In the novel, The Great Gatsby, different colors are used symbolically to represent characters and ideas, which relate to the events in the story. The color white is associated mostly with Daisy and its usage helps to give us an insight into her character's psyche.
When we first meet Daisy, she is dressed all in white and sitting, along with Jordan, on a white couch in her mostly white-furnished parlor. Before Daisy's marriage, her car was a white roadster and she is seen wearing white throughout the novel. She is described as having a "voice full of money" and of being the golden girl, "...high in a white palace, the king's daughter..." It is also notable that Nick describes the homes of East Egg as being white palaces, which happens to be where Daisy, now Mrs. Tom Buchanan, lives. When Daisy wistfully speaks to Nick about her childhood friend Jordan, she says
"Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white..." (Chapter 1, p. 24)
This suggests that, for Daisy, the color white represents her innocent and happy childhood, for which she feels great nostalgia. Her married life has been tarnished and spoiled by Tom's infidelities. Her sadness at the loss of both purity and her innocent girlhood dreams is made vividly clear by the use of the color white, especially as Daisy is seen clinging to it throughout the novel.
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