Fitzgerald writes: "I hope she will be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world , a beautiful little idiot” (17). In literature, women are generally seen as stupid, this dates back to when Pandora was stupid enough to open her box. In fact, a woman is not so much a character as a literary tool whose purpose is to help develop a man's character and whose only meaning is connected with him, alone she is nothing. Women are presented as commodities to be purchased with material goods, essentially selling themselves to the highest bidder. In Francis Scott Fitzgerald's literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, he plays on the classic archetype of the female role using symbolism and allusions to Greek mythology. However, Fitzgerald contradicts this insignificance by portraying women as not powerless, but feigning powerlessness to manipulate and control men such that a man's actions are not her free will, but her own. A desirable woman must be inferior to a man and is therefore dependent. on him for everything because she is considered his property. Just like children, they are seen as helpless and since they cannot take care of themselves, they need a man to take care of them. To reinforce this perception, Fitzgerald describes a scene in which two drunken women are forced by their husbands to leave the party, "both women being kicked up into the night" (52). This creates a very childish image; women throw tantrums because they don't want to leave and so someone has to take them away. Husbands automatically assume they know what's best and regardless, their wishes come first and they want to leave. Daisy plays into this childish character to appear more desirable. This powerless ...... middle of paper ...... in these narrow categories, but a person does not. Behind the personality that a woman is supposed to have, lies the real person who has no gender; Tom, Nick, Daisy, Jordan, Gatsby, and Myrtle all have similar underlying motivations. Everyone wants to be important and memorable: Nick states, “[He] is one of the few decent people [he] has ever known” (59); Daisy wants the status that being rich brings; Gatsby's worst fear is being nobody; Jordan cheats to win a golf tournament; Tom must be superior and in control at all times; Myrtle wears an expensive chiffon dress and describes it as "a crazy old thing", to give the impression that she is so rich that a disguise means little to her (31). Ultimately, men can use women to get what they want, but women manipulate men into doing the same. Women are more capable than the literature portrays.