When flappers ruled the Earth

The wild women of 1920s dance didn't just get everyone doing the Charleston and the Grizzly Bear. Stars like Josephine Baker and Tallulah Bankhead also played a pivotal role in women's emancipation

The Nefertiti of now' ... Josephine Baker at the Casino of Paris in 1939. Photograph: Lipnitzki/Roger Viollet/Getty.

In 1908, wearing little more than a jewelled breastplate and a transparent skirt, the Canadian dancer Maud Allan stormed the fortress of British proprieties with her solo work, The Vision of Salomé. Allan danced an audacious choreography of desire, her body "swaying like a witch, twisting like a snake, and panting with [a hypnotic] passion", according to one dazed viewer. But while several theatres outside London barred Allan's performance as indecent, to her legions of women admirers, she was an inspiration. Margot Asquith, wife of the Liberal PM, was among those who saw Allan's dancing as a liberating expression of female sexuality.The early decades of the 20th century were an exhilarating battleground for women, with key gains made in political and legal reform. But women were also testing out another arena of emancipation: their bodies. As fashions grew simpler and skirts rose higher, reaching knee-length by the late 1920s, women found new physical freedoms – or, at least, those with sufficient money and time to take advantage of them.

In contrast to their bustled, draped and corseted grandmothers, they could feel the sun and wind on their limbs; they could run, stride and ride a bicycle with ease. They could also dance – and it's surely no coincidence that this was an era obsessed with dancing. From the barefoot ecstasies of Isadora Duncan, whosefree, expressive dancing struck a blow against the corseted rigours of classical ballet, to the collective "jazzing" of the 1920s, dance came to play a surprisingly emblematic role in the story of women's liberation.

The impact of Allan's Salomé spread far beyond theatre. To one rightwing politician, Noel Pemberton Billing, its eroticism was nothing less than an incitement to female depravity, specifically lesbianism. A decade later, with Britain at war, Billing published an article in his magazine Vigilante, accusing Allan of being key to a perniciously widespread "cult of the clitoris", and symptomatic of the unpatriotic decadence that was undermining the upper echelons of British society.

Even if Allan wasn't driving women to Sapphic wickedness, she was, in the words of another commentator, "promoting a dangerous tendency to dancing". And it wasn't just on the stage, but on the dancefloor, too, that women were displaying an alarming lack of modesty, with the social dances that began spreading through the west just before the first world war. Driven by the rhythms of American ragtime, the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear triggered a riotous deviation from the formality of the ballroom.

These encouraged dancers to kick up their feet, rock crazily from side to side and lock their swaying pelvises together. In 1914, the Vatican felt compelled to issue a formal denunciation of their suggestive, animalistic moves. To the young and very aristocratic British socialite Lady Diana Manners, these ragtime dances were part of a new "budding freedom", a sign that "Victorianism" had finally lost its grip.

Nightclubs had begun to appear in London in 1912 and, whenever Manners was able to evade her chaperones, these dark and crowded basements promised a cocktail of illicit thrills: smoking cigarettes, wearing lipstick, drinking Pink Ladies – and dancing. Her own expertise on the floor had been fuelled by a year of formal training in ballet and Russian folk dance. The physical poise she acquired wasn't just unusual for a woman of her class, though; it also provided a necessary boost to her confidence after the war, when she further flouted tradition by embarking on an acting career. Not only did this take her to Broadway, it also allowed her to support her husband, Duff Cooper, through his first years as a politician.

In the 1920s, ragtime was superseded by the wayward jangle and bounce of the Charleston and by the pert, buttock-flourishing naughtiness of the Black Bottom. Zelda Fitzgerald, famously the inspiration for her husband F Scott's fictional flapper heroines, was also a wicked exponent of the decade's jazz dances. The celebrity myths that accumulated around the Fitzgeralds were fed by stories of Zelda lifting her skirts high above her waist to emphasis the sway of her hips – and the flash of what Ernest Hemingway was pleased to call her "long nigger legs".

