The Paradoxical 1920s

Abstract The most popular book on the 1920s emphasizes enormous contradictions in the American scene. At the same time that individuals experienced great strides in their personal lives, the nation took one giant step backward into”normalcy. A country tired of sacrificing for war and weary of high-minded slogans about”making the world safe for democracy" reverted to old ways that emphasized personal comfort and national isolation. Nowhere is the contradiction more apparent than in accounts of women’s lives. The view of the 1920s as”roaring" gives only half the picture. It is true that contraception and cosmetics became more available and acceptable; Freud and flapper fashions offered new freedoms. Electric appliances promised to diminish the time required for house work (if standards of acceptable cleanliness did not rise concurrently) and old barriers that had stood between the sexes, in matters such as smoking in public, dropped. Women increased their percentage of the labor force, and 450,000 of the new jobs were in the professions.