African American Women In The 1920s

The 1930’s were hard times for the entire working class, but as usual in history, minorities were hit the hardest. Especially the African American society had to suffer the most under the effects of the great economic depression; they were the first to be discharged from their jobs and the last to be hired. African Americans were even pushed out of jobs, which were previously scorned out by whites. Even if they were allowed to keep their jobs, they still had to face daily racism. Compared to the white folks, the wages of African American workers were at least 30% below white’s wages, even when performing the same job; considering, that even the normal wage of a white American was not enough to cover the subsistent level of expanses of a household.

The 1920s was a major turning point in American history. Known as “the roaring twenties”, the citizens of the United States enjoyed the new found wealth from the economic turnaround. The United States’ wealth more than doubled as the nation turned into a consumer society. Not all Americans were fond of the changes in society, and not all of the changes were good.

Towards the end of the 1800s and into the beginning of the 1900s, the roles of women in society and in the family began to change drastically compared to what it had been in the past. Women were now allowed to own land, vote, and do more than cook and clean. Willa Cather and William Faulkner portray the roles of women in the early 1900s in their short stories, “Neighbor Rosicky” and “A Rose for Emily.” These short stories were both published around the year 1930. Because of what was happening in the US at the time, these stories are very good examples of the ways women were treated at this time.

In the 1920’s, blues was a very popular and dominating genre in the music industry. Generally, the blues was sung by African American women because according to the book entitled, “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism” by Angela Davis, “…The most widely heard individual purveyors of the blues—were women.” (Davis 4) The blues delivers certain emotions such as sadness, loneliness, love, sex, and feelings about the certain circumstances the artist may be going through at the time. Two women who dominate this style of music are Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith. As stated by “Gay & Lesbian Biography”, “The careers of Rainey and Smith are closely interwoven.” Ma Rainey is a woman who is admired for both her amazing vocals and her ability to entertain. Bessie Smith is a woman who started off as a background dancer for her peer Ma Rainey, but then went on to emulate her by outdoing her success. Both women are very talented musicians who can not only sing and entertain, but they also create an impact as two of the most influential feminists during the 1920’s who helped shape the blues into what it is today.

The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage; or possiblyk20 the lady isn’t writing a letter at all, but a novel or a poem, never to be read by anyone but her. Edith Warton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are 19th Century ladies who dare to share their writing with the world. Through their works, the darker side of a woman’s life in the late 1800’s is exposed. Gender politics in the 19th dictates that a lady is dependent on her husband for her financial security and social standing; that is if she is fortunate enough to marry at all. In Edith Warton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is a beautiful woman in her late 20’s, who fails to marry a wealthy man. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper slowly goes insane under her physician husbands misguided attempts to cure her of depression. The downfall of Lily Bart and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is

Women in the 1920s started to earn more respect and equality in society, mostly the right to vote. During this time, women had the opportunity to access higher education, minimum wage, better domestic living, and better healthcare. But women are still coming across challenges where they are submissive to men. Fredrick Lewis Allen introduces women as“... the guardians of morality; they were made of finer stuff than men and were expected to act accordingly” (Allen 129). Clearly, women were expected of something, but men were able to do whatever they so please to do whether it would be to hang out late at night at bars, drinking with friends, or being the one to have a house under his name and making his own money. According to Allen,

In the 1930’s, gender inequality was present for countless women based on the time period they were living in. Many women were not allowed to play major roles in their government or society during the time period of the 1930’s. “ For some reason he looked pleased with Jem.’I was wondering when that’d occur to you,’ he said. ‘There are lots of reasons. For one thing, Miss Maudie can’t serve on a jury because she’s a woman —”(Lee 252). Women in the 1930’s were not able to choose their jobs as easily as men.They were not allowed to hold government positions and had many limitations on the jobs they could do. They were expected to cook and do housework for their families. According to Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird, “ it is funny to think of men cooking and wearing aprons”. Men were not seen as cooks for their family; it was the women who made the meals.

The women of the 1920’s were first introduced to society as a generation that spent most of their time cleaning, cooking, and nurturing their children. However, as the “Roaring 20s” came to impact the

Two-hundred years is a sizeable gap of time that allows plenty of room for change. American society had been rapidly changing from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, but despite this, the roles and rights of women have remained locked in place. There were many factors to consider as to why women were not allowed to flourish in their time and exceed these boundaries, and while some accepted it, there were many that opposed and faced these difficulties head on. Two female authors, one from colonial times, and one from nineteenth century America, have written about the obstacles and misogyny they’ve overcome in a male dominated literary career. Despite the two-hundred-year gap between the lives of Margaret Fuller and Anne Bradstreet, they both face issues regarding the static stereotype that women are literarily inferior and subservient handmaids to men.

