Daisy Fay Buchanan ( ) is a fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a wealthy socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who resides in the fashionable, "old money" town of East Egg on Long Island, near New York City, during the Jazz Age. She is Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of polo player Tom Buchanan, with whom she has a daughter. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romance with Jay Gatsby while he was stationed at nearby Camp Taylor. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom becomes the novel's central conflict.
Fitzgerald based the character on socialite Ginevra King, with whom he shared a romance from 1915 to 1917. Their relationship ended after King's father purportedly warned the writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls", and a heartbroken Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I. While Fitzgerald served in the army, King's father arranged her marriage to Bill Mitchell, a polo player who partly served as the model for Tom Buchanan. After King's separation from Mitchell, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with King in 1938, but his alcoholism doomed their reunion. Scholar Maureen Corrigan states that Ginevra, far more than Fitzgerald's wife Zelda, became "the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".
Scholars identify Daisy as personifying the cultural archetype of the flapper, young women who bobbed their hair, wore short skirts, drank alcohol and engaged in premarital sex. Despite the new societal freedoms attained by women in the 1920s, Fitzgerald's novel examines the continued limitations on their agency during this period. Although early critics viewed Daisy as a "monster of bitchery", later scholars posited that Daisy exemplifies the marginalization of women in the elite milieu that Fitzgerald depicts. The contest of wills between Tom and Gatsby reduces Daisy, described by Fitzgerald as a "golden girl", to a trophy wife whose sole existence is to augment her possessor's status, and she becomes the target of both Tom's callous domination and Gatsby's dehumanizing adoration.
The character has appeared in various media related to the novel, including stage plays, radio shows, television episodes, and films. Actress Florence Eldridge originated the role of Daisy in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel, on the stage at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. That same year, Lois Wilson played the role in the now lost 1926 silent film adaptation. During the subsequent decades, many actresses have played the role, including Betty Field, Phyllis Kirk, Jeanne Crain, Mia Farrow, Mira Sorvino, Carey Mulligan, and Eva Noblezada, among others.
Inspiration for the character Ginevra King
Fitzgerald primarily based the character of Daisy Buchanan on Chicago socialite Ginevra King.: Fitzgerald's "longing for Ginevra went into Gatsby's timeless and untouchable love for Daisy Fay".: "Daisy is the most significant literary incarnation of Ginevra, but almost all of the elusive socialite teases in his other novels and short stories bear strong resemblances to her." While a Princeton sophomore, the 18-year-old aspiring writer fell in love with the 16-year-old King during a visit to his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota. At the time, Ginevra was "a rich and wildly popular visitor from Chicago, who at sixteen had the social ease of a young duchess. A beauty with dark curling hair and large brown romantic eyes, she had an air of daring and innocent allure. To Fitzgerald, Ginevra King was the embodiment of a dream, and he was immediately and completely captivated."
Fitzgerald and King shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917, and King declared herself to be "madly in love" with him.: Ginevra wrote in her diary that she was "madly in love with" Fitzgerald: "Oh it was so wonderful to see him again," she wrote on February 20, 1916, "I am madly in love with him. He is so wonderful". During this time, Fitzgerald visited Ginevra at her family's estate in the upper-class enclave of Lake Forest, Illinois.: "Lacking the outward signs of high status that the landed nobility of Europe once enjoyed, wealthy American families have long maintained social distance from the 'common people' by withdrawing into upper-class enclaves. Often located on forested hills far from the stench and noise of the industrial districts, places like Greenwich, Connecticut; Lake Forest, Illinois; and Palm Beach, Florida, are 'clear material statement[s] of status, power, and privilege.'" As Lake Forest socially excluded non-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant residents, the presence of a middle-class Irish Catholic parvenu such as Fitzgerald in this milieu likely caused a stir and upset Ginevra's parents.: "Boundaries have always been paramount in Lake Forest. The town was off-limits to Black and Jewish people for decades, and even during the First World War a middle-class Catholic like Fitzgerald showing up could have caused a stir." Ginevra's imperious father, Charles Garfield King, purportedly told Fitzgerald that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls".
After her family's intervention ended their relationship, a heartbroken Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton and enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I.: "Like all infantry lieutenants at the time, Fitzgerald expected to be killed in battle. He began writing a novel in training camp, hoping to leave evidence of his genius." While he served in the army, King informed him by letter that her father had arranged her marriage to , the son of his business associate John J. Mitchell.: "On July 15, 1918, [Ginevra] writes to tell [Fitzgerald] that on the following day she will announce her engagement to William Mitchell, in what her granddaughter believes was something of an arranged marriage between two prominent Chicago families.": "A year later Ginevra wrote that she was engaged to Bill Mitchell, another wealthy young Chicagoan who was the son of a business associate of her father's. She said she wanted Fitzgerald to be the first to know." An avid polo player, Bill Mitchell became the director of Texaco, one of the most successful oil companies, and he partly served as the model for Tom Buchanan.
