Chapter 13-2 and 13-3

1. Chapter 13-2 and 13-3 Section 2: The Twenties Woman

2. Young Women Change the Rules… • By the 1920’s the experiences of WWI the pull of the cities and changing attitudes had opened a new world for many young Americans. • In the rebellious pleasure loving atmosphere of the twenties many women began to assert their independence reject values of the 19th century women and demand the same freedoms as a man.

3. The flapper • A new ideal emerged for some women the flapper… emancipated women who embraced the new fashions urban attitudes of the day. • Close fitting felt hats bright waistless dresses above the knee, skin toned silk stockings sleek pumps, and strings of beads replaced the dark and prim ankle length dresses…. • Women clipped their long hair into boyish bobs dying them black. Many women became more assertive… in their bid for equal status….some began to smoke cigarettes, drink in public, and talk openly about sex. • They danced the fox trot, camel walk, tango, Charleston, and shimmy with abandon. Attitudes toward marriage changed it was looked at more as a partnership… but the house work and child rearing still remained that of a women’s job.

4. The Double Standard • Magazines , newspapers, and advertisements promoted the image of the flapper, and young people openly discussed courtship and relationships in a way that scandalized their elders. • The flapper was more an image of a rebellious youth… than widespread reality. Before the 1920’s men only courted women that they intended to marry… however in the 1920’s causal dating became acceptable… • Double standard… set of principles granting more sexual freedom to men than women… require women… to observe stricter standards of behavior…than men did. As a result many women were pulled back and forth.

5. Women shed old roles at work and home • The fast changing world of the 1920’s produced new roles for women in the workplace and new trends in family life. Women starting working in jobs at offices, factories, stores, professions and the economy started producing time saving appliances that changed the role in the household. • New work opportunities: Many women that held typical male jobs during the War lost them after the War but the women then turned to typical women’s professions… college graduates got jobs as teachers, nurses, and librarians. Big business hired women to be clerical workers as typists, filing clerks, secretaries, stenographers, and office machine-operators. • Other women became clerks in stores an held jobs on the assembly lines. Some even broke stereotypes and started working as flying airplanes, driving taxis, and drilling wells. By 1920 10 million women were earning wages. Patterns of discrimination and inequality for women in the business were being established.

6. The Changing Family • Widespread social and economic changes affected the family. The birthrate had been declining and it dropped even faster during the 1920’s. The decline was due to wider availability of birth control information. • Margret Singer opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States and founded the Birth Control League … she fought for legal rights of the physician to give birth control information to the women.

7. Section 3 : Education and Popular Culture:

8. Schools and the Mass Media Shape Culture • During the 1920’s mass media and developments in education had a powerful impact on the nation. • School enrollments: In 1914, approximately 1 million American students attended high school… in 1926 the number had risen to 4 million students an increase sparked by prosperous times and higher educational standards. • High schools now started catering to vocational training instead of totally college bound students. The public schools had a challenge teaching the immigrant families children… many of these new immigrants did not speak English. Taxes to finance the schools rose also.

9. Expanding New Coverage • Widespread education increased literacy in America but it was growing mass media that shaped the culture. • Newspaper circulation rose as writers and editors learned how to hook readers by imitating the sensational stories into tabloids. • Mass circulation of the magazines also flourished… Reader’s Digest was one of these.

10. Radio Comes of Age • Radio was the most powerful communication tool to emerge in the 1920’s. Americans added terms such as “airwaves”, “radio audience”, and “tune in “to their everyday speech. The radios created a shared national experience of hearing the headlines.

11. America Chases New Heroes and Old Dreams • During this period people had money and time to enjoy it. America spent 4.5 billion on entertainment much of it on everyday fads… working crossword puzzles, playing Mashong, and some went exploring to different places. • In the 1920’s people turned to flagpole sitting and marathon dancing. They also attended athletic events

12. Lindbergh’s flight • America’s most beloved hero of the time wasn’t athletic but a small town pilot Charles A. Lindbergh. He made the first solo flight across the Atlantic… he went after the $25,000 prize. • He took off near New York in the Spirit of St.Louis and flew to the coast of Newfoundland and headed across the Atlantic… he landed in LeBourget airfield outside of Paris. • Amelia Earhart also attempted these brave flights during this period.

13. Entertainment and the Arts • Sound movies came in during this period… the first major motion picture with sound was “The Jazz Singer” and then “Steamboat Willie”… the first animated picture… • The new “talkies” had doubled movie attendance • Playwrights and composers of music broke away from the European traditions of the 1920’s… Eugene O’Neil’s plays such as Hairy Ape forced the Americans to reflect upon modern isolation and family conflict. Fame was given to George Gershwin when he merged traditional elements with American Jazz. • Painters appeared… Edward Hopper caught the loneliness of American life and Georgia O’Keeffe produced intensely colored canvases that captured the grandeur of New York.

14. Nighthawks… Hopper

15. Writers of the 1920’s • Sinclair Lewis: Babbitt Lewis used the main character George F. Babbitt to ridicule Americans for their conformity • F. Scott Fitzgerald: Wrote Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise… he revealed the negative side of the period’s gaiety and freedom portraying wealthy and attractive people leading imperiled lives in gilded surroundings. • Dorothy Parker: a short story writer poet and essayist…. Famous for wisecracking wit. • Edna Wharton: Age of Innocence • Edna St. Vincent Millay: wrote poems celebrating youth and life of independence and freedom from traditional constraints. • Some settled in Paris upset about American culture…Lost Generation. • Ernest Hemingway…. Wounded WWI …. Soldier. The Sun Also Rises… A Farwell to Arms