If dances were getting wilder, so too were morals. Between 1914 and 1929, the divorce rate doubled in the US and surveys reported that premarital sex was rising even faster. The promiscuity of young women caused alarm, particularly in Britain where, after the carnage of the war, it was estimated that only one in 10 were likely to find a husband and settle down to marriage and motherhood. As early as 1919, sympathy for their plight ebbed as the press began to speculate about the kinds of selfish, destabilising pleasures these single young women might be indulging in. The Daily Mail warned that the number of "superfluous" females could be a "disaster to the human race".

Dancing continued to be a lightning rod for public concern. In 1923, when Tallulah Bankhead came to London to advance her acting career, it wasn't just the delicious huskiness of her Alabama accent or the fizz of her personality that clinched her success. It was the topicality of the play in which she made her debut. The Dancers, written by Gerald du Maurier and Viola Tree, dramatised the arguments for and against liberated 1920s flappers through the stories of two very different dance-mad women. Bankhead's character Maxie was a professional cabaret artist whose dancing symbolised her independence; she earned her own money, and made her own way in the world. Her opposite number Audry, however, was a socialite whose addiction to dancing led only to a neurotic netherworld of nightclubs, cocktails and sex.

Fizz ... Tallulah Bankhead in 1925. Photograph: Alamy

The moral chaos of Audry's world was captured in a picture painted by the Scottish artist John Bulloch Souter in 1926. Titled, starkly, The Breakdown, it showed a naked flapper dancing the Charleston to the accompaniment of a jazz saxophonist. The latter was seated astride a fallen statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom; the fact that he was also black contributed to the public furore that got Souter's painting forcibly removed from the walls of the Royal Academy in London.

Race was another taboo being broken, as the era saw a mass emigration of black American musicians and dancers into the major cities of Europe.Ada "Bricktop" Smith, a cabaret singer from West Virginia, became doyenne of the Paris nightclubs, giving Charleston lessons to everyone from the writer and heiress Nancy Cunard to the Prince of Wales. And when a skinny chorus girl from St Louis called Josephine Baker was shipped over to Paris in 1925 to perform in the fashionable Revue Nègre, her subversively inventive versions of jazz dance were hailed by artists and intellectuals as genius. Picasso called her the "Nefertiti of now" – and such was the impact of her dancing that she became elevated to an aesthetic ideal.

Having endured racial abuse and discrimination back home, Baker was now advertising beauty products that allowed white women to mimic her own glossy cropped hair, her burnished skin and supple silhouette. It was an astonishing turnaround for her. But it also demonstrated the power that the symbols of the jazz age – its clothes, music and dancing – had to cut across social barriers.

Alive and kicking ... a Charleston competition at the Parody Club, New York in 1926. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

There is, of course, a less benign story to tell about the degree to which these symbols became commodified by the new billion-dollar advertising, fashion and beauty industries, and about the pressures they imposed. Young flappers may have thrown off the tyranny of the corset, but they discovered the new tyranny of dieting. A schoolgirl in Chicago tried to gas herself because her parents wouldn't let her bob her hair or shorten her skirts along with her classmates.

But to the American writer Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, the flapper represented a new spirit of emancipation. If women were to follow their "inner compulsion to be individuals", they had to throw off their shackling inheritance of obedience, whether to the puritanical tenets of old-schoolfeminism or to the sentimentalised duties of marriage and motherhood. It wasn't hardcore politics but, on the dancefloor at least, these women of the 1920s embodied Bromley's views. As they shimmied their shoulders and swivelled their hips, they were released into a brief but deeply subversive world – a world of freedom.

• More on this story

• 
  Josephine Baker and the wild women of 1920s dance – in pictures
  Flappers angered the Vatican and stood accused of starting 'the cult of the clitoris' in Britain. But they also played a huge role in the emancipation of women

Flappers: Women of a Dangerous Generation

1. by Judith Mackrell

http://www.guardian.co.uk

"Berenice Bobs Her Hair" by F Scott Fitzgerald

Reading assignment for the winter holidays ."Berenice Bobs Her Hair" by F Scott Fitzgerald  (complete text in e-caths) Movie watching assignment : "The Great Gatsby" based on the  novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Read complement material on the Jazz Age , in our blog`s past posts.

