论文总字数：26011字

摘 要

对于《了不起的盖茨比》,少有文章从菲茨杰拉德的妻子泽尔达的角度来探讨小说中所刻画的女主角黛西。从文本上分析,作者笔下的女性人物大多都表现出自私、空虚、金钱至上的品性。从深层次意义上说,这种描写是作者整部小说象征主义的一部分,是他对美国社会精神价值观的严肃思考。论文中指出她们的形象中有所透露出关于泽尔达的影子，更有作为女性自我意识的觉醒，反叛社会对女性传统认识的闪光之处。

论文中将从三个部分展示小说中所刻画的主要女性黛西的形象与菲茨杰拉德的妻子泽尔达的性格不同角度的相似之处。一，泽尔达和黛西相同的出生，二者都有着显赫的家世，这对于后来事情的发展有重要的铺垫作用；二，泽尔达与黛西相似的性格，她们都有相似的性格缺陷，如缺乏独立意识、精神空虚等；三，泽尔达与黛西对待生活的态度极为相似，如只忠实于自己的情绪和爱情姿态。作者对书中女性黛西的描写倾注了他对于妻子泽尔达的爱恨以及当代诸多女性人物的冷静分析，认为她们是社会和男人的牺牲品。同时作为女性，她们在一定程度上有其自身闪光、值得称赞的一面。

关键词：《了不起的盖茨比》；黛西；泽尔达；相似之处

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Zelda Sayre’s Similarities to Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby 4

3.1. The Similarity of Their Family Background 4

3.2. The Similarity of Personalities 6

3.3. The Similarity of Their Attitudes toward Life 8

4. Conclusion 9

Works Cited 10

1. Introduction

During the 20th century, a United States well-known writer F. Scott Fitzgerald writes his most famous novel The Great Gatsby. At that time, because the beautiful language, sophisticated skills and the vivid reality of American society have been portrayed, The Great Gatsby has been thought as one of the twelve American best novels.

Zelda Sayre was the youngest child of Judge Anthony Dickinson Sayre and his wife Minnie. As a child and teenager, she led a wild existence in the quiet town of Montgomery, AL. She met F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1918 and after the publication of his first novel “This Side of Paradise” they married on April 3rd, 1920. Their only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, was born in October 1921. Her marriage to Scott was not perfect, while their antics catapulted them to celebrity status and were fictionalized in Scott’s books; there were also fights, affairs, and constant problems with debt. They moved to several places around New York, St. Paul and France for the first few years. At the age of 27, Zelda began ballet lessons with Madame Lubov Egorova in hopes of becoming a prima ballerina, which at her age was impossible. Beginning in 1930, Zelda would be committed (and released) to several mental institutions after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, the final time committing herself to Highland Hospital in Asheville, NC. In 1932, she published her only novel “Save Me the Waltz”, which was an almost autobiographical account of her life up to that point. She also published a play, “Scandalabra”; several short stories and articles; and she also created a large number of paintings, paper dolls, and sketches which some were intended to be passed on to her daughter and grandchildren. After Scott passed away in 1940, she began a second novel, “Caesar’s Things” which was never finished and covered similar ground as her first book. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald died in a fire which broke out at Highland Hospital on March 10th, 1948.

For The Great Gatsby, few articles analyzed the heroine Daisy from the perspective of Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda. From the analysis on the text, the writer’s female characters mostly show the nature of selfish, emptiness and supremacy of money. In a deep sense, this description is a part of the whole novel symbolism, is his serious thought of America social spiritual values.

This essay will analysis some similarities between the heroine Daisy in the great Gatsby with the most important woman in Fitzgerald’s life—his wife—Zelda. First, Zelda and Daisy have similar family background. These two have prominent family background, it has an important influence for the later plot developing; second, Zelda and Daisy have similar personalities. They all have similar character flaws, such as the lack of independence, spiritual emptiness; third, Zelda and Daisy’s attitude towards life is very similar, such as they only loyal to their own emotions. Fitzgerald’s description of Daisy devoted his love, hate and calm analysis for his wife Zelda and many contemporary female characters, that they are victims of men and society. At the same time as women, to a certain extent, they have their own flash and laudable.

