Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are introduced as characters in
Chapter Two of The Great Gatsby; Nick describes George Wilson as
"bonde, spiritless...anaemic and faintly handsome," and Mrytle as a rather stout woman
in her thirties who carries "her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.” There is
a vitality about her in contrast to her husband who remains covered in a white ashen
dust.
When Tom Buchanan stops at the Wilson's shop, Mrytle
secretly arranges to meet him in New York City at a designated apartment where she
transforms to a socialite in pretense. During a conversation, her husband George is
mentioned, When Nick asks if Myrtle does not like him, she overhears and answers in a
way that is "violent and obscene." She tells Catherine, her friend, that she married
George because she thought he was a gentleman:
"I thought he knew something about breeding but
he wasn't fit to lick my
shoe."
When Catherine
counters with "You were crazy about him for a while," Mrytle
retorts,
"The
only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He
borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the
man came after it one day when he was
out."
Afterwards, Myrtle
cried, indicating that she had hopes of marrying someone with social position and money,
rather than what George Wilson really is. Clearly, Myrtle is materialistic as is her
lover, Tom Buchanan. She would like Tom to divorce and marry her so she could then have
nice things and feel elevated in her social position, her two
values.
Poor George is aware that he is not loved, but is
exploited by others. He act of killing Gatsby is a desperate act to avenge himself upon
the upper class, but, ironically, Gatsby is a victim himself of the Jazz
Age.
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