Portrayal of Women in The Great Gatsby and The Castle of Otranto

Abstract

Horace Walpole (1924) creates an interactive heuristic of the novel, which drastically changes the way readers are expected to perceive the novel until its end. The circumstances that he build was of great significance such as helmets falling from the sky and walking portraits as well as places where real people have performed allow reader to act in a real manner. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) wants to shed light on the story of a handsome and inscrutable millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quench about wealth and the obsession for the beautiful lady Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald’s (1925) The Great Gatsby highlighted on the themes of social upheaval, decadence, resistance to change, creating a portrait of the Jazz age or the Roaring Twenties. This paper presents the portrayal of women by comparing and contrasting both novels, Fitzgerald’s (1925) The Great Gatsby and Walpole’s (1924) The Castle of Otranto, in those specific eras. Both positive and negative aspects, attitudes, behaviors of those women will be revealed throughout this analysis. Mostly hardships, torments, sufferings and pains inflicted by men towards women will be elaborated in this paper. The detail analysis of how women are exploited by their men and also their endurance towards this harsh treatment will be mentioned through the references from the novels. Barbaric, brutal and cruel nature of men will be disclosed with the events from the novel and how women become victims of their inflictions will also be illustrated.