One of the most popular American authors of the Jazz Age is F. Scott Fitzgerald. A man who became somewhat more of a legend, scholars and citizens alike study Fitzgerald not only for his own sensational life but also for the characters he created who, some would argue, imitate that life. Fitzgerald lived through a sensational decade, the 1920s, which Matthew J. Bruccoli, a renowned Fitzgerald scholar and literary historian, appropriately describes, "The Twenties have been called a decade of confidence, of cynicism, of disillusionment, of ebullience, of moral upheaval" (154). Many of Fitzgerald's novels aptly depict this decade and the aftermath that it brought. However, when one investigates the female characters of the works and how they affect social and economic class distinctions, there is a curious gap in Fitzgerald scholarship. Fitzgerald's female characters are multifaceted like the mirrors in a fun house, which upon first glance portray one image, and yet that same image changes with even the slightest twitch of the head. Although Fitzgerald develops deep and meaningfully layered female characters, sometimes as counterparts to male protagonists, sometimes as protagonists themselves, the literary scholarship does not reflect with clarity or accuracy the sometimes monumental effects that female characters have on the meaning of the text. Because of his sensational life, critics are often preoccupied with examining Fitzgerald's male protagonists. As a result, his female characters, who deserve just as much if not more attention than their male counterparts, are often either examined briefly or ignored entirely, leading to inaccurate assumptions and stereotypes about female characterization in Fitzgerald's work. When one examines the volumes of criticism on male protagonists compared to that of female ones, criticism generally focuses on Fitzgerald's male characters. This is obvious in the world of Matthew Bruccoli, Kenneth Eble, Craig Monk, and even Arthur Mizener. Ultimately, inaccurate assumptions based on a lack of scholarship focused on female protagonists can affect interpretation of an entire work, potentially leading to skewed analysis of the work as a whole. As a result, this thesis will focus on an analysis of Gloria Gilbert, whose character provides meaningful insights into economic and social class distinctions, and how the fragmentation of feminine gender affects distinctions within differing class stratifications in The Beautiful and the Damned.