2. Literature Review

F. Scott Fitzgerald is judged to be one of the major American prose writers of this century. This novel described the emptiness and nothingness of American worship of wealth and the unending American dream of love, splendor, and fulfilled desires.

In Love or Money，written by Akinyemi, based on an analysis of the break of Gatsby’s American Dream. From his analysis, we can have a view about the relationship between love and money of the characters in the novel—love is closely connected with money. And then according to the status quo in reality, it draws a conclusion that there is a close relationship between love and money in reality. In sum, it is an analysis of the relationship between love and money in reality according to the break of Gatsby’s American Dream.

In The Colors of Daisy—Further Analysis of Daisy in the Great Gatsby, written by Liu Feng, he thought Fitzgerald skillfully uses his imagination to show the charm of colors. Colors play an important role for characterization and have their symbolic meanings. And Daisy is a very complicated woman in the novel. The analysis of the colors that represents her characteristics and symbolizes her ending would be helpful to understand her tragic.

Another article, New Essays on the Great Gatsby, written by Matthew J. Bruccoli, detailedness described the love between Gatsby and Daisy. Gatsby was in love with Daisy and this is true. Gatsby still loved Daisy after the war and this is true as well. Daisy loves Gatsby and will forever, true again. But the fact is that Gatsby views Daisy as a perfect person and she has to live up to this. She obviously doesn’t but he is too blinded by love to see it. He is in love with a past Daisy that was dead after he left for the war. The present Daisy has a new love and thus brings up conflict. Gatsby is trying to get back this Daisy but it will not work with material wealth because she already has that with Tom. So in the end Gatsby might love Daisy but the Daisy he loves is no more and this new one doesn’t love him with the same passion as the old.

To Daisy, in Poor Little Rich Girl written by Siren Song, most of the trouble comes down to one fact: she’s a girl. In her mind, women (or girls—Fitzgerald never uses “women” when he could use “girls”) need to be foolish. They need to be as careless as Nick ends up thinking that she is, because the world is cruel to women. When her child is born, she tells Nick, she weeps: “‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’” If Daisy had been a fool, she would have accepted her fate. She would have married Tom—her Mr. right, as the beautiful Southern belle that she was; she would have had kids and ignored them; and she would have turned a blind eye to Tom’s philandering with the housemaids. But she didn’t.

Alabama Song (2007) is a French-language novel by French novelist Gilles Leroy. It is a fictional autobiography of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although Gilles Leroy always insisted the book was not a biography but a novel, it relied on a large body of factual research. It won the Prix Goncourt in 2007, one of the most important French literary awards. Montgomery, Alabama, 1918. Zelda, “Southern Belle”, met with the lieutenant Scott Fitzgerald, which have a decisive turning point in Fitzgerald’s life. He vowed to become a writer. Then, there’s a great success with altruistic on his first novel. This couple became the new darling of the New York. But Scott and Zelda are all children. They thrust for the fire of life world, they quickly burning wings. Gilles Leroy slipped into the skin, closer to its joys and sorrows. Paint with a rare sensitivity of destiny. By its writer husband had to fight tooth and nail dismantling. With resume and imaginary elements excellent, Gilles Leroy signs here his great “American novels”.

This essay will analysis some similarities between the heroine Daisy in the great Gatsby with the most important woman in Fitzgerald’s life—his wife—Zelda. Zelda and Daisy’s attitude towards life is very similar, such as they only loyal to their own emotions. FitzGerald’s description of Daisy devoted his love, hate and calm analysis for his wife Zelda and many contemporary female characters, that they are victims of men and society. At the same time as women, to a certain extent, they have their own flash and laudable.

3. Zelda Sayre’s Similarities to Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby

3.1. The Similarity of Their Family Background

Zelda was born in one of upper class families in the south, which are descendants of immigrants from the orthodox Angelo. Although she has similar character with Fitzgerald, and they like-minded, but their relationship was objected by Zelda’s father. Because before Fitzgerald had fame, he is still a “poor boy”, and Zelda is really regarded money, wealth, and desire for comfort, luxury life. Although she loves Fitzgerald, she “do not marry a poor boy”.

