Date of Award
5-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
English
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Laura Nicosia
Committee Member
Melinda Knight
Committee Member
David Galef
Abstract
Daisy Fay Buchanan has been a heroine of American literature for one-hundred years now, but the scholarship surrounding her character has been limited to a fixed idea of her that many scholars refuse to stray away from. Though the racial dynamics of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby have been analyzed at length, they have rarely been done so in a thorough manner regarding Daisy Buchanan. In this study, I explore this gap by engaging in a close-reading of the text with the approach that Daisy is a white-passing mixed-race woman. I build upon studies by scholars like Carlyle Van Thompson who originally opened the possibility of white-passing characters in The Great Gatsby, but I remain focused on Daisy as the white-passing individual within the novel. Through my close-reading and analysis of historical context, I intend to reawaken the conversations on The Great Gatsby and open minds to the possibility that Daisy Buchanan is not at all who we’ve been taught she is.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Ramirez, Sarah Nicole, ""I'll Tell You a Family Secret": Daisy Buchanan Passing as White in The Great Gatsby" (2025). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1561.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1561
Included in
American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons