The Great Gatsby: What Makes Daisy So Attractive?
“Her voice is full of money” (Fitzgerald, 120). This quote, said by important personality Gatsby, explains Daisy’s character and demeanor. Daisy Buchannan is one of the main characters in the novel The Great Gatsby. The wife of Tom Buchannan and the dream of Jay Gatsby, Daisy embodies the immoral and shallow values of the upper class East Egg. Although she is not very sincere, to most Daisy is attractive, beautiful, and sexy.
What makes Daisy so inviting? She makes a man improve for her in order to get what they want, she has standards and she wants the best, and only the best. Since the beginning, Jay Gatsby has been madly in love with Daisy, or the thought of Daisy. Gatsby only knew Daisy for one month before he was deployed to war. Is one month enough to fall in love with someone? Five years later, Gatsby still believed that he was in love, and he conceived a new persona to make Daisy come back to him after she married Tom. “You’re acting like a little boy…. ” (Fitzgerald, 88).
This was a quote that the narrator, Nick Caraway, said to Gatsby about how he was acting around Daisy. Jay Gatsby knew to get Daisy back he would need to become the absolute best, the richest, the most handsome, and the most charming. It might have been the challenge of being superior to the rest that was so appealing to Gatsby or it could have been Daisy’s dead-as-a-doorknob personality. The real question is, Is Daisy worth it? What makes Daisy so appealing to smart men such as Gatsby? Is it the challenge of becoming the best, or is it something else?
Jay Gatsby wasn’t the only one who thought Daisy was worth more than perceived. Her husband, Tom Buchannan also believed that Daisy was a prize. To Tom, it seemed, that Daisy was a trophy wife, someone he could show off, not care about, come back, and she would still be there. What brought them together was money, the thing that they both loved and had in common. Nick summed up her love for money well, “She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force, of money…” (Fitzgerald, 151).
Daisy didn’t care about who she loved more when she had to pick Tom or Gatsby; she cared about the money while she was making one of the biggest decisions of her life. To Tom, Daisy was a beautiful woman who he would love to have for his wife. Tom and Daisy were alike in that way, neither of them cared about personality or values; they cared about their reputation. It wasn’t Daisy’s disposition that made Tom marry her; it was her looks and reputation that he found attractive. Daisy Buchannan wasn’t one of the brightest aristocrats in East Egg to say the least.
Her ditzy nature might have been cute to some, but it was obvious that it was more than just a darling quality. Daisy had no common sense, if a man was looking for just looks (like Tom), Daisy was the girl to go to. Her comment to Gatsby, “I’d like to just get one of those pick clouds and put you in it and push you around” (Fitzgerald, 94) made readers re-think why Jay Gatsby would be so far in love with her. “She never loved you, do you hear? She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. ” (Fitzgerald, 130).
There must have been something special about Daisy for Tom Buchannan and Jay Gatsby to have such strong feelings for her. Whether it was her looks, her dimwits, or her money she had what other women would die for, two of the richest and most known men in East Egg fighting over her. What makes Daisy Buchannan so attractive? To some, it’s her looks, the thought of what she might be like, to others it’s her money or her innocent ditz, and certain people might even find her repulsive. The readers of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby will take strong stands on Daisy and her character.
