Significant Connections

The golden girl is the idea of the perfect girl, a girl with ultimate status, unlimited wealth and incredibly good looks. The golden girl is someone who can get whatever they want whenever they want, it is the perception society places over a specific person and its how society expects that person to act. In reality, the golden girl can never be the perfect representation of what society wants them to be. Fitzgerald uses significant connections within his stories The Great Gatsby, The Jelly Bean, Winter Dreams and The movie (inspired by the short film) The curious case of Benjamin Button; In each of these books the idea of the golden girl is given and each time a character in the story becomes close enough to be with the golden girl but is never able to be with them. The characters cannot be with the golden girl as this is simply an expectation placed on them by society and they cannot truly ever be the perfect girl, therefore, none of the people within the stories can ever be with the golden girl, the theme each of the stories hinges on throughout.

The Great Gatsby

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the idea of The Golden Girl is represented through Daisy. Daisy is rich beautiful and is married to Tom Buchanan so also has high status, she represents all aspects of The Golden Girl and is able to easily pull any guy she may choose.
Daisy is a side character in our story, married not-so-happily with Tom Buchanan, she lives in east egg, a suburb filled with people who had inherited significant amounts of wealth, a place Daisy fits right in representing the enormous wealth of The Golden Girl, something Gatsby quickly recognises, saying “Her voice is full of money”. Daisy lives in a mansion surrounded by butlers and servants to tend to her every whim, representing the high status of our Golden Girl and how above everybody else they sit in terms of class. Finally, Daisy is married to a rich man called Tom Buchanan, throughout the story, she is able to draw in the interest of Jay Gatsby and draws the eyes of all those around her, including her cousin Nick who notes “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth”.
This theme of having whoever represents the golden girl being separate from many of the other character represents the divides felt between who the golden girl should be and how she really is. This theme carries over between Fitzgerald’s texts, like in his short story the Jelly Bean where the Golden Girl is represented by Nancy Lamar.

The Jelly Bean:

Nancy Lamar represents the idea of The Golden Girl in Fitzgerald’s story The Jelly bean. Nancy is a beautiful, easily rich and has a high status within the town, she is able to marry whoever she wants and this giver her power within where she lives. In the story she uses her ‘golden girl abilities’ to woe over our main character Jim Powell, quickly within the story Jim is obsessed with Nancy and they quickly begin hanging our together, even committing minor crimes, such like in chapter two where Nancy gets gum stuck on the bottom of her show and she insists the only way she can get it off is using gasoline, which Jim happily drains from another townsperson’s car without a second thought, almost hypnotised by The Golden Girl and doing whatever she wants, she uses her good looks to create a higher status than Jim and so he does whatever she wants. The Golden girl, within Fitzgerald’s texts, is able to use their incredible looks and money to create their own status over anyone they really want. Of course in this story, like all of Fitzgerald’s stories Jim is never able to get with Nancy, she ends up marrying with a very successful business person in the town an ” individual in white trousers—and all because white trousers’ father had made a better razor than his neighbour” this both illustrates how Nancy is able to marry whom she likes because she is the town’s Golden girl but also shows how Jim cannot be with The Golden Girl because she simply does not exist.
This theme of The Golden Girl marrying away from the main character continues in Winter dreams, a Fitzgerald short story, but in a slightly different way, in Winter Dreams the main character marries away from The Golden Girl, only for her to chase him down.

Winter Dreams:

In Fitzgerald’s short story Winter Dreams the idea of the Golden girl is represented by Judy Jones. Judy is an enormously powerful daughter with incredible wealth and beautiful look, she ends up drawing the attention of Dexter Green.
Dexter is a quiet yet wealthy caddy, living mostly off his dad’s money, he is drawn somewhat close to Judy as the story progresses and ends up catching feelings for the Golden girl- as we see in all of Fitzgerald’s stories- after she asks him to dinner “His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life.” Without talking for long, really only a few sentences and a boat ride after they had met Dexter was already falling in love with Judy, this shows just how powerful The Golden Girl or the idea of a Golden Girl really is.
Later in the story Dexter and Judy move apart, Dexter being wealthy from his dad’s company was different from many of the main characters we see in previous Fitzgerald stories, since Dexter is already very wealthy he is not as drawn to The Golden Girl’s idea of wealth and so he never really gets together with The Golden Girl, showing just how difficult it is for a Golden Girl to stick with a relationship. Another text in which the Golden Girl is represented as something un-obtainable but for a slightly different reason is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

In the film The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, based on the short story by Fitzgerald the idea of The Golden Girl is represented by Daisy Fuller in a slightly different way, the Golden Girl in this text is un-obtainable to the way the two main characters age, as Benjamin ages in reverse to Daisy it would be impossible for the two to truly come together for any reason other than a mostly platonic relationship.
Although both Benjamin and Daisy really do love each other they are both unobtainable to each other and so represent the idea of The Golden Girl.
But the untouchable-ness of Daisy is not the only component of The Golden Girl that is seen in Daisy. Daisy is also a ballerina, someone with high status within the dancing world, not only does this bring up the concepts of status within the movie but the idea that Benjamin cannot be with her. For many years Daisy travelled across the globe and for a large amount of this Benjamin was never able to be with her, either physically or emotionally, this high status and unobtainablilty adds to Fitzgerald’s representation of The Golden Girl.

To conclude Fitzgerald uses the idea of The Golden Girl in multiple texts with different characteristics in each text to portray a larger idea of The Golden Girl using significant connections, in The Great Gatsby we see Daisy who represents the idea that the Golden Girl is rich Beautiful and has a high social status to show how the Golden girl is above anyone else and so is also unobtainable, especially to most guys. In The Jelly Bean, the Golden Girl is represented by Nancy Lamar, she is as beautiful as Daisy, like Daisy she is also unobtainable by guys due to her high social status and monetary worth. In Winter dreams the connections of unattainability with the Golden Girl come in the form of Judy Jones, Fitzgerald shows how she is very wealthy, beautiful and high in social rankings and how still the Golden Girl is unobtainable but in this setting for slightly different reasons. In the curious case of Benjamin Button, the idea of The Golden Girl being unobtainable is still prominent but represented slightly differently as both Daisy Fuller and the main character age differently and so the idea of them being together is unobtainable.
Overall the connections between each of the characters and stories are clear in Fitzgerald’s work to outline what the idea of The Golden Girl looks like, mostly using unattainability to show this, creating significant connections throughout his stories.