America’s economy boomed during the 1920's bringing with it a new way of life for everyone, especially women. New innovations such as the phonograph, radio and movies all helped cultivate a new generation based on social excess. The automobile afforded young people the freedom and independence to go places and socialize more with the opposite sex than ever before. With a changing idea of morality some women personified a new style: the flapper. Women started to dress provocatively, listen to jazz music, smoke cigarettes, drive cars, and wear their hair in a short bob. They became free spirited and more charismatic than ever before liberating themselves from the traditional feminine roles and thus creating a new modern woman. However, Fitzgerald alludes to the fact that the “new woman” of the roaring twenties was not born a flapper. Many women, especially the older generation did not approve of the flapper lifestyle. In “Bernice Bobs Her Hair" Marjorie says to Bernice, “I hate dainty minds, but a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it” (Fitzgerald 35). Marjorie is telling her that a modern girl can get away with a sharp mind, as long as she holds on to some feminine traditions. A man still has to know he is in the company of a lady, not a buddy. In “Head and Shoulders” Marcia says, "I don't know where it's coming from. It's up to the old head now. Shoulders is out of business” (19). Now expecting a baby, she has to rely on her head, not shoulders or physical attributes in order to make money. Women will always have ties to traditional femininity, regardless of how hard they try to be different. In “Bernice Bobs Her Hair...
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...r lifestyle, both are feminine by nature and upbringing. Being brought up by their Victorian mothers and later marrying and having children they still have roots in traditional feminine roles. With the roaring twenties over, flapper’s had to transition in order to adapt to the new circumstances. In “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” she adapts to her new style, but has not completely lost the traditional feminine values she holds inside. In “Head and Shoulders” Marcia’s traditional femininity takes over her new lifestyle as wife and mother, but her literary success still holds on to some of her modern woman mentality. Both Bernice and Marcia adapted to their new roles as young modern women embedded in traditional qualities.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F S, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New
Collection. New York: Scribner, 1989. Print.
This work is an incorporation of narrative, statistics, and scholarly work that provide a distinct insight on the “New Woman.” Joshua Zeitz asserts the flapper was not a dramatic change from traditional American values but reflected the “modern” decade under mass media, celebrity, and consumerism. Flappers were the “New Woman,” asserting her right to dance, date, smoke, drink alcohol, work, and be free from the restraint of accepted social norms. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda are notable people who commenced the image of a flapper. Zeitz further develops his argument by providing statistics of working women who dreamed of being a flapper.
From coast to coast people were reading the exploits of a new type of woman called flapper. Prior to World War 1 Victorian ideals still dictated the behavior of American women and girls. Frederick Lewis Allen describes the traditional role of women. Women were the guardians of morality. They were made of finer stuff than men. They were expected to act accordingly. Young girls must look forward in innocence to a romantic love match which would lead them to the altar and to living happily ever after. Until the right man came along they must allow no male to kiss them. Flappers did the opposite. Flappers danced the Charleston, kissed their boyfriends while they played golf and sat behind the wheels of fast cars. The liberated usually young female disdained the traditions of her mother and grandmother before her. Flappers would smoke and drink alcohol, she cut her hair and wore short dresses. They also changed their views on courtship rituals, marriage, and child rearing. With these they could have the same freedom as men could. The time period also saw a highly physical change in women’s lives like how they dressed and looked. For the first time in American history women could choose to be free from long hair and voluminous clothing. Before the women changed they wore very restrictive clothing consisting of long skirts with layers of petticoats over tightly laced corsets that produced an hourglass figure with wide hips and a narrow waist.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald, also known under his writer’s name, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is revered as a famous American novelist for his writing masterpieces in the 1920’s and 1930’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about his extravagant lifestyle in America that his wife, Zelda, their friends, and him lived during that era. In fact, a lot of his novels and essays were based off of real-life situations with exaggerated plots and twists. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels were the readers looking glass into his tragic life that resulted in sad endings in his books, and ultimately his own life. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a nice neighborhood, but growing up, he wasn’t privileged.
Fitzgerald, F S, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New
Some people hated this idea of the Flapper and they blamed the war for these women’s new behaviors. After World War I, young women and young girls started to act free and go against their families. “Some people in society blamed the war for triggering this rebellion of youth and they claimed it had upset the balance of the sexes and, in particular, confuse women of their role in society and where they truly belonged” (Grouley 63). Some people hated the idea of the flappers and these women had become. These women, the flappers, in the 1920s felt free after the 19th amendment was passed. “Since the early twentieth century, the sexual habits of these American women had changed in profound ways” (Zeitz 21). Flappers drank, partied, and had romantic evenings with men. All of which were illegal for women. In addition, they were an embarrassment to society and they were able to get away with anything. “Flappers were a disgrace to society because they were lazy-pleasure seekers who were only interested in drinking, partying, and flirting” (Dipalo 1). For instance, Flappers went to clubs, drank, and hung out with men and were too lazy to do anything. Therefore, one consequence of the war was the creation of a new woman and this led to a movement like no other.
