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Chapter 1
The Twenties:
Malcolm Bradbury claims that the American Twenties was an era of vast change and experimentation within US society. He acknowledges that this was a "period of illusion between two severe political realities- The end of the First World War, which tarnished Liberal Idealism and the Wall Street crash which discredited the entire political and social action of the 'Jazz Age"1. The 'Jazz Age', a term popularised by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was seen as an instrument of "revolt against convention and custom"2. It was an integral part of the changes that society experienced. Bradbury goes on to illustrate how money was essentially the key to this change and development. He believed that the stability and growth of the economic markets allowed people to be more frivolous with money and as a result, America declined in its level of productivity as society chose to belong to the new consumer class. This is emphasised by Michael Spindler who, in his text American Literature and Social Change3, confirms that the Twenties had achieved the highest standard of living that its people had ever known. He believes that the prosperity America witnessed after the War led to a development in literature and goes on to conclude that "we need to understand the economic, social and political developments to which a writer has responded and which he has helped to define before we can judge the degree to which he has exploited or distorted those developments for his own aesthetic or tendentious purposes"4. According to Spindler therefore, literature is shaped by the social changes in which it exists.
Consumerism-Materialism:
The levels of consumption in the US grew rapidly after the War5. Many commentators saw this as part of the shift towards modernity with the rise of the 'consumer society' and their desire to buy needless goods. As Fitzgerald illustrates in his text The Great Gatsby 6 women were the main target audience for advertising campaigns. The figure of Dr Eckleburg in Gatsby emphasises the spread of advertising that plays on the vanity of society. Women all over America were being influenced by the need to be modern. In addition to this was the desire to belong to the society of 'it' girls7. Fitzgerald's Gatsby is explicit in representing this class of consumers. The prime consumer in this text is Daisy Buchanan who is a representative of the 'it' girls. In contrast to Daisy is Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle represents a part of female society that longs to be fashionable and 'in', but is being left behind by their lack of wealth. The continual references to new wealth and mass consumption in this text, reaffirms the social condition of the early Twenties as being very consumer-orientated.
Women:
The emancipation of women during the post-war decade was very much a part of the great social change that America experienced. The rights of women were pressed for and a culture emerged from this desire for freedom. These "young, independently minded" women were known as flappers8. The flappers were essentially, "liberated women"9. They smoked, wore their hair short, wore shortened skirts and broke away from the ideas of virtue and chastity that had been so long held as 'Modern' principles. George Mowry in his anthology The Twenties sums up the essence of the flapper as a woman who demands "the same social freedom for herself that men enjoyed".10 He goes on to state how their existence shaped new industries in cosmetics and beauty, providing the "prop" for a new mass consumer society.
These cultural changes are important in defining a modern society. The emerging cultures allow other sectors of society to progress. The flapper image is one that both Fitzgerald and Hemingway illustrate in their texts. Fitzgerald attributes these qualities onto Jordan, as she is someone who is very independent and challenges conventional roles. Catherine also represents this liberated spirit with her bobbed hair, frequent travels abroad and her living arrangements with a female companion in a hotel. Hemingway uses the flapper image as a model for Brett Ashley in his text The Sun Also Rises11. She is a true representative of the flapper, from short hair and skirts to smoking and drinking with the "chaps". Her role shows how women have changed their values, as Mowry says, "[They] sought less to change the other sex and concentrated on changing themselves."12 This new culture that dominated Twenties women came about by the shift towards consumerism.
Some critics believe that the War is the cause of these changes, as women were taken out of the village life and placed into conventionally male positions within the cities. McAlmon saw these changes emerging before the War as he notes in Village13 and this can be seen as he uses imagery of the flapper, a traditional icon of Twenties culture, within the period of the 1910's. He was not alone in his observations as Thorstein Veblen, a commentator and critic of Class and leisure, satirises the hollowness of conspicuous consumption in his text The Theory of the Leisure Class14 [1899]. What makes this so interesting is that Veblen wrote the text in 1899 and this demonstrates how consumption-orientated society was becoming in the early 1900's. He goes on to expose the false desire and instabilities of those who are not a part of the 'in' crowd, paying specific attention to dress, education and taste. It is these factors that inspire women to go out and purchase goods. In examining one text set before the War and two set after the War, it will be possible to see how these cultural changes have come into effect and perhaps emphasise the pre-war trends that both McAlmon and Veblen observe.
