“Louise Brooks: More Than Just an Actress, an Inspiration” “A well dressed woman, even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world.” This quote from actress and women’s rights inspiration and icon, Louise Brooks, accurately describes her life. The quote means being independent and relying on your own ability is what will get you ahead in life. This is how Brooks lived her seventy nine year life. She is best known for her many films in Hollywood. Between the years 1925 and 1938 she was in twenty four films. Not only was she a Hollywood actress, she was also a dancer and a Broadway performer. But, Louise Brooks is also known for other things beside her performing. Louise Brooks was the most influential person of all on …show more content…
The goal of the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1920s was to provide equality amongst women and men. In 1920, while Brooks was still pursuing her dancing career, the 19th Amendment was passed. It provided women with full voting rights. Also during the 1920s some women started to work in factories for the first time because of WWI. This change in women’s roles helped to inspire many women to be more independent. Louise Brooks helped with this. Brooks always took roles where she could put her own independent personality in. In the 1920s women also fought for a change in property laws, to have equal guardianship of children, higher pay, access to college and other forms of higher education, improved working conditions, and new, more equal divorce laws. Though Brooks never cared much for property laws, never had children, and never went to college, she did benefit from divorce law changes. In her lifetime, Brooks was married only two times, though she had many affairs with both men and women. Brooks was married to the film director, Edward Sutherland from 1926 to 1928, after she was in his film “It’s the Old Army Game.” After she divorced him Brooks married the Chicago sportsman, Deering Davis. They were married from 1933 to 1938. After this divorce Brooks never married again. She prefered to be independent and not tied down. With the change in divorce laws and the social norms of the time, Brooks was able to be her independent self. (The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1920, Womens Rights in the 1920s, Louise Brooks - Newspaper articles, Louise Brooks
May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...
Comparable to other American men as well as a few American women before, during, and after the Revolutionary War of the 18th century, Benjamin Rush believed that women’s skills were limited to that of domestic work. His thoughts toward the abilities of women were that they began, and ended with the home: from caring for their children to caring for their husbands in addition to caring for the home. According to Rush: “They must be stewards and guardians of their husband’s property.” Judith Sargent Murray on the other hand believed women’s abilities extended past and beyond that of domesticity alone. She believed that women were capable of much...
To understand the significant changes within the role of women, it’s important to look at the position women held in society prior to World War II. In a famously quoted ruling by the United States Supreme Court in a case denying a woman’s right to practice law, the following excerpt penned by the Honorable Joseph P. Bradley in 1873 sums up how women were perceived during that period of time by their male counterparts. Bradley declared, "The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother -- this is the law of the Creator" . While many women may agree that the role of wife and mother is a noble one, most would certainly not agree this position would define their destiny.
Lucy Stone is known today for many things, among them being the first woman to graduate from college in Massachusetts, one of the first women not to change their name after marriage, the first woman to appeal before a body of lawmakers and forming The Woman’s Journal and The NWSA. Women all over the United States owe much to the work of Lucy Stone. In the history of Woman’s Rights, few can activists can compare with the determination and success of Lucy Stone. While many remember Susan B. Anthony for being the most active fighter for Woman’s Rights, perhaps Lucy is even more important. With out her it would have taken much longer to achieve Woman's Votes.
After World War I America became the world’s center for trade. The economic center of the world moved from London, England to New York City, New York, United States of America, and more specifically Wall Street (Buhle, Mari J, Czitzrom, Armitage 848). Due to women, the 1920’s marked economic and social change in America. Women took over men’s jobs during the war while their husbands were overseas, and once the men came home the women wanted to keep their positions. To show gratitude to these women Congress passed the 19th Amendment on August 18th, 1920 which prohibited any United States citizen from having the right to vote based on sex. This change in women’s social status led to more workers in the factories, which were usi...
