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.
‘I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a— of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?’ She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. ‘An absolute rose?’
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!’ in a warning voice. 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.
‘This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor——’ I said.
‘Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.’
‘Is something happening?’ I inquired innocently.
‘You mean to say you don’t know?’ said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. ‘I thought everybody knew.’ ‘I don’t.’
‘Why——’ she said hesitantly, ‘Tom’s got some woman in New York.’
‘Got some woman?’ I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
‘She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don’t you think?’
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.
‘It couldn’t be helped!’ cried Daisy with tense gayety.
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?’
‘Very romantic,’ he said, and then miserably to me: ‘If it’s light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables.’
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.
‘We don’t know each other very well, Nick,’ she said suddenly. ‘Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.’
‘I wasn’t back from the war.’
‘That’s true.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.’ 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.
‘I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.’
‘Oh, yes.’ She looked at me absently. ‘Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?’
‘Very much.’
‘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.’
On pages 14-17 of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes how Daisy’s knowledge of Tom’s affair makes her a more cynical person. First Tom’s butler interrupts dinner to tell him something, after which Tom goes inside, and Daisy follows. While they are inside, Jordan tells Nick that this has to do with Tom’s mistress in New York. For the next several paragraphs after they returned, Daisy remains unhappy, and the situation gets tense once again when the phone rings. Once Tom and Jordan leave, Daisy tells Nick that she feels she had become “pretty cynical about everything” (Fitzgerald 16). In this case, Daisy’s knowledge of the situation between Tom and his mistress ended up making her worse off. Because she never put the knowledge to use try and divorce Tom, the knowledge ate away at her and corrupted her view of the world. Likely, she wishes that she never would have found out, as she would be able to lead a happier life. Daisy then goes on to tell Nick a story about how, when she first heard that her daughter was a girl, she 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’” (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy believes that her daughter would be better off ignorant of the world’s reality than knowledgeable of how it actually is. She does not want her daughter to experience the same pain that she has with Tom’s affair, so she hopes that by being a fool her daughter can lead a happy ignorant life. That way even if terrible things happen she would not know about them. This is a case where knowledge is not always good to have. Sometimes being ignorant is better than seeing reality as Daisy believes would be the case for her daughter.
A similar time where knowledge made me feel worse was when I was 8 or 9 and first found out that Santa Claus was not real. I had gone through my life up until that point ignorant of the truth and was happy believing in Santa, but when some friends told me that he was fake, I was upset. When Christmas rolled around, I did not enjoy it nearly as much knowing that the gifts from “Santa” were actually just from my parents. Since then, Christmas has never been as fun or special, and I wish it had been longer before I found out. I was happier not knowing the truth just as Daisy believes her daughter would be.
The most compelling part of the excerpt is when Daisy says that “the best thing a girl can be in this world [is] a beautiful little fool,” as it has multiple meanings (Fitzgerald 17). Along with describing how Daisy feels her daughter would be better off ignorant, Daisy’s description is also representative of how Fitzgerald portrays women’s roles in the book. The Great Gatsby gives a very stereotypical view of women in the 1920s, showing them as delicate and often under the control of men. A good example of this is later in the book when Gatsby and Tom are fighting over who should have Daisy as neither of them cares about what Daisy would really like. They consider her as more of an object than an actual person with emotions. When Daisy says that the most her daughter can be is a fool, she is describing how the world mistreats women and that the most any woman can be is a fool in the male-dominated society of the time.