Often in literature, female characters fall easily into traditional stereotypes of women and their role in society. This is prevalent in both the great American novel 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) and Jane Austen's novel of manners, 'Emma' (1816). However within these two texts, the traditional stereotypes are both used and subverted throughout the different characters we meet over the course of the novels. Both 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Emma' have a social commentry of their time running through the pages, with Emma's being the more satirical of the two. It is difficult to tell which, if either, of the authors have used these stereotypes deliberately and which have fallen into the trap of accidentally writing their female characters this way due to the way they are usually portrayed. Within both of the two texts, we see a clear difference of classes in the women characters; this is seen in 'Emma' mainly in the juxtaposition between Emma and Harriet and in 'The Great Gatsby' in the juxtaposition between Daisy and Myrtle. Arguably, the presentation of female characters in 'The Great Gatsby' is from the first person point of view of Nick Carraway, the novels narrator, and is therefore his opinion of women. Comparatively, in 'Emma' we are presented with an omniscient narrator, thus the views put forth are all that of the author, Jane Austen - however, the novel is still from Emma's perspective (with the exception of Chapter 41 which is from Mr Knightley's perspective) and her thoughts and feelings are still presented to the reader. The main issue, in both of the texts, for the female characters is the idea of marriage - in 'Emma' the eponymous protagonist does not wish to be confined by marriage, whilst Daisy in 'The Great Gatsby' is already trapped in an unhappy marriage.