Nick describes Daisy as the golden girl, in large part, because of her money. She has a lot of it, and she acts and speaks as though she has a lot of it. He says that the money in her voice
was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it . . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl...
Nick describes Daisy as the golden girl, in large part, because of her money. She has a lot of it, and she acts and speaks as though she has a lot of it. He says that the money in her voice
was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it . . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl . . . .
Daisy speaks with the confidence of someone who has always been treated as though she were special; she conducts herself with the bearing of one who has always been set apart. She is beautiful and rich, and no one has ever really refused her anything she's wanted. This has made her self-centered and selfish, elitist, and sort of cruel.
When Nick first arrives at her home in chapter one, she reproaches him because he "didn't come to [her] wedding." He reminds her that he was in the war. She goes on and on about the "very bad time" she's had, failing to consider that Nick probably had a far worse time in the war: she's unbelievably self-centered. Further, she states, with "thrilling scorn. 'Sophisticated -- God, I'm sophisticated!'" and then
"looked at [Nick] with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged."
Daisy is like a princess in a castle, and she knows it. She may seem to hold this fact in contempt at times, but she is ultimately too attached to her status to relinquish it. For these reasons, Nick calls her "the golden girl."
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