Still on my Daisy killed Myrtle on purpose agenda. Like is there any proof in the book itself? No. Does it make the story so so much more impactful? Absolutely.
No you’re right and you should say it. Is there proof for it? No. But is it suggested? Absolutely.
“Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back.”
Fitzgerald is a very deliberate writer and he very specifically tells us that Daisy swerves toward Myrtle, not away. Gatsby offers us a plausible alternative, but also he is clearly deluding himself about Daisy this entire scene. He’s worried that Tom will hurt Daisy and he’s sure that she’ll run away with him soon when in reality Tom and Daisy are more united than we’ve yet seen them. Gatsby is also shown to be concerned with Daisy’s wellbeing over his own and over any concerns for Myrtle. Gatsby could be right, but it would be more consistent with the entire scene if he were bending over backwards to excuse Daisy’s actions and make her the innocent victim in the situation.
It’s also consistent with Daisy’s characterization overall. Daisy is one of the most ambiguous characters in the book because Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby all have Nick as a confidant at different points but Daisy never really does. The best glimpse we get of Daisy is when she talks privately with Nick in chapter 1. She goes on this little monologue about being cynical and what she thinks of the world and then when she finishes Nick’s narration says, “The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.” This is the same conversation where we get her most famous line “I hope she’ll be a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” Later in chapter 4 Jordan tells us “[Tom and Daisy] moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.” These three quotes tell us that Daisy is very careful about controlling how she is perceived by other people, and she’s very good at shifting how they think of her. The first indicates that underneath it all, she’s actually more like Tom than most characters (or readers) would initially believe. And the second tells us how she most often presents herself. Daisy puts forth an image of naïve innocence but it’s an act to protect herself. Daisy plays the fool but there are indications from the start that she knows a lot more than she lets on. Chapter 1 it’s clear that she knows Tom is having an affair, it’s just left ambiguous exactly how much she knows about it. It’s never shown that she knows who Tom is having an affair with but it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume she did. After all, the fool is just an act.
And Daisy’s facade is the main point of her character. Her controlling symbol is a daisy. On the outside it’s white, representing this sort of innocence or perfection. Daisy’s surrounded by white– white dresses, white curtains, a white house, a white car, white pearls. But a daisy’s center is yellow– the color representing wealth in the book. And that wealth is almost always harmful: like the yellow car that runs down Myrtle. Daisy’s purity is a veneer. At her core, the only real substance to her is her wealth. That’s why through all the book, we hear about Daisy’s alluring voice. It’s almost magical. Everybody loves her voice. Then at the climax in chapter 7, Gatsby pinpoints what that allure is: “her voice is full of money”. It’s not magical at all. She’s just rich and that’s the sum total of her appeal. And in this book, wealth is used to destroy other people.
So, Fitzgerald very deliberately raises the question throughout the book about how much Daisy knows about who Tom’s affair is with. He has Daisy tell us that she pretends to be a fool because that’s how she gets through her marriage, but suggests that she knows a lot more than she lets on, and reinforces this with little asides from Daisy throughout the book. Our initial introduction to Daisy drops the idea that Daisy and Tom are more alike than they first appear, and then the book ends with them as a united front. Fitzgerald also pointedly hints at not only the possibility that Daisy intentionally hit Myrtle, but also paints a pretty clear picture of Gatsby as someone who can’t see Daisy for what she really is. The book’s color symbolism links Daisy’s core personality to the car (the murder weapon).
In conclusion, it is very much Fitzgerald’s intention for the reader to see Daisy intentionally running down Myrtle as at least a very tangible possibility.
AAAAHHHH THANK YOU THIS IS ALL SO TRUE.
Also what you say with the idea that Tom and Daisy are more alike than appears, do you reckon that could also indicate that she did it on purpose given that Tom sends Myrtle’s husband to Gatsby this effectively killing him?
ooh yes! The ending is Tom and Daisy drawing together so their actions fall into parallel, revealing what Gatsby and a lot of the others missed: that they’re the same. And with both of them, it’s not really a premeditated thing. Myrtle runs into the road and Daisy is highly emotional and just reacts. Wilson shows up at Tom’s house with a gun and Tom just on the spur of the moment decides to point him in Gatsby’s direction. Because they’re careless and selfish more than malicious.
And on the idea of them being alike– Tom is brutish and violent because he can be. Daisy doesn’t have the same luxury since she doesn’t have the same physical power (being a woman) or the same social power (being a woman in the 20s) so she compensates through manipulation and money and her charm and beauty. But while the expression of it tends to make it look like they’re opposites, the core nature is the same. The car accident is just the first opportunity Daisy has to express herself violently the way that Tom does.
