Beautiful Little Fool

"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."

In this passage Daisy allows a glimpse into her character when she describes her hopes for her daughter to Jordan and Nick. Although Daisy is not a fool herself, her wish for her daughter to be one is due to the lack of value women received in the 1920's for their intelligence. Daisy implies that a girl can have more fun if she is beautiful and simplistic. After all, "ignorance is bliss". Not to mention, the absence of the father in this scene. Tom is not even pacing the hall with a cigar as the way dads were supposed to back in the 1920's. This signifies how Tom is withdrawn as a husband and fears intimacy as I read about in the psychoanalytic reading. Daisy's weeping shows her sorrow for her daughter who may in the future end up in a relationship such as her own and also her expected disappointment in her husband's lack of appearance. The placement of the word “boy” in the sentence is also significant. Since it comes prior to “girl” it signifies how daisy wanted a boy instead of a girl. A daughter may have had to face the same problems that Daisy endured for years such as her unfaithful husband. In The Great Gatsby era, Women were valued only for their looks and ability to be a good wife. Nobody wanted to hear what an intelligent woman had to say. Daisy wishes for her daughter to be “a beautiful little fool” because that would  make her the perfect wife and she would be able to have a  much better life than an intelligent girl in the 1920’s.