Intellectual Cultural Movements and Popular Entertainment in the late 19th Century

1. 1 Intellectual & Cultural Movements and Popular Entertainment in the late 19th Century

2. 2 �Conspicuous Consumption� In his book �The Theory of the Leisure Class,� American economist Thorstein Veblen described what he referred to as �conspicuous consumption.� Conspicuous consumption is essentially consumption for the overt purpose of showing off one�s wealth and status. �One portion of the servant class, chiefly those persons whose occupation is vicarious leisure, come to undertake a new, subsidiary range of duties--the vicarious consumption of goods.�

3. 3 Women's Suffrage Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony met in 1851; three years after Stanton organized the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They were the spearheads of the Women�s Suffrage Movement. They believed that voting rights should be based upon citizenship rather than sex.

4. 4 Although the American women would not receive the vote until 1920, the suffragists persevered throughout the 19th century. In 1878, a Women�s Suffrage amendment was introduced and was debated over for years. In 1892, Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed the Congress to help sway the vote. In this excerpt, she reasserts that citizenship is the root of enfranchisement. �Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our government.��

5. 5 The Morrill Act of 1862 Signed by Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, the Morrill Act made higher education accessible to a broader spectrum of Americans by starting state universities across the country. It provided each state with 30,000 acres of public land for each Senator and Representative, the land was then to be sold and the proceeds put in an endowment fund to provide support for the state colleges. The increase in educational opportunities contributed to and was enjoyed by the growing middle class in the late 19th century.

6. 6 The Gilded Age The Gilded Age is a term, coined by Mark Twain, applied to late 19th Century America that refers to the superficial exhibition and adoration of wealth that was characteristic of the period. The wealthy were almost painted in gold as the name implies, displaying their fortunes at every possible opportunity. Written by Twain and Charles Dudley Warner and published in 1873, "The Gilded Age" is a satirical novel about materialism and corruption in the 1870�s.

7. 7 American Impressionism American artists adopted the Impressionist style of painting from the likes of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and C�zanne, to name a few. The Impressionist style of painting is characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors and became a widely used style in late 19th century America. Maurice Brazil Prendergast, in addition to being quite skilled with the impressionist style of light and color, incorporated structure as integral into his sketches and watercolors.

8. 8 Patrons of the Arts In the late 19th century the upper classes lived lavish lifestyles, not only pouring their money into vacation and country homes, jewelry, furs, fashion, and extravagence at every turn, but also into European art and funding symphony, opera, and ballet companies. Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870, located for one year on 5th Avenue and then seven years on West 14th Street, at its 1880 location in Central Park.

9. 9 Vaudeville Vaudeville, as it was popularized, grew out of Burlesque to create a more family friendly entertainment venue. It was the most popular form of commercial entertainment primarily because it bridged the gap between middle and working class tastes.

10. 10 Ragtime In the late 19th Century, African Americans living in the north began to play a new style of music called Ragtime. By the turn of the century, it was popular throughout the country and enjoyed by many different groups of people. The 1800�s was the era when Ragtime became distinguished in its own right alongside the Cakewalk and Jazz, which would surpass it in popularity by the 1920�s. The Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1899 and is viewed as the turning point after which, Ragtime exhibited more depth and sophistication than it previously had.

11. 11 Circus The American circus was revolutionized by P. T. Barnum and William Cameron Coup, who launched P. T. Barnum's Museum, Menagerie & Circus, a travelling combination animal and human oddities, the exhibition of humans as a freakshow or sideshow was thus an American invention. Coup was also the first circus entrepreneur to use circus trains to transport the circus from town to town; a practice that continues today and introduced the first multiple ringed circuses.