According to scholar James L. W. West, Ginevra's arranged marriage to Bill Mitchell functioned as a dynastic union between two wealthy Chicago families, and Bill's brother Clarence likewise married Ginevra's sister Marjorie. By consenting to marry the scion of her father's business partner in order to cement an alliance between two powerful Chicago families, Ginevra "made the same choice Daisy Buchanan did, accepting the safe haven of money rather than waiting for a truer love to come along."
Despite his later marriage to Zelda Sayre,: Fitzgerald wrote in 1939, "You [Zelda] submitted at the moment of our marriage when your passion for me was at as low ebb as mine for you. ... I never wanted the Zelda I married. I didn't love you again till after you became pregnant.": "Victory was sweet, though not as sweet as it would have been six months earlier before Zelda had rejected him. Fitzgerald couldn't recapture the thrill of their first love". Fitzgerald continued to yearn for King as an unobtainable ideal who embodied the American dream. For the remainder of his life, he remained so in love with King that "he could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes".: "Ginevra gave substance to an ideal Fitzgerald would cling to for a lifetime; to the end of his days, the thought of her could bring tears to his eyes." Scholar Maureen Corrigan wrote that "because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—even more than Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan". In subsequent years, Fitzgerald's rejection by Ginevra fueled his incipient alcoholism.: "Rejected by Ginevra, he consoled himself with gin and became an alcoholic."
In 1937, King separated from Bill Mitchell after a tumultuous and unhappy marriage. A year later, Fitzgerald tried to reunite with King when she visited Hollywood, California, in 1938. The reunion, long anticipated by Fitzgerald, proved to be a disaster due to his alcoholism, and a disappointed King returned to Chicago. Reflecting in later years on her romance with Fitzgerald, a contrite King described her younger self as "too much in love with love to think of consequences" and as a "thoughtless," "self-centered little ass". She died in 1980 at the age of 82 at her family's estate in Charleston, South Carolina.
Zelda Sayre
To a far lesser extent, Fitzgerald partly based Daisy Buchanan on his wife Zelda Sayre, a Southern belle who reminded him of Ginevra. Like Daisy, Zelda came from a rich Southern clan. Zelda grew up in the heart of the Jim Crow South's white supremacist establishment and revered the Confederate States of America. Her father's uncle, U.S. Senator John Tyler Morgan, reigned as the Grand Dragon of Alabama's Ku Klux Klan. Her father, Anthony D. Sayre, an Alabama politician, authored the law that disenfranchised black voters and inaugurated the state's racially segregated Jim Crow era.: "Zelda Fitzgerald's parents were white supremacists according to Sam Lanahan, Scott and Zelda's grandson."
A staunch neo-Confederate,Per , quoting Zelda's friend Eugenia Tuttle, "We were brought up on the Confederacy. It meant more to us than almost anything else did". Zelda venerated her white supremacist father who, as a legislator and judge, embodied the "categorical imperatives of Confederate ethics" and served as "one of the sturdiest pillars" of Alabama's racial hierarchy. Embracing her family's white supremacist beliefs, Zelda described herself as "a Typhoid Mary of Confederate tradition" in Scott's "decadent world".
Like Daisy, Zelda's youth exemplified Southern "white girlhood." During her youth in Jim Crow Alabama, Zelda grew up immersed in "the white romanticism of antebellum plantation life built on slavery", and she lived a privileged existence free of any responsibilities with her every whim gratified by African American servants. Accustomed to black servants catering to her every need, an adult Zelda showed little competence in managing ordinary responsibilities, from money matters to daily tasks.
Living in a racially segregated society where the lynchings of African Americans often occurred, Zelda never questioned the brutality and injustice of her milieu. Her love for the Jim Crow South caused friction in her marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald who disdained both the region and the Confederacy. Over time, Zelda's political views evolved from neo-Confederate beliefs toward an espousal of fascism as a political creed.: "Zelda was taken with the idea of Fascism as a way of holding everything together, of ordering the masses.... She joined every organization she could 'to keep things from falling apart and to keep the finer things from being lost or extinguished.'": "...she became a proponent of fascism..." Likely due to Zelda's Southern upbringing, her daughter Scottie Fitzgerald described the character of Daisy Buchanan as having an "intensely Southern nature".
Daisy's remark, "I hope she'll be a fool... a beautiful little fool", is partly attributable to Zelda, although Scott authored the additional observation, "That's the best thing a girl can be in this world". After the birth of his daughter Scottie in October 1921, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald heard his anesthetized wife murmur: "Oh God, goofo I'm drunk. Mark Twain. Isn't she smart—she has the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool."