Summary: Today's we will consider shifts that take place in American popular culture in the wake of World War I. We will summarize the devastating impact of the war, and the bulk of our time will be spent considering the works of Fitzgerald and Lindsey and Evans. Fitzgerald's story and Lindsey and Evans' popular self-help text address similar issues. Both reflect the new generational consciousness of 1920s youth; both reflect the flapper's centrality as a symbol of the 1920s; and both reflect Americans' quest for new foundations on which to base American ideals of selfhood and social commitment in the wake of World War I. Among other things, we will assess the limits of the would-be "revolution in manners and morals" that is generally associated with the 1920s and the flapper ideal.

I. Introduction

A. Impact of World War I (Yeats' "The Second Coming")

B. Critical evaluation of cultural stereotypes

C. Influence of larger cultural trends on 1920s "revolution in manners and morals":

1. pre-World War I bohemian cultural radicalism

2. working-class cultural practices, especially the development of a mixed-sex leisure sphere

3. persisting beliefs about marriage and the proper relationships between men and women

II. Fitzgerald's Representation of the "Revolution in Manners and Morals"

A. Fitzgerald's depiction of the "jazz-nourished generation"

B. Marjorie and Bernice as representative flapper figures

1. Marjorie is frank, sexually adventurous, and fun-loving

2. She is also bascially conventional -- unwilling to jeopardize her marriage prospects

3. Bernice and Marjorie's relationship represents female competitiveness for men

C. Fitzgerald's commentary on the absence of social commitment among American youth

1. the trivial takes the place of the consequential

a. Bernice's hair-cut likened to the execution of Marie Antoinette

b. her retaliation against Marjorie likened to a "scalping"

2. in Fitzgerald's story, the younger generation lacks all social commitment

a. young men are "temperamentally restless," afraid of "getting stuck"

b. Jim Strain and Ethel Demorest as figures for their generation

III. Lindsey and Evans

A. Exemplifies popularization of Freud (the unconscious, sex drives, concealment)

B. like Fitzgerald, Lindsey and Evans lend credence to the idea that a revolution in manners and morals has taken place

1. sex is newly central to individual fulfillment for men and women

2. Millie is a radical flapper type

3. birth control and premarital sex are sanctioned

C. BUT, there are limits to that revolution

1. sanctity of marriage, in a new companionate form, is preserved

2. Millie is still basically a "nice girl"

D. Like Fitzgerald, Lindsey and Evans reveal a world searching for new foundations on which to base its notions of selfhood and social commitment

IV. Conclusion

A. Post-WWI era witnessed a revolution of manners and morals

B. But it was a profoundly limited revolution -- one that might even be understood as a dominant-cultural containment of disruptive bohemian and working-class cultural practices