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Daisy Buchanan Biography & Facts

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 town of East Egg on Long Island during the Jazz Age. She is narrator 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 romantic relationship with Jay Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel's central conflicts. She was described by Fitzgerald as a "golden girl". Fitzgerald based the character on socialite Ginevra King. Fitzgerald and King shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917, but their relationship stagnated after King's father warned the writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls". After their relationship ended, 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. Following King's separation from Mitchell, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with King in 1938. The reunion proved a disaster due to Fitzgerald's alcoholism. Scholar Maureen Corrigan notes that "because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—even more than [his wife] Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan". The character of Daisy Buchanan has been identified as personifying the cultural archetype of the flapper. Flappers were young, modern women who bobbed their hair, wore short skirts, drank alcohol and had premarital sex. Despite the newfound societal freedoms attained by flappers in the 1920s, Fitzgerald's novel examines the continued limitations upon women's agency during this period. In this context, although early critics viewed Daisy to be a "monster of bitchery", later scholars posit that the character exemplifies the marginalization of women in the elite milieu that Fitzgerald depicts. The ensuing contest of wills between Tom and Gatsby reduces Daisy to a trophy wife whose sole existence is to augment her possessor's socioeconomic success. As such, she is 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. New York actress Florence Eldridge originated the role of Daisy on the stage when she starred in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. That same year, screen actress Lois Wilson played the role in the now lost 1926 silent film adaptation. During the subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actresses, including Betty Field, Phyllis Kirk, Jeanne Crain, Mia Farrow, Mira Sorvino, Pippa Bennett-Warner, and Carey Mulligan, among others. Inspiration for the character Fitzgerald based the character of Daisy Buchanan on Chicago socialite Ginevra King, whom he met on a visit back home in St. Paul, Minnesota while enrolled as a student at Princeton. The 18-year-old aspiring writer fell deeply in love with the 16-year-old King. According to scholar Nancy Milford, 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 wrote in her diary that she was "madly in love" with him. During this time, Fitzgerald visited Ginevra at her family's estate in the upper-class enclave of Lake Forest, Illinois. As Lake Forest "was off-limits to Black and Jewish people," the appearance of a middle-class Irish Catholic parvenu such as Fitzgerald in the predominantly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant area likely caused a stir and upset Ginevra's parents. Ginevra's imperious father, stockbroker Charles Garfield King, purportedly told an out-of-place Fitzgerald that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls". After her father's intervention ended their relationship, a suicidal Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton and enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I. While Fitzgerald served in the army, King's father arranged her marriage to William "Bill" Mitchell [wd], the son of his wealthy business associate John J. Mitchell. An avid polo player, Bill Mitchell became the director of Texaco, one of the most successful oil companies of the era, and he partly served as the model for Thomas "Tom" Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Ginevra informed Fitzgerald of her arranged marriage to Mitchell via a letter which he received while stationed in Alabama. According to scholar James L. W. West, "Ginevra's marriage to Bill Mitchell was a dynastic affair very much approved by both sets of parents. In fact Bill's younger brother, Clarence, would marry Ginevra's younger sister Marjorie a few years later." By consenting to marry the son of her father's affluent business associate and thus cement a business alliance between the two powerful Chicago families, an obedient 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 which Fitzgerald described as a disappointment, Fitzgerald continued to yearn for King as an unobtainable ideal who embodied the elusive American dream. For the remainder of his life, Fitzgerald remained so in love with King that "he could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes". Scholar Maureen Corrigan notes 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 1937, King separated from her first husband Bill Mitchell after an unhappy marriage. A year later, Fitzgerald tried to reunite with King when she visited Hollywood in 1938. Their reunion proved a disaster due to Fitzgerald's alcoholism, and a disappointed King returned to Chicago. Her second husband, John T. Pirie Jr., was a business tycoon and owner of the Chicago department retailer Carson Pirie Scott & Company. Reflecting in later years upon her romance with Fitzgerald, King remarked: "Goodness, what a self-centered little ass I was!" She died in 1980 at the age of 82 at her family's estate in Charleston, South Carolina. To a far lesser extent, Fitzgerald partly based Daisy on his wife Zelda. Like Daisy, Zelda hails from a rich Southern family. Zelda was the daughter of Anthony D. Sayre, an Alabama politician who authored the landmark 1893 Sayre Act which disenfranchised black Alabamians for seventy years and ushered in.... Discover the Daisy Buchanan popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Daisy Buchanan books.