What is Jordan Baker described as?

From her very first appearance in the novel, Jordan strikes Nick as mysterious, aloof, and alluring. Jordan belongs to the upper crust of society. Although she moved to the east coast from somewhere in the Midwest, she has quickly risen among the social ranks to become a famous golfer—a sport played mainly among the wealthy. Yet Jordan’s rise to social prominence and affluence is founded on lies. Not only did she cheat to win her first major golf tournament, she’s also incurably dishonest. According to Nick, Jordan constantly bends the truth in order to keep the world at a distance and protect herself from its cruelty. Nick senses Jordan’s nature when he initially encounters her lounging on a couch with Daisy in Chapter 1. He writes: “She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.” Here Jordan appears distant, statuesque, and beautiful, even regal with her chin tilted into the air. Yet Nick’s description also lends her appearance an air of fragility, as if she’s posing.

Jordan’s cynical and self-centered nature marks her as one of the “new women” of the Roaring Twenties. Such new women were called “flappers,” and they became famous for flouting conventional standards of female behavior. Flappers distinguished themselves physically by bobbing their hair, dressing in short skirts, and wearing a lot of makeup. They also listened to jazz music, smoked cigarettes, openly drank alcohol, and drove cars. Most scandalous of all, flappers were known for their casual attitudes toward sexuality. Jordan’s presence in the novel draws attention to the social and political turbulence of the Jazz Age. In this sense, Jordan calls forth the larger social and historical background against which the tragic events of the novel unfold. Unlike Daisy, who leads a conventional life of marriage and children and doesn’t work (or even drink alcohol), Jordan represents a new path for women. Whereas Daisy is the object of men’s fantasy and idealism, Jordan exhibits a hard-hearted pragmatism that, for Nick at least, links her more forcefully to the real world.

Jordan Baker

Nick might end up "halfway in love" with Jordan, but he consistently describes her as cynical, having seen too much and heard too much to be fooled by anybody.

If that's love, we'll pass.

She's a Pro

Jordan is a golfer—a professional golfer. Already, we know she's different from Daisy. Where Daisy is always fluttering and babbling and giggling and basically acting like a dumb girl (her words, not ours), Jordan is hard, direct, and cynical. And she's bored to tears. We don't know much about her family, except that she has "one aunt about a thousand years old" (1.137), but we know that she and Daisy spent their "white girlhoods" together (1.140). Given the looks that Daisy and Tom give each other, we suspect that she might not be so "white" (as in, pure) anymore.

But there's a problem with her game. She's a cheat. And Nick describes her as not just a golf cheat, but a cheat at life:

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body. (3.158)

Let's break this down: she's dishonest, hard, cool, insolent, and deceptive. Oh, and her body has " demands," which, to us, sounds a lot like sex. Golf, sex, and dishonesty: Jordan may come from the same world as Daisy, but she's a modern woman, with "slender golden arm[s]" (3.19).

Golden arms? Code for tan. Tan? Code for not white. And white means pure. (Check out our "Symbols" section for more on color in The Great Gatsby.)

Jordan may not make a rich, brilliant match like Daisy, but we get the feeling she's going to have a much more successful life. Maybe it won't be happy—we're pretty sure no one in this novel gets to be happy—but she's going to make it in the modern world. In fact, she might be the only one who doesn't end up retreating back West.

NC + JB

So what does Nick see in her, anyway? One of the first things she says to him is that she "hates careless people" (3). Perfect! Nick hates careless people, too. It's a match made in heaven. And Jordan has a little bit of the same glamour that Daisy does; when he's thinking about breaking up with his Chicago girlfriend, he thinks about how that girlfriend gets a little sweaty when she plays tennis. And Jordan, apparently, never sweats at all.

So, like Gatsby, Nick is drawn in by the rich glamour of this world. Unlike Gatsby, though, he's eventually able to see through it, and he recognizes that Jordan, like Daisy and Tom, is nothing but a careless person herself. Even if she's a really sexy one.

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