The Nameless Woman Myrtle Wilson And The Mechanism Of Economic Exclusion In F. S. Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
Keywords:
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson, valley of ashesAbstract
Studies of the female image in “Lost Generation” prose are normally organized around two positions: the woman who meets the war directly and the woman who experiences it through its social consequences. Myrtle Wilson fits neither. This paper argues that she constitutes a third structural position, defined not by her relation to the war but by her exclusion from the post-war economy. This position is marked in the text by three features: an openly economic account of marriage, the most physically rendered death in the novel and namelessness. The paper also shows that the fates of the four female characters form a single system in which social position, and not personal quality, determines the outcome.
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