Daisy Buchanan in The Chosen and the Beautiful: Character Analysis

Overview

Daisy Buchanan, born Daisy Fay, is one of the central figures in Nghi Vo's 2021 retelling of The Great Gatsby. Seen almost entirely through Jordan Baker's eyes, Daisy is Tom Buchanan's wife, Jordan's childhood friend, and the object of Jay Gatsby's obsessive desire. Vo's Daisy is a woman who has made painful compromises—a secret abortion, a marriage to a man she does not love, a buried romance with Gatsby—and who performs the role of the wealthy society wife with a brittle, knowing precision. She is not merely the golden girl of Gatsby's imagination; she is a character with her own history, her own secrets, and her own capacity for decisive, even violent, action.

Plot Role

Daisy is the hinge on which the novel's central conflict turns. Gatsby's entire enterprise—the mansion, the parties, the demoniac, the infernal bargain—is built to win her back. Jordan's narration repeatedly circles back to her: the novel opens with Jordan and Daisy floating through the Buchanan mansion on a clay charm, and it is Daisy who asks to speak with Nick alone, Daisy who wakes Jordan in the night to report Tom's departure, and Daisy whose confession about the fatal accident reshapes the novel's ending.

Daisy is also the character who most directly exposes the novel's themes of performance and constraint. She is never simply herself; she is always playing a role—wife, mother, hostess, lover—and the strain of these competing performances is visible to Jordan even when the men around her miss it. Her decision to drive Gatsby's car home from the Plaza, and her role in Myrtle Wilson's death, mark her as an agent of the novel's tragedy rather than a passive victim of it.

Motivations and Traits

Daisy's primary motivation is survival within the narrow confines of her class and gender. She marries Tom Buchanan nine months after the Armistice, despite her love for Gatsby, because Tom offers the security and social position that Gatsby—a poor lieutenant from a dirt-farming family—cannot. The novel makes clear that this was not an easy choice: the day before her wedding, Daisy is found drunk on Sauternes, clutching a letter, demanding that Jordan return Tom's pearls and declaring that Daisy has changed her mind. She is talked down, bathed in cold water, and married the next day.

Daisy's traits emerge through her actions:

• Performative: She gives Jordan lip color for good luck and dresses in matching white with her, but Jordan senses the gesture is a bookend rather than genuine warmth.

• Self-preserving: She breaks down at the Plaza when Tom reveals Gatsby's infernal bargain, unable to deny that she loves Tom. She chooses the known devil over the unknown one.

• Capable of decisive action: She drives the car that kills Myrtle Wilson, and while Gatsby casts a spell to conceal them, it is Daisy who pulls the still-living Myrtle off the road—a detail that complicates any reading of her as passive.

• Emotionally volatile: She weeps when Jordan tells her about Gatsby's feelings, insists that Gatsby loves her, and asks Jordan to repeat the story. She also slaps Jordan when Jordan reacts angrily to her confession about the accident.

Chronological Arc

Daisy's arc spans more than a decade. In the 1910 flashback, she is a curious, slightly cruel child who calls Jordan a heathen but also sees her as different from the servants. She is fascinated by Jordan's stories of Tonkin and demands a demonstration, which ends in fire and tears.

In the summer of 1917, Daisy meets Lieutenant Jay Gatsby and begins a secret romance. When he leaves for Europe, she locks herself in her bedroom, refusing food and comfort. After the war, she marries Tom Buchanan—nine months after the Armistice—and the shadow of her bad March (the abortion) does not touch her hems at the wedding.

In the novel's present (1922), Daisy is trapped in a marriage to a man who openly carries on an affair with Myrtle Wilson. She reconnects with Gatsby, kisses him passionately in front of Tom, and briefly seems ready to leave. But at the Plaza, when Tom reveals Gatsby's infernal bargain, she breaks down and chooses Tom. She then drives home with Gatsby in his car, and it is she who kills Myrtle Wilson. After Gatsby's death, she confesses the truth to Jordan, slaps her, and invites Jordan to Barcelona with her and Tom—an invitation Jordan refuses.

Relationships

With Jordan: Daisy and Jordan share a deep, complicated friendship. Daisy is the one who included Jordan in her social world, and Jordan covers for Daisy's secret romance with Gatsby. The novel hints at a physical intimacy between them—Daisy kisses Jordan on the lips at the Plaza hotel, and Jordan's narration is charged with a kind of longing. But Daisy also uses Jordan, asking her to keep secrets and to help her with the abortion. When Jordan presses Daisy about the accident, Daisy slaps her, and the friendship fractures.

