Youth rebellion has long been a fixture of American culture. After the economic boom of WWII, teenage rebellion became an iconic part of American culture. The previous war, WWI, also ended a strong economy, and young people felt emboldened to new ideas. At that time it was the college-age and young professionals who defined the New Morality of the 1920s. How did assumptions about social roles, gender, race, and sexuality change during the 1920s? Let's explore the rise of America's new morality!
Fig.1 - Film The Painted Flapper (1924)
What was the New Morality?
In the 1920s, young people developed a more open sense of what was acceptable than the previous generation. The new morality grew up around new cultural developments like the founding of Planned Parenthood and the popularity of jazz music. Young White people in big cities danced to Black music in a promiscuous party atmosphere. Total equality was not achieved but barriers between race, gender, and sexuality were starting to erode.
Flappers and Sheiks
Flappers and Sheiks were subcultures that were strongly associated with the New Morality. Flappers were the female and Sheiks the male versions of this new, Jazz-influenced youth culture. These groups reflected the 1920s departure from conservatism.
FLAPPERS | SHEIKS |
- Short hair; short, straight skirts, and heavy make up
- Smoked and drank with men
- Sometimes called "Shebas" as a counterpart to "Sheiks"
| - Named after the popular film, The Sheik
- Wore baggy pants, straw hats, slicked-back hair
- Trendy young men who enjoyed fast cars and jazz music
- The term also was applied to dashing movie stars of the late silent film era
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Liberalism
While flappers are the most iconic symbol of the new morality, liberalism is the word most often used to describe it. Liberalism in this sense means that people deserve freedom and equality. Freedom and equality were not perfectly realized in the era, but it began a march in that direction.
Fig.2 - Flapper on Magazine Cover
New Roles for Women
In 1919, the Senate approved the Nineteenth Amendment, which allowed women to vote. At the dawn of the 1920s, women sought to achieve more social equality to match their newfound political equity. Areas like family, career, and sex and long-held rigid roles for women in American society. Women of the new morality had new ideas about what was acceptable in these areas and took control of their own lives.
The Nineteenth Amendment did not happen quickly. The issue had been debated in the Senate for over 40 years! As recently as just 1919, they had voted against women's suffrage. The struggle for political rights wasn't easy and the struggle for more social freedoms would be either.
Contraception and Planned Parenthood
Despite their new political freedom, women were still largely expected to only be wives and mothers. Margaret Sanger launched the organization Planned Parenthood in 1916 to provide women with more information on birth control methods. This greatly increased women's ability to make decisions about their own lives. From increased career focus for women to more permissive ideas of sexuality, this information changed society.
Transmitting this information wasn't always safe and easy though. Many states made it illegal to give out contraceptives or related information except as treatment for a disease. On April 15, 1929, The police raided a birth control clinic in New York City. They even arrested the doctors and nurses. Patients' confidential medical files were taken as evidence.
Women in Professions
In the 1920s, more women started going to college and working outside the home. The practice of an unmarried woman having a job became a normal part of society. Still, equality was not total. Women earned less than men and married women who worked were still viewed negatively, the assumption being that they were only after frivolous spending money.
Continuing Struggle for Women's Rights
As the decade of the 1920s began, it seemed that women's rights were gaining new ground. Ideas like birth control and working outside the home started to become more accepted by society. However, with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, many women felt their struggle was over and left the movement. The wave of progress began to recede and ideas like the Equal Rights Amendment stalled in Congress.
Race and the New Morality
Jazz was a major influence in the 1920s and its culture is the culture of the New Morality. For the first time, White audiences were enthralled by Black music coming out of New Orleans and Chicago, before heading on the New York. The music tied into women's new sense of liberation to dance freely and dress in ways that their parents' generation would have considered to be too provocative.
The Cotton Club in Harlem was a famous Jazz Club that packed in a hip, young audience.
Fig.3 - 1923 Jazz Ensemble
Party Culture of the New Morality
With the wild music of Jazz music as a soundtrack, the party culture of the New Morality veered away from what older generations thought was appropriate. New ideas were being explored in regards to sexuality. Even laws were meant to be broken as the younger generation looked for new ways to enjoy themselves.
The automobile also shaped the New Morality. Young people experienced a kind of new independence and autonomy. Fast cars became a part of the fast-living of Jazz party culture.
New Ideas of Sexuality
Academics began to reconsider ideas about sex at the time. Psychologist Sigmund Freud and Physician Havelock Ellis published works stating that sex was a natural part of life and could be enjoyed. College kids outside of their parents' view for the first time held promiscuous parties owning to this new comfortability with sex and increased knowledge of contraception.
Drinking and the New Morality
Alcohol was illegal at the time due to prohibition. Criminal enterprises flourished by bootlegging and importing alcohol under the noses of law enforcement. Speakeasies became tied to culture. Beyond just dance and fashion, women were now drinking and engaging with the men in ways that their parents' generation had not. The New Morality did not just disregard social codes, but also legal ones.
Speakeasy:
A speakeasy was a bar that illegally sold alcohol during prohibition. They were also known as a Blind Pig or a Blind Tiger.
The Lost Generation
The works of the Lost Generation showcase the New Morality. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is one of the most popular depictions of this new world of flappers, parties, and illegal activity. The disillusionment brought on by World War I contrasted with the material excess of the strong 1920s economy to inform their works. The works of these writers and artists are among the most well-known representations of the era and the view of the times they presented is the lens through which most modern audiences understand the time period.
Those Left Out of the New Morality
The New Morality may have defined the popular image of the 1920s but it was primarily restricted to the middle and upper classes of the North East and West coast. The Democratic Party of the time controlled the South. They supported prohibition and segregation. Democrats were less in favor of women's suffrage. The Party's popularity in the region didn't just enforce more traditional ideas but showed that those conservative ideas themselves were popular in the region. For much of America, the New Morality had little impact on them.
Fundamentalism
While the New Morality was changing the lifestyles of the coastal upper and middle classes, there was a strong religious objection to new ideas. In Tennessee, the Scope Money Trial was a famous example of fundamentalist resistance. Teaching evolution in school strongly upset Fundamentalists, who believed in literal interpretations of the Bible. The New Morality didn't have one specific form of conflict that was as iconic as the Scope Money Trial, but on a larger scale, it was a part of the same cultural shift.
A Summary of the New Morality Rise
The social uproar of the 1920s was strongly heard in the cities, where bigger urban concentrations gave place to cultural fusion and freedom. It impacted art, music, fashion, literature, and philosophy. The new artistic expressions gained popularity, like cinema and jazz. The lost generation found itself freer in this new morality.
New Morality - Key takeaways
- Ideas about race, gender, and sexuality were challenged during the 1920s.
- Primarily existed among the middle and upper classes of the Northeast and West coasts.
- Often described as "liberalism," meaning that people deserve freedom and equality.
- The flapper is the symbol of the New Morality.
- A culture of parties and jazz music went with the new openness.
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