Sexuality and Changes:
The freedom of women to experiment with their appearance and attitudes is greatly different to the ideology they followed in the 1910's. As Mowry demonstrates, this involved moving away from the puritan movement of prohibition and also in their redefining of sexual morality. This can be seen as women waited by the railway stations for the travelling salesmen who would not only offer them consumables, but also sex. McAlmon's representation of pre-war women shows the extent of sexual liberation. It shows how women were moving toward the sexually liberated flapper, and also marks the foundation of an emerging consumer society. The relationship between men is also examined by many Twenties American writers.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick examines the close relationship of men in her text Between Men15. She focuses our attention not towards homosexuality but concentrates more on male bonding, the homosocial. She artfully equates the homosocial with desire and not love and furthermore examines the historical differences in the structure of men's relations with other men. In texts I am examining there is at times a sense of the homoerotic that verges on homosexuality, but by using Sedgwick's idea of the buddy 'love' it is possible to re-define these very close boundaries. The men illustrated in these modern texts are quite often veterans of war, living away from women in single sex communities. The only concepts they have of love, in between the killing, is that of their male comrade, or buddy. The buddy culture emerged from the War, not necessarily in a homosexual context, but more in a homosocial context. This homosocial culture, a male society revolving around men in work or leisure, is important in defining the role of the male during this period16. It represents a liberating force, something that the 1910's lacked as McAlmon illustrates in Village. This style is incorporated in much of Hemingway's work. He seems comfortable representing the homosocial in his writing and so a very male world is explored in The Sun Also Rises and furthermore, how it exists in a post war climate.
Literature:
The experimentation that took place in the Twenties can clearly be seen in much of the literature of that period. Malcolm Bradbury describes how the writers of this time sought "above all, style, the literary and emotional economy appropriate to a new age."17 This modern style is very relevant to the way the writers conducted themselves and their writing. It acts as response to the climate of the Twenties. Bradbury believes that it evoked a period of "behavioural experimentation" through expatriation, the idea of re-defining the self and most importantly through creating new styles of writing. Paris became a centre of attraction for these types of people where, like America, it too was evolving into a modern society.
McAlmon makes the connection with Paris in Village as he places his character Peter Reynolds in Parisian society, remarking how Peter "was thought to be leading a dissolute life, somewhere in Europe, probably Paris which was always known to be a horribly immoral city"18. When combined with the earlier passages involving Peter in a homoerotic environment we are able to understand where McAlmon is leading us. Frederick Hoffman believes that Paris was important to American, male expatriate writers because many of them had fought in France during the war19. To these men, Paris was a continuation to the adventure of war. Its appeal widened as writers such as Joyce and Pound felt that it was culturally very wholesome unlike America who some described as an isolated "half-savage country out of date"20.
This Modernist writing illustrates a changing world and marks the inevitability of change after a fierce war. Hoffman is one such critic who outlines potential causes for these literary changes. He believes that these changes were pre-war issues that were not caused by the War, but were merely revealed by the events of War. He exemplifies these issues by saying, "First, [there was] a failure of communication; second, a failure of social meaning and value; and third, a failure of morality"21. He believes that these failures touched the "dominating and emotional aesthetic needs of the younger generation" while not reaching the older generation who accepted more traditional values and morals. Hemingway recalls a moment with Gertrude Stein in A Moveable Feast when she tells of "une génération perdue", the lost generation, "That's what you are'. 'That's what you all are', Miss Stein said. 'All of you young people who served in the War'. 'You are a lost generation"22. This rejection of traditionalist values can be seen clearly in the modern styles of fashion and literature which the younger generation have accepted.
The literature of the Twenties is very different to anything that had come before. The style of form and content was re-evaluated and writers such as Stein wrote experimentalist novels that neglected standard syntax and even words were excluded or altered to create a very different text23. Yet writers weren't solely trying to change writing. There is a sense that they are trying to recapture life before the War. Many of the American writers writing in Paris wrote nostalgic stories based in America.