Daisy is in a relationship where she is unhappy. Not only is she unhappy, she is immobile and has no say in just about anything that goes on. Relationships in the 1920’s were just like this scenario. Women were dominated by their husbands and unhappy. They were objects that were to be domesticated and be under the command of “the man”. It was during this time that woman were starting to take a stand and be in charge. They were done with standing on the sidelines while their husband had reign over their lives. In the beginning of the twenties a change was made. On August 18, 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified giving women the right to vote. This gave women the chance to have a voice in the government. In 1922 Nellie Tayloe Ross, the nations first female governor, was elected in Wyoming. Giving women the right to vote was the first step to helping them emerge from out of the shadows of a male dominated society.
The New Morality in the 1920’s was represented by a shift in cultural values. On one hand the minorities and social vulnerable groups gained more equality and social recognition, and on the other hand people holding the traditional values fearing of this sudden change formed their own groups to resist it, among which the most notable one was the Ku Klux Klan. When the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, American women finally gained their suffrages, the legal rights to vote. With this achievement accomplished, in the following decade, American women moved forward and gained even greater roles in society. The feminist ideal known as the New Woman was popular in the 1920’s. Symbolized by an image of women dressed practically, living independently and freely, it manifested sexual liberation and the coeducational system. Flappers, young women with free thinking, casual manners, new fashions a...
Women rights became an issue as men were seen as the sole providers of families. In many instances, women and children had no say so as to what goes on inside the home. Whatever the father believed is what their children and wife’s had to conform to. Many women such as Lucy Knox and Abigail Adams began challenging their husbands for respect and partial control in their union and homes. Despite gains of rights and divorce, republican society still defined women’s roles exclusively in terms of mother, wife, and homemaker. Any other roles pursued would seem unnatural and
...wo decades was that in the 1920’s women’s rights advocates were able to pass the 19th amendment, granting women suffrage, and increasing political interest among women. Both time periods were difficult ones for minorities and women, though some victories were had.
Despite the big gains the movement made in the early twentieth century, including winning the right to vote and pushing for more freedom in how they could dress and act, both of these women’s lives aren’t vastly improved. They’re both trapped in unhappy marriages, they both rely on their looks, charms, and sexuality to get what they want, and neither of them has even a chance of pursuing a fulfilling life through a career.
In the early 1900’s, women made one of their chief advancements for their cause. In 1869, the NAWSA did a statewide campaign to have states adopt the legislation that the suffrage created (Loveday, Women’s Suffrage). By 1912, only nine states had adopted the legislation (Loveday, Women’s Suffrage). Since they needed a two-third majority to make it national, NAWSA and other feminists began to be more active than they had been (Loveday, Women’s Suffrage). They organized rallies, parades, silent vigils, and even hunger strikes...
Schneider, Dorothy. American Women in the Progressive Era 1900-1920. New York: Facts on File, 1993.
Women’s role in society changed quite a bit during WWI and throughout the 1920s. During the 1910s women were very short or liberty and equality, life was like an endless rulebook. Women were expected to behave modestly and wear long dresses. Long hair was obligatory, however it always had to be up. It was unacceptable for them to smoke and they were expected to always be accompanied by an older woman or a married woman when outing. Women were usually employed with jobs that were usually associated with their genders, such as servants, seamstresses, secretaries and nursing. However during the war, women started becoming employed in different types of jobs such as factory work, replacing the men who had gone to fight in the war in Europe. In the late 1910s The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had been fighting for decades to get the vote for women. As women had contributed so much to the war effort, it was difficult to refuse their demands for political equality. As a result, the Nineteenth Amendment to the constitution became law in 19...
However, when the war was over, and the men returned to their lives, society reverted back to as it had been not before the 1940s, but well before the 1900s. Women were expected to do nothing but please their husband. Women were not meant to have jobs or worry about anything that was occurrin...
In conclusion, the woman of the Victorian Era had her role in life planned out from before she was born. Although it was a dreadful role these women carried it out in a way that shows their purity of the heart and willingness to do so many of things for others and for little return. They were truly a remarkable testament to hard work and ingenuity of the time that even the men of the time could have learned from.