In this post we will explore the character of Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress in the Great Gatsby. I will be taking a look at her actions and how these represent the themes F. Scott Fitzgerald tries to portray. This post forms part of my series of posts celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby.
Chapter 1
We are first aware of Myrtle’s existence in passing when she telephones and interrupts Nick’s dinner with Tom, Daisy and Jordan and Jordan tells Nick that “Tom has a woman in New York”. This does show the gossipy nature of the upper classes and high society that nothing is ever truly secret in those social circles, although we do not meet Tom’s mistress or know her name at this point.
In the second chapter we meet Myrtle properly and she is married to George Wilson who runs the garage in the Valley of Ashes, she is described as:
“[A woman] in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.”
The contrast in the description to George shows that unlike him she has not been beaten down by her situation of living in the valley of ashes, or possibly that she sees her relationship with Tom as a way of escaping her situation and providing social mobility for her out of the working classes and into the elites. This could be further supported by how she orders George around at the garage as if she is better than him – ordering him to “‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’”
The American Dream
After telling George she is going to meet her sister she meets Tom and Nick but at the train station newsstand she buys “a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume.” Town Tattle is a fictional celebrity gossip magazine and Myrtle buying these perhaps shows how she doesn’t fit into the upper classes that she aspires to be a part of but also perhaps how much she dreams of it. This could also show how the American Dream is so elusive and subjective to different people in America, in Myrtle’s case it is to be socially mobile and to climb up to the upper classes of society.
Appearances vs Reality
When Tom, Nick and Myrtle arrive at the apartment they carry out their affair at, Nick notices quite a few changes in Myrtle’s behaviour immediately. When she arrives she gives the neighbourhood a “regal homecoming glance” and gathers her purchases and goes “haughtily in”. In this world with Tom she is able to act out her fantasies of being in the upper classes and acting how she believes upper class people to behave, even if she isn’t in that social class herself.
Once there they decided to throw a party and Nick describes how Myrtle changes her dress to an “elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.” He also comments this dress brought about an even bigger change in her behaviour – that “the intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.”. This description shows how her behaviour becomes more and more out of character and even has a dream-like quality to the description that Myrtle is able to live out her wildest dreams of having power, influence and status when she is with Tom, so much so she seems to become “bigger than the room” and a caricature almost.
However the behaviour contradicts with many of the descriptions Nick provides of the apartment and events that occur. Nick describes the apartment as small and sparsely furnished, so when Myrtle says during the party that she “told that boy about the ice.’ Myrtle [raises] her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. ‘These people! You have to keep after them all the time.’”, implying she has servants, it is pretty clear that would be unlikely given the size of the apartment physically. This highlights how much Myrtle being with Tom gives her what seems to be an ego trip.
Upper vs Lower Classes
Nick mentions a few things that suggest a power imbalance in Tom and Myrtle’s relationship, that whilst Tom didn’t care who knows about the affair, he also frequently left Myrtle alone to speak to his associates, suggesting he doesn’t really care for her. Likewise the apartment is so small that it shows he has a lack of care for her and for her needs.
Nick himself even shows a degree of snobbishness towards Myrtle when he describes her answer to his question “Doesn’t she like Wilson either?’” as “violent and obscene”, it shows Myrtle doesn’t really fit into Nick and Tom’s social classes and to an extent Nick sees her as beneath him too, although this could also be clouded by Nick being Daisy’s cousin too and feeling loyalty towards her.
However the biggest moment that shows the power imbalance between the upper and lower classes is when Myrtle goads Tom by shouting “Daisy” repeatedly and by “making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.” The violence shows the utter contempt Tom has for Myrtle and that he sees her as beneath him and not an actual person he could have a serious relationship or equal partnership with. This in turn shows the power dynamics between the upper and lower classes in America during the 1920s.
Chapter 7
Myrtle’s death
In Myrtle’s final appearance in the novel in Chapter 7 she also meets her untimely end after being killed by Gatsby’s car, being driven by Daisy, in a hit and run.
She appears briefly earlier on in the chapter when Tom, Jordan and Nick arrive at George’s in Gatsby’s car to refill it. George reveals he knows Myrtle is having an affair and has decided to move them both away but he doesn’t know who with. As they drive away they spy Myrtle upstairs as her face had “one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture” and she looks out with “jealous terror” at the car and Nick realises that she has mistaken Jordan for Daisy.
Later on in the chapter, we discover George has kept her locked up in the room upstairs and the two of them have a fight, with Myrtle bellowing “Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!”. She then spots Tom’s car being driven by Daisy and Gatsby on the way back from the Plaza Hotel and runs out onto the main road to stop it. Her death is described very graphically, with her life being “violently extinguished”. Meanwhile her body is described as:
“Still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.”.
This final appearance by Myrtle has a number of symbolic and thematic meanings. George has found out about her moral decay but Myrtle is willing to do whatever it takes to try to escape her current social class and situation and that she sees Tom as her way out. This ultimately leads her to do a reckless and emotionally charged action of running into the road which kills her. However she believes in that moment she can stop Tom and still be in his life which shows the naivety and power imbalance in the relationship, especially with Tom’s actions afterwards which seem to be about saving his own skin and not especially remorseful, even though his actions indirectly caused her death.
The description of Myrtle’s body is also very graphic and Fitzgerald leaves some quite brutal details such as her breast hanging like a flap. This removes any kind of romanticism and glamour from her death and abruptly shows the reader the harsh reality of it. This dehumanizes Myrtle somewhat to the reader at this point and Nick mentioning the newspapers referred to the “death car” adds a salacious but emotionally distant tone, perhaps reflecting how she is treated in the novel by Tom and wider society as an outsider and a woman of a lower class. An interesting observation is this mirrors Gatsby’s death which is described in a much more poetic fashion, perhaps as Nick as a character has a closer friendship to Gatsby or perhaps he saw Gatsby as being more of an insider than he did Myrtle and perhaps shows his biases between the two characters.
Similarly, the depiction of her left breast, breasts being a symbol of femininity and how it is hanging by a flap, perhaps is used to highlight the feminine sexual power she had over Tom during her affair is now meaningless as her body is broken, ruined and exposed in death.
Finally the description could serve as a warning to the reader again about the pursuit of the American Dream and how it can end. In this case Myrtle’s dream was about social mobility but in actively pursuing it it cost her life in a very violent and brutal way. An interesting parallel can also be drawn with Daisy as she is asked by Gatsby to leave Tom and be with him but she refuses, as this would be a form of social suicide costing her her wealth, status and connections. Myrtle’s death could then perhaps act as a warning to Daisy, making her regress and choose the comfortable life of wealth and privilege she has with Tom over risking being ostracized with Gatsby.
Those were my thoughts on the character of Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress in The Great Gatsby. If you have any other thoughts then please leave them in the comments below as I would love this post to spark a discussion about her role within the novel.
