Then I heard footsteps on the stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby. Chapter 1, Nick’s description of Myrtle Wilson, focusing almost entirely on her body and her sensuousness. It is obvious Nick doesn’t see much in Myrtle as regards intellect or personality. An unhappily married woman, her husband George is depicted as a ghost whom she walks through to get her lover Tom Buchanan.