Partying, drinking, and dancing; these are the adjectives most commonly associated with the life of a flapper. While these descriptions are accurate, they do not inform people of the advantages and gains flappers made for the female gender. The flapper embodied the idea of freedom from the usual duties of a young female in the 1920s. These women were no longer tied down with the expectation that they immediately become a wife and mother, as well as being conservative and modest. By diving into a look at the fashion, music, and lifestyle of the flapper during the 1920s it will become obvious that they were not only independent, liberated, and enjoying many more freedoms than they had previously throughout history, but that they also helped to pave the way for future generations of women’s quest for independence.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
In the 1920s, a new woman was born. She smoked, drank, danced, and voted. She cut her hair, wore make-up, and went to petting parties. She was giddy and took risks. She was a flapper.
Peer pressure is the tool that Marjorie uses to change Bernice’s behavior to increase her popularity and can be seen as a positive force or a negative force. Peer pressure can be seen as a positive force because it gets Bernice out of her shell and allows her to become more confident in herself. Prior to the use of peer pressure, Bernice was seen as boring, “…Cousin Bernice was sorta dopeless. She was pretty, with dark hair and high color, but she was no fun on a party. ”(211). Although Bernice seems steadfast to her usual routine that includes talking about cars, weather and her hometown with boys, she sees that people treat Marjorie very differently than they treat her. It is obvious that Marjorie looks down upon the way Bernice acts and believes that Beatrice is boring, "You little nut ... all those ghastly inefficiencies that pass as feminine qualities.” She says this because some woman at this time, “were confused and frustrated by the conflict between traditional ideas on woman place, and the in...
Eble, Kenneth. F. Scott Fitzgerald Limited Edition. Ed. Sylvia E. Bowman. N.p.: Twayne Publishers, 1977. Print. Twayne’s United States Authors Series.
During the 1920’s women were fervently depicted as inferior to men and incapable of the success. In the novel The Great Gatsby female characters are subject to gender based stereotypes and blindly follow culturally accepted norms which dictate their place and position within society. The expectations placed upon the female characters to comply with the norms of society limit their potential to become successful in comparison to the male characters, who are successful in the 1920’s. Within The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates the female characters as socially and economically limited and dependant, due to the strong implementation of patriarchal roles of men in society. Women are confined
What’s Fitzgerald’s implicit views of modern women in this novel? Daisy and Jordan dress the part of flappers, yet Daisy also plays the role of the Louisville rich girl debutante. A good question to ask is perhaps just how much Daisy realizes this is a “role,” and whether her recognition of that would in any sense make her a modern woman character.
When one thinks of flappers, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of a woman dressed much like Julie Andrews in Thoroughly Modern Millie, bobbed hair, fringed low-waisted dress, flat-chested and highly made up face. This, though a stereotype is close to the truth. In the 20’s after the first world war women’s roles in society began to change, primarily because they started becoming more independent – both in their dress and action. They started to defy what was considered to be appropriate feminine behavior and along with those actions came new fashions. The sleek, boyish look became popular and women began to wear lower waistlines, higher hemlines, sleeveless dresses that showed off their arms, long strands of pearls and rolled down pantyhose to show their knees. Women who had larger breasts even went so far as to bind them down to fit into the flat-chested ideal of beauty. The “in” look now was boyish, much in contrast to the feminine big skirted, shirtwaisted dresses of their mothers’ age. Women began to gain the independence and social liberties that men had always possessed, they wanted to physically display their newly gained freedoms. Short hair, first as a bob, later as a slicked down “shingle” that curled above the ears emphasized the new androgynous look women were trying to obtain. These “modern” women asserted their independence by going out dancing, moving to the city alone, drinking even during prohibition, flirting and having love affairs.
Dubbed by Fitzgerald as “the quintessence of what the term ‘flapper’ signifies,” Clara Bow served as the model for all flappers. A flapper was the new woman; attractive, sassy, “worldly-wise, and briefly clad.” The flapper took on an impish and tomboyish, at lead for their time, attitude. They danced on tables, rendering the recklessness of the new youth. But modern women proved to be a danger for the conventionalism of America. They influenced the change on women’s rights, what was considered moral, and what was considered appropriate for women. These issues had previously been for making a timid woman; upon the coming of the modern woman, these issues made for a modernist female.
Time flew by and as the war ended in 1918, the 1920’s decade of change soon approached. The year was famously known as “The Jazz Age” and “The Roaring 20’s” because of the newly found freedom, social and political changes, and the time of prohibition. Among these powerful new changes was the freedom that women were finally able to vote and enjoy what was about to come. Instead of being confined at home, the women joined labor forces, worked with wages, and experimented with different types of behavior that would have been unreasonable a few years back. Along with these dramatic changes were their fashion styles. This style changed their rights and relationships with others completely. With that change, a new woman was born. There were not many ways for women to stand up for themselves and what they believed in. They had no voice but in the 1920’s, women found a way of freely expressing themselves and changing their relationships with others all with the start of fashion.