Well before she met F. Scott Fitzgerald and became an embodiment of Jazz Age glamour and dissipation, Zelda Sayre was an icon in her hometown. In the genteel milieu of upper-class Montgomery, Alabama, the teenaged Zelda smoked cigarettes, spent more time with boys than was thought proper, danced naked in the lily pond, and generally attracted so much attention that a fraternity sprang up at Auburn University, Zeta Sigma, whose pledges swore an oath of devotion to her. The fraternity was not really serious, nor was it really a joke; Zelda was, by all accounts, the pre-eminent belle of Montgomery. Over the course of a life with Fitzgerald that was marked by glittering wealth, institutionalization, days-long parties and attempts at suicide, Sayre would try writing and dancing, but would leave her most lasting legacy in a body of paintings, most of which were created while she was a psychiatric patient at sanatoriums in Europe and the United States.

When Fitzgerald was young, he desire for wealth, pursuit of wealth, and by having wealth and he got his sweetheart Zelda--the daughter of a judge. Zelda was born in bourgeois society, beauty and rich. Her pursuit of material comforts was the prototype of the female images that Fitzgerald created. From a poor boy became wealthy people, Fitzgerald so that get her love, in order to meet his wife Zelda’s vanity, he tried writing, often stay up all night to write short stories, and earns royalties for luxurious living. He has a luxurious palace style building, at weekend they host large parties, the guests like the cloud.” Men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” He and his wife drinking, singing and dancing, hearty laughter in Paris, Rome, New York and other places with the nobility, all this and Fitzgerald’s stories are similar.

Daisy is from upper class family, and the family circumstances are superior. She is beautiful, and be pursuit among the youth men. Apply Jordan word, Daisy at the age of eighteen, is one of the most popular miss in Louisville. In Nick’s view, Daisy’s face is blue and beautiful. It has a beautiful look on her face, two bright eyes, and a beautiful warm lip. She has an exciting quality voice, that’s all men which dumped for her felt it was unforgettable. However in many suitors, Daisy chose an army lieutenant, a handsome but from lower class young officer Gatsby. In this exquisite matched for marriage, hierarchical entrenched western society, Daisy’s choice is a doomed tragedy for later developing.

Girlhood Daisy should be naive romantic, full of yearning and imagination to the love, wealth let her have a carefree life. But when the First World War, the war fire destroyed the people of all the wonderful fantasy, people lost everything, all the rational knowledge and beliefs collapsed and Daisy also grew up in confusion and uncertainty. In such background, Daisy fell in love with a young officer from the Midwest—Gatsby, but this love is blocked by the Daisy family. Gatsby was ordered to take place in overseas war, Daisy didn’t break up with him, on the contrary, packed up, ready to New York to see him off. But “She was blocked down; she has several weeks without talking with her family”. “She began to feel the pressure of the outside world, so she wanted to see him, feel him beside her, he needs to comfort her, said what she have done was completely correct”. Eventually, Daisy cannot find the power of hope that can support her, she deeply felt the hope is elusive and illusory, she needs some “the real thing” to promise her, but Gatsby is unable to give the sense of security she needed, and she is weak and confused. We shall see when Gatsby was away from her, Daisy waiting for a long time. In the mind and emotionally she has suffered many hardships. Because there is no answer from Gatsby’s returning, coupled with parents firmly opposed, she can’t wait indefinitely. The temptation of material made her maiden peacock restless agitation, resulting in the dim hope foamed burst. She chose “a near power” to fill the loss. It is combined with Tom Buchanan.