Bernice Bobs Her Hair" was Fitzgerald's fourth Saturday Evening Post story (1 May 1920) and provided the subject for the dust-jacket illustration when it was collected in Flappers and Philosophers. It occupies an important position in the Fitzgerald canon as a witty early treatment of a characteristic subject that he would later examine more seriously: the competition for social success and the determination with which his characters-- especially the young women--engage in it. The story was based on a detailed memo Fitzgerald wrote to his younger sister, Annabel, advising her how to achieve popularity with boys: "Cultivate deliberate physical grace."  Fitzgerald had some difficulty bringing "Bernice" to salable form; he cut some three thousand words and rewrote to "inject a snappy climax. "

www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/bernice/

The Jazz Age: The American 1920s

The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has lived on in American pop culture for decades. With the introduction of jazz came an entirely new cultural movement in places like the United States, France and England. The birth of jazz music is often accredited to African Americans but expanded and modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white Americans. White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz music in America. Even though the jazz movement was taken over by the middle class white population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and ideals with the white middle class society.Areas like New York and Chicago were cultural centers for jazz, and especially for African American artists. In urban areas, African American jazz was played on the radio more often than in the suburbs. 1920s youth used the influence of jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations. This youth rebellion of the 1920s went hand-in-hand with fads like bold fashion statements (flappers) and new radio concerts. As jazz flourished, American elites who preferred classical music sought to expand the listenership of their favored genre, hoping that jazz wouldn't become mainstream.

Women in the Jazz Age

With the women’s suffrage at its peak in the 1920s and the entrance of the flapper women began to make a statement within society and the Jazz Age was not immune to these new ideals. With women now taking part in the work force after the end of the First World War there were many more possibilities for women in terms of social life and entertainment. Ideas like equality and free sexuality were very popular during the time and women seemed to capitalize during this period. The 1920s saw the emergence of many famous women musicians including Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith also gained attention because she was not only a great singer but also an African American woman. She has grown through the ages to be one of the most well respected singers of all time. Another exception to the common stereotype of women at this time was piano player Hardin Armstrong. She was given the piano part in her husband's big band radio performance series called Hot Five and then his next series called the Hot Seven  It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that many women jazz singers, such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday were recognized as successful artists in the music world.Women such as pianist Billy Tipton dressed up like a man to gain acceptance into society as an artist. These women were persistent in striving to make their names known in the music industry and lead the way for many more women artists to come.

The Jazz Age

The Great Gatsby takes place during the summer of 1922. Fitzgerald coined the phrase, "the Jazz Age" that same year to describe the flamboyant—"anything goes"—era that emerged in America after World War.
Visit these websites for more reliable information:

http://reading.cornell.edu/reading_project_06/gatsby/jazz_age.htm


http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=437

http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/default.html

Berenice Bobs her Hair- Analysis

Fitzgerald's stories chronicled a new generation of American youth whose excesses astounded their elders, and his delightful, bold, and infuriating characters provided a template for the modern socialite. Any talk of the "Jazz Age" (also known as the "Roaring Twenties") of the 1920s immediately brings to mind images straight out of Fitzgerald's world – devastatingly charming flappers and their debonair dates. The collection that features "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is actually titled Flappers and Philosophers (1920), a label that immediately announces its subject matter.

Fitzgerald strove to faithfully and entertainingly depict the changing face of youth in his time; the women are envisioned as forward-thinking, revolutionary "flappers" (slang for the kind of new, fast-talking, Charleston-dancing, jazz-listening, leg-baring gal that emerged at this time), while the men, who either narrowly missed or survived the horrors of World War I, are labeled "philosophers." This title sums up the hedonistic modus operandi of the period: life might be short, so you might as well make it as sweet as possible.

