Quote 43
Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately – and the decision must be made by some force – of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality – that was close at hand. (8.19)
You get the feeling that Fitzgerald thinks that women are fundamentally incapable of making up their minds, and so they have to have some dude do it for them. In that way, The Great Gatsby is really about the fight between Gatsby and Tom: whose vision of America is going to win?
Quote 44
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete. (8.112-114)
Myrtle's already dead, but we have to wonder: would Wilson have killed her, too? Is he avenging his wife's honor—or her death?
Quote 45
The fact that he had one [a mistress] was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomever he knew. (2.3-4)
Tom is just the worst. It's one thing to have a mistress; it's quite another to embarrass your wife and friends by rubbing that mistress in their face. Right? Right.