LOVE AND RELATIONAHIPS IN THE GREAT GATSBY

Tom and Daisy Buchanan were married in 1919, three years before the start of the novel. they both come from incredibly wealthy families, and live on fashionable East Egg marking them as members of the "old money" class.

As Jordan relates in a flashback, Daisy almost changed her mind about marring Tom after receiving a letter from Gatsby, but eventually went through with the ceremony “without so much of a shiver”- chapter 4.

Daisy appeared quite in love when they first got married, but the realities of the marriage, including Tom’s multiple affairs, have worn on her. Tom even cheated on her soon after their honeymoon, according to Jordan: “it was touching to see them together- it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers too because her arm was broken- she was one of the chambermaids in Santa Barbara Hotel”- chapter 1.

Neither Myrtle’s infatuation with Tom nor Gatsby’s deep longing for Daisy can drive a wedge between the couple. Despite the lying, cheating and murdering that occurs during the summer, Tom and Daisy end the novel just like they began it: careless, restless and yet firmly untied.

The stubborn closeness of Tom and Daisy’s marriage despite Daisy exaggerated unhappiness and Tom’s philandering, reinforces the dominance of the old money class over the world of Gatsby. Class is a much stronger bond than love in the novel.

George and Myrtle were married 12 years before the start of the novel. In contrast to Tom and Daisy’s unified front, Myrtle and George’s marriage appears fractured from the beginning.

Although Myrtle was taken with George at first, she overestimated his money and “breeding” and found herself married to a mechanic and living over a garage in Queens a situation she’s apparently unhappy with (chapter 2).

Divorce was uncommon in the 1920s and the working class Myrtle does not have access to wealthy family members or any other real options, so she stays married perhaps because George is quite devoted and even in some ways subservient to her.

A few months before the beginning of the novel in 1922, she begins an affair with Tom Buchanan (chapter 4).She sees the affair as a way out of her marriage, Tom sees her as just another disposable mistress, leaving her desperate and vulnerable once George finds out about the affair.

Tom and Daisy can pattern things up over and over by retreating into their status and money, while Myrtle and George don’t have that luxury.While George wants to retreat out West, he doesn’t have the money, leaving him and Myrtle in Queens vulnerable to the dangerous antics of other characters. The instability of their marriage thus seems to come from the instability of their financial situation, as wll as the fact that Myrtle is more ambitious than George.

Gatsby fell in love with Daisy and the wealth she represents and she with him,but he had to leave for the war and by the time he returned to the US in 1919, Daisy had married Tom Buchanan.

By the beginning of the novel, he is ready to try winning her back over ignoring the fact she has been married to Tom for three years and has a child.

Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship is definitely lopsided there is an uneven degree of love on both sides (Gatsby seems much more obsessively in love with Daisy than Daisy is with him). There is also difficulty deciphering both sides of the relationship, since we know far more about Gatsby, is past and his internal life than about Daisy. Because of this, it’s hard to criticise Daisy for not choosing Gatsby over Tom as an actual, flesh- and blood person, she never could have fulfilled Gatsby’s rose- tinted memory of her and all she represents.

During her brief introduction into Gatsby’s world in chapter 6, she seemed pretty unhappy “she was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented place that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village- appalled by its raw vigour that chafed u der the old euphemisms and by the obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand” (chapter 6).

Many people tie Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit of Daisy to the American Dream itself- the dream is as alluring as Daisy but ultimately elusive and even deadly.

Myrtle sees the affair as romantic and a ticket out of her marriage, while Tom sees it as just another affair and Myrtle as one of a string of mistress.

The pair has undeniable physical chemistry and attraction to each other, perhaps more than any other pairing in the book.

Just as George and Myrtle’s marriage serves as a foil to Tom and Daisy’s, Tom and Myrtle’s affair is a foil for Daisy and Gatsby’s. While Daisy and Gatsby have history, Tom and Myrtle got together recently and while their relationship seems to be driven by physical attraction, Gatsby is attracted to Daisy’s wealth and status.

The tragic end to the affair, as well as Daisy and Gatsby reinforces the idea that class is an enormous insurmountable barrierand that when people try to circumvent the barrier by dating across classes, they end up endangering themselves.

Tom and Myrtle’s affair also speaks to the unfair advantages that Tom has as a wealthy, white man. Even though for a moment he felt himself losing control over his life, he quickly got it back and was able to hide in hid money while Gatsby, Myrtle and George all ended up dead because of their connections to the Buchannan.

Tom and Myrtle relationship allows Fitzgerald to sharply critique the world of the wealthy, old money class in 1920s New York. By showing Tom’s affair with a working-class woman, Nick reveals Tom’s ugliest behaviour as well as the cruelty of class divisions during the roaring twenties.

Nick and Jordan are the only couple without any prior contact before the novel begins. Jordan is a friend of Daisy’s who is staying with her, and Nick meets Jordan when he goes to have dinner with the Buchannan’s.

By the end of the novel, Nick sees Jordan as just self-centred and immoral as Tom and Daisy, and his earlier infatuation fudes to disgust. She in turn, calls him out for not being as honest and careful as he presents himself as.

Interesting relationship as it is the only straight-forward dating we see in the novel, and it doesn’t serve as an obvious foil to the other relationship. But it does echo Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship, in that a poorer man desires a richer girl, and for that reason gives us additional insight onto Gatsby’s love for Daisy. But it also quietly echoes Tom’s relationship with Myrtle, since we see Nick seems physically drawn to Jordan as well.

Through his relationship with Jordan, we can easily see Nick evolving attitude towards the wealthy elite while he allows himself to be charmed at first by this fast- moving, wealthy and careless world, he eventually becomes disgusted by the utter lack of morality or compassion for others.