The repetition of the narrator's rhetorical questioning ‘what is one to do?’ in response to the male character's dominance over the female psyche, exemplify her state of helplessness and isolation prompting a sympathetic response from the reader. Significantly, the microcosm created by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in regards to the narrator's domestic sphere largely reflected the public realm within 1890’s America; a period plagued by the prevailing value system ‘The Cult of Womanhood’. The Cult of True Womanhood identified several key characteristics cardinal to a woman's identity, notably submissiveness, which ensured their stature remained secondary to their husbands. The aftermath of this, crucially the status of women as secondary citizens, remains evident in Maya Angelou’s poem ‘Woman Work’. As in 'The Yellow Wallpaper', ‘Woman Work’ provides an impassioned, dramatic monologue reflecting the frustrations that the ‘true woman’ tenet

During the early 1800's women were stuck in the Cult of Domesticity. Women had been issued roles as the moral keepers for societies as well as the nonworking house-wives for families. Also, women were considered unequal to their male companions legally and socially. However, women’s efforts during the 1800’s were effective in challenging traditional intellectual, social, economical, and political attitudes about a women’s place in society.

Typically, in the 1930s, women’s roles consisted of raising the children, taking part in their church community, and as some people might say: “belonging in the kitchen.” “As if to confirm Scout’s misgiving, the young girl has hardly sat down to sip her lemonade when Miss Stephanie Crawford from across the street asks her if she wants to grow up to be a lawyer like her father. ‘Nome, just a lady,’ Scout answers,12 and Miss Stephanie says that if Scout wants to be a lady she will have to wear dresses more often”(Shaffer). Calpurnia is a great example of what a woman in the 1930s were to be, even though she was not Jem and Scout’s mother. She taught the children how to read and write, just enough so they were prepared in school, she worked in the kitchen, and she was active in her church group. Over time, women began working in jobs outside the home, while the men were fighting in the war. “In the US, for the first time, in 2011, women made up slightly more than half the workforce” (Van der Gaag). Women today work in every field of work known possible especially in: entertainment, the medical field, science and technology, and even as professional athletes who take part in the olympics. This is considered the standard in the modern time where women pour out their blood, sweat, and tears into their job performance to work hard and achieve their goals. A woman’s role in society

Women are capable of bringing human beings in this world, and they live a lot longer than men. They are like the sun, the whole world needs women but in other cases, this cannot be said for most women. Based on The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the motion picture Chicago directed by Rob Marshall, both prove that during the 1920s, women had a negative influence in society. They were seen as toys. They were manipulative over men and had a way of always getting what they wanted using lust and acting a bit promiscuous. Rather than being seen as human beings, they were seen as trophies and were not taken serious and were ignorant. They would only care about money or fame. Even during the 1920’s women are portrayed as always being competitive and jealous towards each other when it comes to receiving attention.

During this time, there were no words for the longing of women in articles that had been written by experts, for and about women. In which, equal rights seemed unattainable and/or distant. The average age of marriage was dropping into teens, the birthrate was increasing, the proportion of women attending college in comparison to men had dropped to 47 percent in the 1920 to 35 percent in 1958. Yet there was a continuing trend in the unhappiness of women. Contrary, American culture insisted that women could find happiness in marriage and the becoming of a housewife.

The twentieth century is known as the historically transitional period of women’s roles in society not only in America but also all over the globe. Early the twentieth century, women began to question their positions and rights. They found that their value didn’t just stop at domestic work. They no longer wanted to be seen a potential source of ”help” for men but wanted to take part in the process of society’s development like any other men. Even in literature, many famous authors started to indicate women’s role through their novels. Mostly, this foundational period of women movement was usually emphasized within the frontier context. Thus, it was believed that the transition and progress between the Western countryside and big city in the East play a big role in the changes of women themselves as well as the society’s perspective toward women. Women began to approach other opportunities to work different types of jobs other than just staying home doing housework. Also, women held many responsibilities during the westward expansion, such as managing the movement of households overland, establishing social activities in pioneer settlements, and sharing the hard labor of farming new land. Eventually, frontier towns attracted women who worked as laundresses and seamstresses, and organized church societies and other reform movements. In other words, the born of Feminism took place and was impacted by the Westward movement.