In The Great Gatsby, following the
quote you mention, Daisy shows Nick a bit of herself that she doesn't usually reveal.
She tells Nick how disappointed she was when she gave birth to a daughter, instead of a
son. Daisy shows weakness and despair. She says:
"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel
about--things. Well she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke
up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if
it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and
wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's
the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little
fool.'
Daisy uses this
anecdote to explain why she is cynical. And remember that when she
says:
"...I've
had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about
everything"
Nick
responds:
Evidently she had reason to
be.
Daisy shows despair,
here. Her daughter--born into a male-dominated world--will face what women have faced
for centuries: an existence in which the best and sometimes the only way to improve
oneself socially and economically is to marry a wealthy man. That, of course, is what
Daisy has had to do.
Though Daisy seems to play her
despairing revelation off with a "smirk," and Nick interprets the anecdote and
revelation as an act, it is difficult to not see at least some truth in it. Especially
when one considers Nick as an unreliable narrator projecting his Midwestern values upon
everything he narrates. At least some of Daisy's despair is
real.
Remember, when Daisy ultimately rejects Gatsby, she
does so because he asks too much, she says, because he wants her to say that she has
pined for him for the last five years and that she never loved Tom. And she refuses to
do that. She does not reject Gatsby out of greed--Gatsby has plenty of money, and
certainly has more style than Tom.
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