McAlmon focuses his post-war text Village on American village life before the war. His writing captures the essence of the village and his drifting recollections identify emerging cultures and transformations in morals and values. In writing the text after the War he has become a part of the social change. His nostalgic overview reflects on these changes in their infancy such as the rise of materialism, the new methods of farming and sexual experimentation. These are shown in their early stages and it is not until his writing the text after the War that they have come fully to fruition.
F.Scott Fitzgerald also seems to focus his literary skills on America and its changing society. Although there is a sense of nostalgia, he seems to write with disbelief at the way society has changed following the War. The greed and endless materialistic desire of society are represented in his text The Great Gatsby. Like McAlmon he is writing after the war as an expatriate in Paris. Yet he too is aware of the changes that society has witnessed. He is conscious of the freedom that exists in society, of the liberated men and women. Although not as explicit as Hemingway's writing, Fitzgerald does reveal an understanding of the homosocial world between men.
Hemingway immerses the reader within the homosocial world he has created in Paris and Spain. He decided early in his career that he "would write one story about each thing [he] knew about" and so the buddy world that exists in The Sun Also Rises must be close to real life relationships. The homosocial scenario within Sun is very similar to A Moveable Feast that, although a supposed autobiographical novel, is rich in homosocial culture and activity. He incorporates the concept of buddies within many of his texts, and treats the issue with a first hand experience. We can assume that it was very much a part of his own life as Shari Benstock considers when describing, "expatriate Modernist experience as a form of male bonding produced by the actual experiences of World War 1." What Benstock is implying is that it was the events of the Great War that formulate this buddy culture of male bonding. This is something that I would like to discuss later as it raises an interesting issue, how do developing trends that proceed and follow the War challenge patriarchy?
What follows is an attempt to look at each of these writers in turn and draw conclusions from the texts examined.
1 Malcolm Bradbury, ed., The American Novel and the Nineteen-Twenties, Stratford Upon Avon Studies, 1971, p. 12.
2 George Mowry, ed., The Twenties: Fords, Flappers and Fanatics, Prentice Hall Inc., 1963, p. 67. 3 Michael Spindler, American Literature and Social Change, Macmillan Press, 1993, p. 2.
4 Ibid., p. 3.
5 Malcolm Bradbury, op. cit., p 12.
6 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1926, rpt., Penguin Popular Classics. 1994.
7According to Spindler, the term was used to represent those of wealth and glamour who were 'in' within the City and amongst the wealthy.
8 A Flapper according to the Oxford English Dictionary represented an 'immoral, young girl'. The term was in existence from 1889 where it described 'very young girls trained to vice'. In 1909 J. R Ware uses it to describe a 'very immoral young girl in her early 'teens'. The 1910's flapper was described often as having 'freckles and a pig-tail' up until 1915. As early as 1916 the flapper bracket was a common term- the term given to the bracket at the rear end of a motorcycle used for carrying flappers. The Twenties flapper seems to be a term that represents change in a woman. It was used to describe the transition from "childhood through to the tempestuous teens". There are many references to flapper-hood as representing the teenage years of experimentation and self- discovery.
9 G. Mowry, op. cit., p. 173.
10 Ibid., p. 173.
11 E. Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1927, rpt., Arrow Books, 1994.
12 G. Mowry, op. cit., p. 173.
13 Robert McAlmon, Village-As It Happened Through A Fifteen-Year Period, n.d., c1924, University of New Mexico Press, rpt., 1990.
14 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Macmillan, 1899, rpt., Dover Publications, 1994.
15 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Columbia University Press, 1985.
16 Ibid., p. 3.
17 Malcolm Bradbury, op. cit., p. 15.
18 Robert McAlmon, op. cit., p. 250.
19 Frederick J. Hoffman, The 20's: American Writing in the Post-War Decade, Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1965, p. 77.
20 Malcolm Bradbury, op. cit., p. 15. 21 Frederick J. Hoffman, op. cit., p. 23.
22 Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1936, rpt., Arrow Books, 1994, p.26.
23 Gertrude Stein, Lucy Church Amiably, Something Else Press, is a prime example of this experimentation that could be found within Stein's work.