In the 1920s, men still ruled the society, but feminine consciousness started to take root. Industrialization and urbanization developed American’s economy rapidly, which not only changed people’s life but also provided a sound environment for women to take part in social development and progress. The First World War brought the USA the prosperity and strength and also created much more jobs. Women have more opportunities to get a job and enter into the fields which used to belong to men. Inevitably, financial independence made women ask for emotional independence. Women started to break the traditional moral ideas, seek to be equal to men and pursue inpidual liberation and freedom of marriage. With dissolving traditional moral system and cultural concepts, patriarchal culture sank into a decline. With women playing more and more roles in life, they started to realize the feminine consciousness. 

The literary works always reflects the conflict of thoughts and consciousness in their own age; the writers are always affected by the ideology of their time, too. The changes on social consciousnesses and values also affected writers at that time. Many a writer supported women in their novels. They described women’s living conditions and emotional needs with reality, understood and supported them. Fitzgerald was one of those writers and many female characters in his novels represented American New Woman. In the novel, the new female images that Fitzgerald showed impress us a lot. They experienced a series of sufferings, which made them not only become independent but also question and even overturn the patriarchal society.