The Great Gatsby
Myrtle Wilson
Tom’s mistress
George Wilson’s restless wife, who has taken Tom Buchanan as her ticket out of the Valley of Ashes.
Myrtle is in her middle thirties, faintly stout, and full of energy. She lives above her husband’s garage in the Valley of Ashes, but she is not content with it. When Tom brings her to a rented apartment in New York, she changes into a fancier dress and starts acting like a woman of society, ordering the help around and holding court.
She says she married George because she thought he was a gentleman and found he was not fit to lick her shoe. She is vivid, loud and desperate for a better life, and she wants Tom to give it to her. Her appetite for luxury is plain in the way she talks about buying a dog for the apartment.
“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! I’ll say it whenever I want to!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Myrtle hosts an afternoon party in the New York apartment with her sister Catherine and the McKees. After she taunts Tom by shouting his wife’s name, he breaks her nose. Later, George locks her in her room because he wants to take her West, and Myrtle sees Tom pass in a yellow car with a woman she believes is his wife.
She breaks free and runs into the road to flag down the yellow car, and she is struck and killed. Her death sets George Wilson on the path that ends in Gatsby’s death.
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