Daisy's American dream is simultaneously the simplest and the most difficult to achieve of all the main characters in this story, which is perhaps why people seem to gravitate around her. She is the catalyst for every slightly significant event in the entire tale, something that cannot be truthfully said for any other character. Without Daisy, Myrtle would be alive and possibly married to Tom, Nick would have accomplished his own modest American dream, and Gatsby would still be alive and likely much poorer.
Daisy Buchanan's dream is simply to live in financial comfort and to have security in as many areas of her life as possible. Contrast this with Tom's dream of living a grand life in which the world is his oyster and nothing is denied him and with Gatsby's dream of regaining Daisy and showering her with every extreme sort of thing he can find.
Daisy's dream is to have a comfortable, safe and respectable life, which is the same kind of dream that everyone in life starts out with until they eventually set their sights higher. But for women in the 1920s, a stable life was the most that they could ever hope for. Financial independence was a rare thing for women back then and could only ever be accomplished by women like Jordan Baker, who was born into a wealthy family and possessed a highly marketable skill (playing golf).
For Daisy, who presumably doesn't have a skill that can make her famous and successful, her only recourse to sell her beauty and wealthy breeding to man of similar social standing as her. And Daisy does make a living off of her beauty and charms, make no mistake. Throughout the entire book Nick comments on the almost ethereal and magical qualities that Daisy possesses simply by being. In chapter 1 he states that "there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered 'Listen,' a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour."
Daisy has learned how to make every aspect of herself appealing in every way to anybody that even briefly encounters her. Gatsby himself eventually remarks in chapter 8 that he was surprised at how powerfully he was drawn to her.
This is how Daisy survives in an incredibly sexist world where a woman can only make a good life for herself if she is alluring, preferably of high social standing, and certainly willing to shove aside her scruples and often her self-respect in order to keep a wealthy man. Even Myrtle, Tom Buchanan's "other woman" lacks the comfortable life that Daisy leads because she wasn't born to it and didn't possess beauty, only "vitality." One of Daisy's most notable lines is in relation to her daughter when she says, "And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” This perfectly illustrates Daisy's mentality and resignation towards dealing with every mistreatment or neglect from Tom or any other man she's been involved with throughout her life.
Daisy's ambition is significantly less than that of every other major character, with perhaps the exception of Nick (and even that is dubious), yet the chances of her achieving and retaining it are slimmer than for anyone else. Jay Gatsby managed to pull himself up from nothing and he almost certainly became one of the wealthiest men alive, all of which was possible for him because he was a very dedicated man. As a woman, Daisy doesn't have anyway to support herself adequately on her own, let alone reach the heights that Gatsby rose to.
Ultimately, Daisy doesn't fail completely in her pursuit of the American dream. She stays with Tom and presumably continues to lead her cushy, relatively-secure life. However, she does fail to attain the bright dream that Gatsby offered her. For one brief window of time he offered her something she hadn't dared to hope for: a loving, decent relationship. Gatsby's promise was to idolize her, never cheat on her, and provide her with greater respect than Tom ever did. Marrying Gatsby would still be a far cry short of the ideals that women today strive for, but back than a wealthy man that didn't cheat on or insult his wife was almost too good to be true.
This is the dream that Daisy failed to achieve and while that was partially her own doing, it is difficult not to pity her when her considerable lack of security in such a sexist world is taken into account. This book is a wonderful commentary on the gender inequalities of the 1920s and it manages to speak equally on the flaws of the characters and the omnipresent flaws of the world they lived in.
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