3.2. The Similarity of Their Personalities

In a “Fireflies fly” night, a country club dancing party, Fitzgerald met a long hair, beautiful clothes, elegant, sweet voice, beautiful girl. She is Zelda Sayre. Zelda is the youngest of the family; her childhood is doted by her parents. Therefore she was not affected by the secular understanding of bound, she is ideological emancipation, go all lengths, romantic and willfulness, and has a strong spirit of rebellion. Her face is beautiful, and has the incomparable charm. Fitzgerald is one of Zelda’s fanatical pursuers. Not just entranced by her charm, even her rude, selfish, everything but mine ... All the character let Fitzgerald feel have a flavor. He thought the Zelda is his dream shining typical women. So he works all the heroine as attractive as Zelda. Such as the first love of Gatsby, Daisy in The Great Gatsby, her beauty makes her turned into a supreme ideal in the mind of Gatsby. a symbol represents all the good things, a colorful wonderland, in order to recover lost again, to get Daisy, he works hard, earns money, wants to succeed in exchange for a lover’s heart, but in the end he loved, his intellect and even his life dedicated to is just a beautiful shell.

Fitzgerald later wrote in his diary: “I fell in love with a whirlwind, and I have to weave a net out of the mind to grasp it, when my mind is filled with silver coins jingling, like the poor side to a non-stop music box.”

The heroine, Daisy—a symbol of beauty and wealth— is the embodiment of Gatsby’s dream, represents the most beautiful things in the world. She was born in a hereditary privilege, is a beautiful, charming, and a glorious woman, who was the first “great lady Gatsby knew”. She is very clear and bright like silver glow, and enron above poor fierce struggle for life. She has a charming appearance, beautiful eyes, and attractive voice. Her voice can make all men for dumping, “her melodious voice in the rain can intoxicated people”, her tantalizing has magic, and “it can make unconscious hot plastic into shapes”. Gatsby possessed the voice. He seems to have a magic. When Daisy and he reunited, “her voice was sad and moving”, when she visited his house, “With enchanting murmurs, daisy admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, admired the gardens, the sparking odour of jonquils and the frothy odour of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odour of kiss-me-at-the-gate.” As long as she says something in Gatsby’s ear,” he had a rush of emotion turned to her.” If not thorough Daisy’s inner world, only by her appearance, she is a woman of poetic, as if all sunshine were focused on her. Her beauty is enough to move everything. Both of them are beautiful and moving, fashionable and avant-courier, romantic streak. They have full of desire for love, but they do not know how to cherish and how to care others. Eventually, they were self destruction due to trampling other’s love.

But, after a thorough analysis, we will find that this disposition, largely due to the unfortunate marriage to the disappointment of love and, as a result of the reality of the society at that time. On the one hand, Daisy is a clever woman, in the young girl puppy love, love is the highest of the age, she has devoted sincerely love to Gatsby, but because of the fate of playing tricks on helplessly with separate. After marriage she loved Tom, who run their own marriage attentively, have been ruthlessly betrayal, she is the oppressed and the victims of the patriarchal society. In the face of the dual pressures of home and society, Gatsby was sent to the battle front has not come back, she was looking for help but no results, finally can only choose to rich, handsome Tom, hope and Tom marriage can bring her Wonderful Life and maintain their families’ current social dignity. On the other hand, Daisy is the weak of the society, the lack of economic independence. Her marriage as a fortress, as everything to her husband, when she suffered from her husband’s indifference and betrayal in our lives, she can only be indented by selfish and cold cast shell, armed themselves. Daisy is a rich and vivid characters, her husband is a cheating hatred fu, sentient beings there is love, but false, is both practical and romantic, is both an angel and devil woman.

Her beautiful fragrance is intoxicating, but full of flavor and sinful secular. The merciless reality crushed in Gatsby’s dream, have such a description: “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely.” The leaves of the sky, the rose, the sun in the just created grass, this is some what beautiful images, but at the moment to people’s psychological perception is entirely different— and more terrible beauty, because it is “A new world, material without being real.”

3.3. The Similarity of Their Attitudes toward Life

The novel The Great Gatsby is considered to be a record of author’s life experience. Fitzgerald had a strange and long process in love with Zelda, which provides rich perceptual materials especially for the creation of the novel. The character Daisy is actually a true portrayal of Zelda.

