History 474A

Devine

Spring 2014

Study Questions for Zeitz, Flapper

 

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. What factors account for the incredible expansion of wealth in the US during the 1920s? Why was the resulting wealth distributed so unevenly? (5)

 

11. How did the presence of more wealth affect American culture – even its “fads and frivolities”? (5)

 

12. When Zelda Fitzgerald announced “the flapper is deceased,” what did she mean? Why did she believe flappers would make even better wives and mothers than Victorian girls had? (6)

 

13. As the nature of work and daily life changed at the turn of the twentieth century, how did values and behavior reflect those changes? How did advertisers facilitate this shift in values and behavior and even redefine “the good life”? (6)

 

14. Why did Margaret Sanger see contraception not as a “question of population” but as an “instrument of liberation and human development”? Why did her arguments in favor of birth control have special resonance during the 1920s? (6)

 

15. How, according to Zeitz, were the flappers proto-feminists? What significance does he attribute to “choice”? (6)

 

16. How do we know that the United States’ shift to a more modern culture did not occur without a struggle? What evidence does Zeitz cite to demonstrate this? (7)

 

17. How was the rise of fundamentalism (in both religion and culture) related to the increase of choice and diversity in American culture during the 1920s? How were the “culture wars” of the 1920s an example of the tension between freedom and authority? (7)

 

18. How did the “process of cultural transmission” spread “flapperdom” – and its fashions and values – from New York to the rest of the nation? (8)

 

19. Why is it not surprising that a magazine like The New Yorker emerged from the context of 1920s Manhattan? What distinguished it from other popular magazines? (8)

 

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

 

21. How did an earlier generation of feminists react to the flapper?  How did criticizing the flapper actually paper over rifts within the feminist movement itself? (11)

 

22. According to Zeitz, how was the flapper’s preoccupation with establishing herself as a unique individual in fact evidence that she was a “feminist”? (11)

 

23. What were the limits of the 1920s “sexual revolution”? How did the “sexual candor” of the 1920s narrow the romantic and sexual possibilities available to women? (12)

 

24. How did the phrase “Without imagination, no wants” sum up the consumerist ethos of the 1920s? Why had buying things become so important to people since the turn of the 20th century? (17)

 

25. How had advertising changed between the 1890s and the 1920s? What impediments did the ad men have to overcome as they “taught” Americans to be good consumers? (17)

 

26. How did new technologies in visual reproduction help fuel consumerism? (17)

 

27. How did filmmaker D.W. Griffith’s declining popularity demonstrate that “times had changed” by the 1920s? (21)

 

28. How did Colleen Moore’s depiction of a flapper blend rebellion and reassurance? How did Clara Bow provide an “alternative” to Moore’s “winsome” flapper? (22)

29. How did Hollywood reflect and shape the new modern culture that emerged during the 1920s? How did Hollywood imagery affect women’s lives in particular?(24)

 

30. How did the arc of Scott and Zelda’s relationship mirror the trajectory of the 1920s? (25)