Daisy Buchanan

Daisy Fay Buchanan (/bjuːˈkænən/ ^ⓘ bew-KAN-ən) 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, "old money" town of East Egg on Long Island, near New York City, during the Jazz Age. She is Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of polo player Tom Buchanan, with whom she has a daughter named Pammy. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with poor doughboy Jay Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom becomes the novel's central conflict.

Fitzgerald based the character on socialite Ginevra King with whom he shared a romance from 1915 to 1917. Their relationship ended after King's father purportedly warned the writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls", and a heartbroken 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. After King's separation from Mitchell, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with King in 1938, but his alcoholism doomed their reunion. Scholar Maureen Corrigan states that Ginevra, far more than Fitzgerald's wife Zelda, became "the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".

Scholars identify Daisy as personifying the cultural archetype of the flapper, young women who bobbed their hair, wore short skirts, drank alcohol and engaged in premarital sex. Despite the new societal freedoms attained by women in the 1920s, Fitzgerald's novel examines the continued limitations on their agency during this period. Although early critics viewed Daisy as a "monster of bitchery", later scholars posited that Daisy exemplifies the marginalization of women in the elite milieu that Fitzgerald depicts. The contest of wills between Tom and Gatsby reduces Daisy, described by Fitzgerald as a "golden girl", to a trophy wife whose sole existence is to augment her possessor's status, and she becomes 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. Actress Florence Eldridge originated the role of Daisy on the stage in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. That same year, Lois Wilson played the role in the now lost 1926 silent film adaptation. During the subsequent decades, many actresses have played the role, including Betty Field, Phyllis Kirk, Jeanne Crain, Mia Farrow, Mira Sorvino, Carey Mulligan, and Eva Noblezada among others.