With Tom: Daisy's marriage to Tom is a transaction. She tolerates his affair with Myrtle, his Nordic supremacy rants, and his casual cruelty because he provides the security she needs. At the Plaza, she cannot deny that she loves him—or at least, that she cannot leave him.

With Gatsby: Gatsby represents the romantic possibility Daisy gave up. She weeps when Jordan tells her of his devotion, and she kisses him passionately in front of Tom. But when faced with the reality of what Gatsby has become—a man who sold his soul to Hell—she recoils. She chooses the devil she knows.

With Nick: Daisy's relationship with Nick is brief but significant. She asks to speak with him alone early in the novel, and she gives him a green ticket at Gatsby's party. The revelation that Nick is a paper construct (the original Nick died before Daisy's wedding) means that Daisy's connection to him is ultimately hollow.

Key Decisions and Consequences

1. The abortion (March 1919): Daisy obtains a secret abortion with Jordan's help. This decision shapes her subsequent choices—she marries Tom, buries her feelings for Gatsby, and carries the weight of this secret for years.

2. Marrying Tom: Daisy chooses security over love. The consequence is a marriage in which she is emotionally abandoned, publicly humiliated, and ultimately complicit in a death.

3. Reuniting with Gatsby: Daisy allows herself to be drawn back into Gatsby's orbit. The consequence is the confrontation at the Plaza, the revelation of Gatsby's infernal bargain, and the chain of events that leads to Myrtle's death and Gatsby's murder.

4. Driving the car that kills Myrtle: Daisy is the driver. Gatsby casts a spell to conceal them, and Daisy pulls the still-living Myrtle off the road. The consequence is that George Wilson, directed by Tom, murders Gatsby.

5. Confessing to Jordan: Daisy tells Jordan the truth about the accident. The consequence is that Jordan reacts with anger, Daisy slaps her, and their friendship ends.

Themes and Symbols

Daisy embodies several of the novel's central themes. She is a figure of identity as a constructed and fragile performance—her performance of wealth and femininity is so complete that even Jordan, who knows her best, cannot always see through it. She is also a symbol of the corrosive power of wealth and class privilege: her decision to marry Tom is a decision to prioritize money over love, and the novel suggests that this choice corrupts everything it touches.

Daisy is also connected to the theme of gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy. Her abortion is a secret she carries alone, and her body is constantly being controlled—by Tom, by Gatsby, by the expectations of her class. Her kiss with Jordan hints at desires she cannot fully express within the confines of her marriage.

Finally, Daisy is linked to memory, trauma, and the haunting past. The bad March of 1919 haunts her, as does her lost love for Gatsby. She is a woman who cannot escape her past, even as she tries to bury it.

Questions and Answers

1. Why did Daisy marry Tom instead of waiting for Gatsby?

Daisy married Tom nine months after the Armistice, after Gatsby left for Europe and did not return in time. The novel implies she was pregnant (the bad March abortion) and needed the security Tom could provide. She chose survival over romance.

2. What was the thing Jordan helped Daisy with in March 1919?

Jordan helped Daisy obtain a secret abortion. The novel references this obliquely—Daisy shows up at Jordan's house disheveled, and Jordan later reflects on the thing I helped her with—but the context makes clear it was an abortion.

3. Why does Daisy confess to driving the car that killed Myrtle?

Daisy confesses to Jordan in Chapter Twenty-Two, after Gatsby's death. She reveals that she was driving, that Myrtle ran into the road, that Gatsby cast a spell to conceal them, and that she pulled the still-living Myrtle off the road. The confession seems motivated by guilt and a desire to unburden herself, though it comes too late to save Gatsby.

4. What does Daisy's relationship with Jordan reveal about her?

Daisy's relationship with Jordan reveals her capacity for intimacy and her willingness to use people. She trusts Jordan with her deepest secrets—the abortion, the affair with Gatsby—but she also slaps Jordan when Jordan challenges her. Their kiss at the Plaza suggests a physical dimension to their friendship that Daisy cannot fully acknowledge.

5. Why does Daisy invite Jordan to Barcelona at the end?

After the confession and the slap, Daisy invites Jordan to travel to Barcelona with her and Tom. The invitation seems to be an attempt to salvage their friendship, or at least to keep Jordan close. Jordan refuses, insisting she is not in love with Daisy, and the novel ends with Jordan driving west alone.

For more on how Daisy's choices shape the novel's conclusion, see the ending explained page, or browse discussion questions for further analysis.