Daisy Buchanan Personality Type
Fictional character in the novel The Great Gatsby
Daisy Fay Buchanan is a fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a wealthy socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who resides in the fashionable town of East Egg on Long Island during the Jazz Age. She is narrator Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of polo player Tom Buchanan, by whom she has a daughter. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with Jay Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel's central conflicts. Described by Fitzgerald as a "golden girl", she is the target of both Tom's callous domination and Gatsby's dehumanizing adoration. The ensuing contest of wills between Tom and Gatsby reduces Daisy to a trophy wife whose sole existence is to augment her possessor's socio-economic success.Fitzgerald based the fictional character on socialite Ginevra King. Fitzgerald and King shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917, but their relationship stagnated after King's father purportedly warned the writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls". After their relationship ended, a distraught Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton University and enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I, while King entered into an arranged marriage with William "Bill" Mitchell, a polo player who partly served as the model for Tom Buchanan. Following King's divorce from Mitchell in 1937, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with King when she visited Hollywood in 1938. The reunion proved a disaster due to Fitzgerald's alcoholism. Scholar Maureen Corrigan notes that "because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—even more than [his wife] Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".The character of Daisy Buchanan has been identified as personifying the cultural archetype of the flapper. Flappers were typically young, modern women who bobbed their hair and wore short skirts. They also drank alcohol and had premarital sex. Despite the newfound societal freedoms attained by flappers in the 1920s, Fitzgerald's novel examines the continued limitations upon women's agency during this period. In this context, although early critics viewed the character of Daisy to be a "monster of bitchery", later scholars assert that Daisy's character exemplifies the marginalization of women in the elite social milieu that Fitzgerald depicts.The character has appeared in various media related to the novel, including stage plays, radio shows, television episodes, and feature films. New York actress Florence Eldridge originated the role of Daisy on the stage when she starred in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. That same year, screen actress Lois Wilson played the role in the now lost 1926 silent film adaptation. During the subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actresses including Betty Field, Phyllis Kirk, Jeanne Crain, Mia Farrow, Mira Sorvino, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Carey Mulligan, and others.
