It seems like Daisy's daughter was mentioned once in the movie & the book but was never mentioned again. Gatsby essentially wanted to pretend that Tom never happened but what about her daughter? How was Gatsby going to handle that? Surely he couldn't pretend that she didn't exist.
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I got the sense that neither Tom or Daisy paid much attention to her but if Gatsby wanted to pick up where he and Daisy left off and forget that she married Tom then how would he explain her daughter to himself. I find that to be the only flaw in the book. It would have been better to leave the daughter out of the story altogether, everyone else did.
shareI thought the whole point was that despite the daughter being something Gatsby wanted to efface entirely in his bid to recreate the past, she is a symbol that he couldn't. She's like a living symbol that as much as he wants not to exist, does, and is an uncomfortable and ineradicable reminder that Daisy and Tom happened. It's not a flaw in the book - we are MEANT to be annoyed by the poor kid's awkward and uncomfortable "offscreen/offpage" presence because Gatsby is. If she didn't exist, there would be no uncomfortable presence lingering in the background and Gatsby would have been able to fantasise that Daisy and Tom were never really together.
shareThank you for your insight. :-)
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She did appear in the novel briefly before the gallivant to New York. She comes in and Daisy shows her off to everybody but doesn't pay any real attention to her. Gatsby "kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't think he had ever really believed in its existence before."
This scene does appear in the Mia Farrow version though.