History 371H

Devine/Thompson

Fall 2014

Study Questions for Joshua Zeitz, Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women who made America Modern

1. How was the flapper both “distinctly real,” but also an artificially created “character type”? How did the flapper emphasize individuality, but also conformity? (Introduction)

2. How is the flapper’s story also the story of America in the 1920s? (Introduction)

3. What characteristics made Zelda Sayre so popular with young men? How did she blend both traditional and modern traits into her persona? (1)

4. How did Scott and Zelda’s relationship illustrate the emergence of new “rules” that governed interactions between men and women? How did these new rules depart from traditional Victorian notions about how men and women should treat each other? (2)

5. What changes – technological, economic, demographic – contributed to a “new dawn of freedom” for young women in the 1920s? (3)

6. Why, for some young women, did city life hold out the promise of social freedom, but not the reality? (3)

7. How did the new urban leisure culture create a “complex interplay among commerce, sexuality, and love” – what Zeitz calls “the commercialization of romance? (3)

8. Why was the publication of Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise a significant cultural event? (4)

9. Why did many Americans have fewer children starting in the 1920s? How did this demographic trend affect attitudes about sexuality, childrearing, family life, and the emergence of youth culture? (4)

10. Why did the New Yorker hire Lois Long? Why did her columns prove so popular with readers? (9-10)