Zelda had said: “I wish we could spend July be the sea, browning ourselves and feeling water-weighted hair flow behind us from a dive. I wish our gravest concerns were the summer gnats. I wish we were hungry for hot dogs and dopes, and it would be nice to smell the starch of summer linens and the faint odor of talc in blistering summer bath houses... We could lie in long cotoneaster beams of the five o’clock sun on the pelage at Juan-les-Pins and hear the sound of the drum and piano being scooped out to see be the waves.”

The last twenty’s century is a crazy era. The art unprecedented prosperity, people break the pale. “All the gods were all dead, all wars are all over, all beliefs have finished.” Zelda and Fitzgerald’s life like a play; it is the best example of the flashy age. Their life is a novel. Fitzgerald once said, he didn’t know exactly what he and Zelda are living in reality, or a piece of fiction characters living under his pen. “I don’t know who he is. I also do not want to know who you are.” They spend money like water with their short life.

When other women still wear tights in artist salon, young Zelda freely in a transparent skirt jumped into New York’s famous Plaza Hotel fountain. “I have danced in all the tables of the clubs in Manhattan, and I dressed up to the waist. High racked my legs, public smoking, and chewing gum; drink drunken slip into the gutter.” She is like a tornado, swept over each person by her side.

Daisy and Zelda have the same character: “whenever she wants something she would get it immediately, if not, she will make everyone around her all suffering, no peace. However, in a real sense, she was not been pampered. Her youthful enthusiasm, her strong ambition and desire for knowledge, her clinging faith of vigorous pursuit of romantic love, her courage and honest - these are shows that she is not spoiled. “

They are lovely, elegant, shallow, romantic, with childish selfish. They are obvious parasitical. They just can live better and more brilliant with emotional indifference by relying on other people’s support. Although they have a “romantic” and sentimental charm which is not a quality of life, but an attitude towards life. They are “white” beauties. Their nature is the lack of true feeling. They are typical of the flowers of evil. In their beautiful delicate appearance is strong mass destruction and destruction.

4. Conclusion

According to the social network theory of western sociology, society is a huge network, each person is a member in the net. Different classes of people who are different network space. Love and marriage has a net, too. Dislocation network space will be difficult to draw the eternal happiness flower. There is no doubt that Daisy is the symbol of “American dream”. She is attractive, but no value. She is also selfish and indifference with no sense of responsibility, and she is lack of enough ability. Also do not deserve to act as the incarnation of Gatsby’s ideal. Between love and money, she chose the latter.

Gatsby false Daisy as the incarnation American dream, showing his dream is which money can realize. And the American dream is establishment of secular materialism first shows the symbol of its corrupt nature, and eventually contributed to the inevitable outcome of failure. To a certain extent, daisy’s character has author Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda’s shadow, Fitzgerald has similar experience with Gatsby on pursuit of USA dreams, and he knows the essence of the American dream. He also knows the essence of American woman, which are lack of the spiritual behind beauty, the essence of the supremacy of money. Women of this nature also symbolically represent the cultural values of American society in the 1920 s, and based on the value system of the American dream must eventually burst. Writers through the understanding of ethical values and exploration, to help people in pursuit of life value, save the soul of the self, and to seek the return of traditional ethics, baptism and purify the soul.

Works Cited

[1]Fitzgerald. F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 上海：上海三联书店，2009.

[2]Gilles Leroy. Alabama Song. 作家出版社，2008

[3]Matthew J. Bruccoli. New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Cambridge University Press, 1985

[4]胡敏.《lt;了不起的盖茨比gt;的象征意义解读》. 西南科技大学学报，2006,6.

[5]蒋桂红.《重释菲茨杰拉德的女性观》. 广西师范大学. 2007年

[6]吴建国.《菲茨杰拉德研究》. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，2002.

[7]杨慧群.《菲茨杰拉德的小说lt;了不起的盖茨比gt;浅析》. 江苏广播电视大学学报，2002.

[8]赵金凤.《女性主义视野中的黛西与盖茨比的爱情》.科教文汇，2008.(10)：21-23

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