Daisy Fay (1899-) was an American socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who was the wife of Tom Buchanan and the lover of Jay Gatsby.
Biography[]
Daisy Fay was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1899, and she came to be one of the most popular girls in the city. In October 1917, she met Lieutenant Jay Gatsby as he prepared to ship off to Europe to fight in World War I, but her mother forbade her from following Gatsby to New York City to bid him farewell, leading to her not speaking to her family for weeks. In the autumn of 1918, she attended a debut ball, and, in February 1919, she got engaged to wealthy heir Tom Buchanan. The married in June and had a lavish three-month honeymoon, and they lived in France from April 1920 to the autumn of 1921, during which time Fay gave birth to a daughter. The family went on to settle in the lavish upper-class village of East Egg on Long Island in New York, and Fay was forced to deal with her husband's abuse, philandering, and lack of attention-giving. In 1922, her cousin Nick Carraway moved to neighboring West Egg to work as a bonds salesman, and it was through Carraway that Fay discovered that Gatsby had settled in West Egg and become rich. With Carraway's help, Fay would continue her affair with Gatsby, but her husband later discovered this and had Fay and Carraway go with him to the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan to confront Gatsby, where he accused him of being a bootlegger. Fay broke Gatsby's heart when she revealed that she had come to love Buchanan, who sent her to drive Gatsby home to prove that Gatsby would not hurt her. In a panic, she accidentally struck and killed her husband's mistress Myrtle Wilson, but Gatsby agreed to take the blame and cover up the murder. Myrtle's widower George B. Wilson mistakenly believed Gatsby to be the driver, and he killed him in a murder-suicide at his mansion. With Gatsby dead, Fay and Buchanan attempted to have a better marriage, and Carraway returned to the Midwest.