In The Great Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson represents the dependent role of women in the 1920s.
Myrtle is George Wilson’s wife and Tom Buchanan’s mistress. She is an uneducated woman trapped in a loveless marriage.
Myrtle is desperate for attention and believes that having an affair with Tom will make her feel better about herself.
Here are some of the best Myrtle Wilson quotes in The Great Gatsby:
The Great Gatsby Quotes With Page Numbers
Myrtle Wilson Character Analysis
Myrtle Wilson is a prominent character in “The Great Gatsby.” As depicted, she is a woman in her middle thirties with a sensual aura. Despite being stout, she possesses an overwhelming vitality that speaks volumes about her character.
Myrtle is married to George Wilson, a man she deems unsophisticated and unknowing about the simple realities of life.
This judgment shines a spotlight on her aspiration to a certain social elevation and refinement that her marital life seems not to provide.
Myrtle’s relationship with Tom Buchanan reveals her desire for a more opulent lifestyle than her current circumstances. This relationship is her means of transcending the limitations of her life.
Her transformation whenever she changes her attire is also notable. When she dresses in her cream-colored chiffon dress, Myrtle transforms into a woman of impressive hauteur.
Her personality and demeanor shift, and she becomes more assertive and commanding in a room. This transformation highlights her desire to fit in and be a part of a remarkable and influential world.
Her disregard for the lower orders exhibits her need for higher-class recognition. Her constant need to maintain order and control, specifically with the people she considers below her, reveals an elitist predisposition.
Myrtle’s dissatisfaction with George is evident in her disrespectful comment that George wasn’t “fit to lick her shoe” and in her regret for marrying him. These comments clearly express her dissatisfaction with her marriage and her life situation.
As the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that Myrtle is captivated by materialism. When recounting her early memories with George, she admits that she was swayed by George’s borrowed suit and patent leather shoes, which falsely presented him as a man of means.
A tragic aspect of Myrtle’s character is revealed in her dishonesty and denial. Despite her extramarital affair, she vehemently defends her actions and lies about her affairs with Buchanan.
Her intense excitement and fascination with Buchanan’s attention are, in several ways, indicative of her shattered realities and dreams.
Consequently, Myrtle’s character illustrates a complicated representation of aspiration, class distinction, and moral judgment in the novel “The Great Gatsby.” Her tragic end illustrates the repercussions of pursuing ill-founded dreams and lust for a materialistic lifestyle.
Myrtle Wilson Quotes With Page Numbers
“The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 19
“Then I heard footsteps on the stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She (Myrtle) was 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. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrtle), Chapter 2, Page 20
“‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity – except his wife, who moved close to Tom.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Characters: Nick Carraway as the narrator and George Wilson about Myrtle), Chapter 2, Page 20
“He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Tom Buchanan about George and Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 21
“Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. 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.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrlte), Chapter 2, Page 23
“I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. “These people! You have to keep after them all the time.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 24
“I married [George] because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Pages 25-26
“I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out…I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried…all afternoon.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 26
“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.’”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 26
“Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name.
‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’ shouted Mrs. Wilson. ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai – ‘
Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.”~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 27
“Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrtle), Chapter 4, Page 44
“He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrtle), Chapter 7, Page 77
“Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t working he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colorless way. He was his wife’s man and not his own.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about George and Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 7, Page 85
“‘Beat me!’ he heard her cry. ‘Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!’”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 7, Page 85
“Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, 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 for so long.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrtle), Chapter 7, Page 85
“‘I spoke to her,’ he muttered, after a long silence. ‘I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window’ – with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it – ‘and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’
Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.
‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson.
‘That’s an advertisement,’ Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: George Wilson about Myrtle), Chapter 8, Page 98
“Most of those reports were a nightmare – grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade – but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too – looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man ‘deranged by grief,’ in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Nick Carraway as the narrator about Myrtle), Chapter 9, Page 100
“He broke off defiantly. ‘What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.’
There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn’t true.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Character: Tom Buchanan about Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 9, Page 109
Myrtle Wilson description quotes
“the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was 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-dechine, 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. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Nick Carraway as the narrator), Chapter 2, Page 20
“My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 23
What does Myrtle Wilson symbolize?
Myrtle Wilson symbolizes the pressure of society’s materialism and social standing on individuals.
She represents the struggle of low- to middle-class women and how society favors the elite while oppressing those with lower social standing and fewer financial resources. Her death speaks to the tendency of society to favor the wealthy at the expense of the lower classes.
Myrtle Wilson voice description
“Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Nick Carraway as the narrator), Chapter 2, Page 20
“My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 23
Tom and Myrtle quotes
“‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity – except his wife, who moved close to Tom.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Characters: Nick Carraway as the narrator and George Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 20
“Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name.
‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’ shouted Mrs. Wilson. ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai – ‘
Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 27
What is a memorable quote from Myrtle Wilson?
All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.’”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Myrtle Wilson), Chapter 2, Page 26
What is Myrtle’s death quote?
“The “death car.” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for amoment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Michaelis wasn’t even sure of its color — he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, (Nick Carraway as the narrator), Chapter 7, Page 85
What does Myrtle say about Daisy in Chapter 2 quote?
In Chapter 2 of The Great Gatsby, Myrtle argues with Tom about Daisy. She exclaims, “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! And Da-” before Tom breaks her nose with his open hand. This quote shows that Myrtle has no respect for Daisy and is willing to mention her name despite Tom’s objections.
It also highlights Tom and Myrtle’s abusive relationship, where Myrtle is treated as an object and not given the respect she deserves.
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