Significant Connections

The Idea of the Golden Girl and Time

Introduction: the concept of the golden girl weaves its way through all four of the texts that we have studied, how people grow up affect who they become and who they are throughout the texts. Someone who lives without consequences, unaware of the many bad things that can happen if you make a wrong move, someone who thinks that money and attention can fix up whatever consequences they leave behind them. As desirable as the golden girl is to everyone, no one can have her, cannot contain her and hang on, Gatsby couldn’t have Daisy as he could not recreate the past through her, and Benjamin couldn’t keep Daisy as he was aging backward and thought he would only hurt her if she had to care for him as well as their daughter. Dexter can’t make Judy love him no matter how hard he could have tried, as she didn’t want to love only one man, but still wanted to be loved by all. And finally Myra didn’t want to be ‘caged’ into marriage, she wanted to be free like she was when she was younger, making all of the young college men fall in love. Each one is unattainable to the men who fell for them, the golden girl.

Paragraph One: Gatsby
The idea of the golden girl in the novel The Great Gatsby is surrounding Daisy Buchanan, the girl who grew up in money and in the spotlight of all of the men who surrounded her. To the rest of the world, she is untouchable, the idea of what the perfect woman should be to a man, and to the female population she has a perfect life, from the outside the Buchanans have completed the American Dream. Before we fully understand the shallowness of her character, we think of a delicate, white, blonde woman, but as we find out more of her past, of how she conducts herself through the text, she becomes nieve and self-absorbed.

“They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.”

The Great Gatsby

Despite all of her charm and beauty and innocents, Daisy near the end of the book begins to show her real nature, a selfish and shallow human being that doesn’t know the full extent of how the consequences of her choices affect other people. This is shown by this quote through the symbolism of the white dresses meaning the innocents that they wear are apart of their facade. Following the unlimited devotion shown by Gatsby towards Daisy, you can clearly see that Gatsby’s American Dream is already falling apart, as soon as something even remotely challenging comes up and between Daisy and Gatsby, she doesn’t try to stop it, but he obsesses over the outcome of his life so much that he forgets on how to conduct the plan in getting there, so he strives to recreate the past experiences they had together.

Daisy is the golden girl, the girl that is aloof and self-centered, unconcerned for the lives of others. Her behavior shows throughout the novel to be a personality that thrives on lies, fronts, and pretty things, making her look better and more desirable to the people she wants to attract. Attention is another thing that is all throughout the novel, she is dramatic and emotional, drawing attention from everyone, especially Gatsby.

“Her voice is full of money,”… That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it….High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl….”

The Great Gatsby

Gatsby says this to Nick when they are over at the Buchanans house, with this Nick finally understood how to describe Daisy. She grew up in money and married into money, and with that comes large amounts of privilege derived from the misfortune of others. Consequences are a foreign thing to the richer families living in East egg, the Buchanan’s included.

The golden girl is an idea of something more than ordinary, something or someone more desirable than the lesser product. In the novel The Great Gatsby, it shows this in full, that the advertisement of something better will always get attention and everyone will want that new and exciting product. This product is Daisy, and she advertises herself in a way that she makes herself untouchable to most and to the selected few a treasure to have even for a little while.

Paragraph Two: Benjamin
The Daisy in this story is slightly different from the stereotypical ‘golden girl’ trope, she still has a lifestyle that, on the outside, would look like a dream and completion of the American Dream. But from her point of view, she is just following her dreams and when her leg gets crushed that dream changed into teaching dance instead of dancing herself. Her character isn’t selfish and doesn’t play with Benjamin’s feelings, but she is the golden girl in his perspective, someone he cannot have.

Benjamin is trapped by his past, he still lives in his past as that is all he knows due to how he grew up, all he can think about is how he’s aging backward and he is uncertain about what he can and cannot do in his life. Daisy fixes that uncertainty, because to him, Daisy is the perfect girl, the golden girl, she might not be the golden girl to the rest of the world, be she is to him. He creates his own little illusion over the years out of hope that he can be with Daisy. That they can have a normal life together and sort out his aging abnormality when it starts to get in the way.

When the accident happens and Daisy’s leg is crushed, that almost seems like stepping down from the pedestal of perfect to the world but to Benjamin she just got to have more time with him. From Benjamin’s perspective, love wasn’t something that he could have, but when Daisy said she loved him, love became a possibility to him.

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.”

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

When Benjamin says this in the film inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, he may be talking about the missed, imagined opportunity he had to be with Daisy. His hope of being with his golden girl for the rest of his life was let down by his condition of aging backward. This can also link to time and how it can run out as fast as it is gained, in the context of Benjamin and Daisy, the time that they spent together ran out faster than expected because his aging backward, and Benjamin thought he had to leave to avoid hurting Daisy.

When Benjamin comes home to the Old Person Home, he makes the observation, “It’s a funny thing about coming home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.” This, conveniently, actually happens. As most people would age forward and get older, he got younger and healthier.

This connects him to the thread of time, he knows that he’s changing, fears the change as he can’t experience time the way everyone else does. Whenever he goes on one of the many world trips he sends back postcards to the people he left behind and when he comes back, he knows that he has changed, he enjoyed himself with the exploration but the fear of getting younger haunted him whether he realizes it or not, it reminds him that he cannot have a normal life.

Paragraph Three: Dexter

“My name is Judy Jones” – she favored him with an absurd smirk – rather, what tried to be a smirk, for, twist her mouth as she might, it was not grotesque, it was merely beautiful – “and I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I’m his ideal.”

Winter Dreams

This quote perfectly describes how Judy is right from when we meet her older self, she flirts and projects an image of perfect beauty to draw people in but as soon as they show interest and say that she is their ‘ideal’, she flees and doesn’t think twice about it. She tells Dexter that she doesn’t want to be someone’s ideal and that she wants to be free, as she had just driven out into the lake with her family’s boat spontaneously. This quote also tells of how Dexter immediately views her, pretty and although try she might she cannot be anything but beautiful.

Judy Jones is the most materialistic, selfish, tempter that represents the perfect ‘golden girl’ in her time. She flirts with every single man she meets and keeps a few on their toes, making them wait and love her. Even though she has her insecurities, she cannot get out of her cycle of making people fall in love or simple curiosity due to the length of time she has been doing it. What she doesn’t realize is that she can’t keep doing it forever, she can’t find happiness where she has already caused so much suffering for those that fall in love with her like Dexter. Judy is also superficial due to her privileged background, she grew up in a family full of money and grand parties and balls.

“I’m more beautiful than anybody else,” she said brokenly, “why can’t I be happy?”

Winter Dreams

When Judy said these words to Dexter she tells of a worry that she has been having for most likely a long time due to the fact that she isn;t married at this time in her life, this relates to time, and how it is running out for her to complete her perfectly happy life. Judy is the perfect idol for what a woman should be in image and mind, but she is criticized by older men for being too open-minded and not disciplined enough to hold her tongue. But in some cases, that quality draws in the young men and women alike because she is different. She is well known by the wealthy and by the lower class due to all of the gossips that would come of the large parties her family would throw. But Judy Jones doesn’t have it all as her image would suggest to the rest of society, she has insecurities, and worries, but doesn’t show them until the end of the text when she sees Dexter after a few months when he is engaged to another girl. She isn’t happy, she cannot find love, all of this because she is an image, something no one can have but tries to have anyway, she doesn’t know how to be other than how she was and that is playing with the emotions of the men that fall in love with her.

When Dexter meets Judy Jones and finally starts to court her, even though he is fully aware of the other men she is also courting, he describes her as, an addictive drug, “The helpless ecstasy of losing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic.” This completes her golden image, she gives him and others a taste and then draws away leaving them wanting and needing more.

Paragraph Four: Myra

“You intoxicated me, Myra. It was just as though you were making me love you by some invisible force.” 

Myra Meets his Family

Knowleton says this to Myra after confessing that he had tricked her, and with no encouragement, what so ever, she had him loving her and the idea of her, and her reply was just confirmation on her golden facade, “I was.” Myra is the golden girl, she spent her years playing with emotions quite like Judy Jones, but without the large wealth behind her. She had made a reputation for herself from her earlier years as the ‘party girl’ or the ‘husband hunter’ since she was sixteen she has been enticing the young college men with her beauty and personality.

So when Knowleton Whitney falls for her and she decides to marry him, she knows that she can get any man she wanted, as she said to her friend Lilah at the start of the short story when they were having tea. This is the mindset of a perfect golden girl, she has the perfect image for men to fall in love with and to want to marry. This is no doubt where she got all the engagement rings that she keeps with her, maybe in a box.

“By the way, what are you going to do with all the rings?”

Myra looked laughingly at her hand.

“That’s the question,” she said. “I may send them to Lady Helena Something-or-Other—and—well, I’ve always had a strong penchant for souvenirs. Tell the driver ‘Biltmore’, Walter.”

Myra Meets His Family

At the very end when you just realize that she was playing Knowleton all along, she mentions that she has many engagement rings and another one from Mr. Whitney to add to that collection. With the comment of sending them to Lady Helena-something-or-other, just adds to her fake golden girl image, she’s petty, and mean in some ways.

Conclusion: The concept of the golden girl is classic, it weaves what a perfect woman should look like, be like, and what the image they preserve is the best one. It does not exist, the golden girl is a woman who is perfect, the woman that every man wants in his life, but unbeknownst to the rest of the world, they are fake and do not exist. Daisy Buchanan has the flaw of not being able to see the consequences of her actions, a result of growing up with the money to be able to ignore those consequences. Daisy fell in love with the person who was going to be taken away from her too early and in the wrong body, she was the person Benjamin could never have. Judy Jones was everything and nothing at the same time, she was everything a man could ever want on the outside, but on the inside, she was rather dull and materialistic. Myra was beautiful and cunning, collecting engagement rings as souvenirs and memoirs, her facade built for a little fun to be had with the men who fell for her.

In each one of these texts, there is a golden girl, all of them drawing people in to love them and cherish them, but never being able to be obtained. Over the timeframe of each of the stories, the characters personalities are revealed more and more, the truth coming out in ways you would never expect from them at the start of their characters. at first innocent, and then the more they face hardships and deal with life, you start to see their full personality.