

The first time we see George Wilson, his wife seems to order him around a bit, and he allows it.  When Tom and Nick arrive at the garage, she says to George, "'Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down.'  'Oh, sure,' agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went toward the little office [...]."  Later, the last time he talks to Tom, he says, "'I've been here too long.  I want to get away.  My wife and I want to go West [....].  And now she's going whether she wants to or not.  I'm going to get her away.'"  At first, then, he seems to implicitly trust her, but once he finds out that she's been having an affair and cheating on him with someone else, he seems to believe that it is his prerogative to take away any other poor choices she might make.  He decides for them both that they are going to move away, and he doesn't really care if she still wants to go or not. 


To be fair, he seems to genuinely mourn Myrtle after she's died, and this implies that he really does love her.  However, he seems very traditional in thinking that, as her husband, he gets to limit her choices.  In order to prevent her from continuing her extramarital affair or engaging in any other questionable behavior, George believes it is his right, perhaps even responsibility as her husband, to remove her from any temptations.


Aside from Myrtle, we don't see George interacting with many other women.  Jordan is in the car when George discusses the move out west, but he's really only talking to Tom.  Perhaps this implies that George doesn't really look at any women other than his wife: while she has been unfaithful to him, he would never dream of being unfaithful to her.  It doesn't seem like something that would ever occur to him.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...