She snapped them out with her fingers. I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—". Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire.
They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved. What was that word we—". It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.
I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. Do you see? There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose? He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—".
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he? This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words.
Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house. Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh! A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether. Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line.
He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom? The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes.
I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front.
In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee. Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl. You didn't come to my wedding. Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
Would you like to hear? 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. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. 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.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—".
Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—". Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—". I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home.
They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait! Given Gatsby's obsession with Daisy and the lengths to which he has gone to win her, she seems a worthy paramour.
As the story continues, however, more of Daisy is revealed, and bit-by-bit she becomes less of an ideal. Given that she is fully aware of her husband's infidelities, why doesn't she do anything about it? Because he has money and power and she enjoys the benefits she receives from these things, she is willing to deal with the affairs. In addition, when she attends one of Gatsby's parties, aside from the half-hour she spends with Gatsby, she has an unpleasant time.
She finds the West Egg nouveaux riches to be tedious and vulgar, an affront to her "old money" mentality. Another incident that calls Daisy's character into question is the way she speaks of her daughter, Pammy.
Later, in Chapter 7 when Pammy makes her only appearance, Daisy treats her like an object, showing her off for guests, suggesting Daisy's lack of concern for her child.
Daisy's life revolves around Daisy, allowing Pammy in only when it's convenient. Clearly, in real life Daisy isn't all the way Gatsby remembers — but blinded by his dream, he cannot see the truth.
Although Daisy seems to have found love in her reunion with Gatsby, closer examination reveals that is not at all the case. Although she loves the attention, she has considerations other than love on her mind. First, she knows full well Tom has had affairs for years. Might this not motivate her to get back at him by having an affair of her own?
Next, consider Daisy's response to Gatsby's wealth, especially the shirts — does someone in love break into tears upon being shown an assortment of shirts? For Daisy and Gatsby too, for that matter the shirts represent wealth and means.
I think we were getting somewhere during class today when we discussed Pammy as an object. For Daisy, her daughter was nothing more than an object she could show off and display with her house guests at her leisure.
The way that she as an object is cared for in a very negligent manner is just another example of the inattentive manner that the major characters use in handling their possessions and relationships. We find throughout the book that innocence is trampled on for the sake of personal gain and pleasure and what is more innocent than that of a young child. This girl, a mere child, finds her maternal relationship cast aside as she is objectified allowing her to be a symbol of the ever careless relationships found within the story.
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