"Her expression was curiously familiar — it was an expression I had often seen on women’s faces...

"... but on Myrtle Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife."

Today's Gatsby sentence — we read one sentence from "The Great Gatsby" every day here on the Althouse blog — is very long, one clause after another, and yet, it doesn't tumble all out of control. We get it.

It's a sentence about an expression on a woman's face, a very common and utterly insipid expression, yet obviously very disturbing for the woman herself, even as we are deprived of any reason to feel for her. She's not even right about what she thinks she sees.