"Bernice" isn't quite as dramatic in its embrace of this philosophy as some of Fitzgerald's other works, but it still gets the message across. The young characters we encounter here are on a different schedule than their parents; instead of planning for the future, they're all about living in the moment. Marjorie proudly claims to be a "gardenia girl", a blossom that's incredibly beautiful, but whose beauty fades fast. Rather than plodding along steadily and never really enjoying herself, Marjorie's motto is something akin to "live fast, die young." Bernice, on the other hand, represents the traditional mode of womanhood – she's totally predictable, and totally boring. The conflict between the two cousins demonstrates the tumultuous social conditions of Fitzgerald's time, with a freshness and accessibility that still impresses readers even ninety years down the road.


Symbolism, Imagery, and Allegory


Hair

It's obvious from the title that hair – and a certain haircut – is of great import in this text. Hair (both Bernice's and Marjorie's) has great symbolic weight here. There's a reason that everyone is so shocked and titillated by the idea of Bernice bobbing her beautiful hair; up until the 1920s, long, glorious, pampered hair was a key component of traditional feminine beauty. The idea of bobbed hair, which came into style in the Roaring Twenties, was considered scandalous and, as Bernice herself jokingly comments, even "unmoral". At the end, one of the reasons Mrs. and Mr. Harvey are so upset by Bernice's bob is that one of their friends, Mrs. Deyo, is a strong opponent of bobbed hair. The fact that a simple hair cut could so upset an entire town may seem ludicrous to us now, but if we consider it in the context of the changing social period Fitzgerald lived in, it makes more sense. Long hair represented both a woman's beauty and her virtue – and bobbing one's hair simply wasn't seen as something a respectable, well-bred girl would do. When Bernice bobs her hair, she is horrified by the dramatic way in which it changes her whole appearance; it robs her of her charm and renders her totally altered. This horror is what makes her ultimate revenge on Marjorie – the removal of her cousin's beautiful hair – even more fitting and gleefully, sinfully, delicious. Marjorie, for all her talk of being a modern girl, prides herself on her traditional feminine beauty, something that Bernice violently takes away from her at the end of the story.

Women / Womanhood

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair," is an allegory for the changing social mores of Fitzgerald's time. Bernice, Marjorie, and Mrs. Harvey all represent different kinds of womanhood, and different sets of social beliefs, and their interactions demonstrate to us the conflict between tradition and modernity. The old-fashioned world that Mrs. Harvey (and Bernice's unseen mother) represent is one in which "all young ladies who belonged to nice families had glorious times", and Little Women was still a model for feminine behaviour. Marjorie, on the other hand, lives in a modern world where a girl has to earn her own popularity. Poor Bernice is stuck in an odd transitional period in between these two ideological spheres, and the conflict of the story is really her struggle to move from one to the other.

Women and Femininity

Up until the twentieth century, one of the most common questions in literature was, "What do men expect from women?" After a certain point, however, the question changed. In "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," we see a new issue emerge: what do women expect from women? This story asks us to evaluate and challenge traditional expectations of womanhood and femininity in comparison to a new kind of woman that exploded into life in the post-Victorian era. However, in the end, neither definition is totally satisfactory; Fitzgerald asks us to question whether or not we should create clear-cut models for femininity at all.
Theme of Youth

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair," like many of Fitzgerald's stories and novels, contemplates what it means to be young, specifically, what it means to be young in a wildly changing social climate. The young people we see here challenge the belief systems they grew up with, and, at times, they shock their parents and other elders. The story asks us to ponder youth and its value, while also looking rather fondly back at the teenage years as a time of rash decisions and heightened emotions.

Identity

It's tough to develop – and maintain – one's own sense of individual identity, when the whole world seems to want to tell us how to act, dress, think, and speak. The characters in "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" don't have it any easier. Even though this story takes place in the now-distant 1920s, we can sympathize with them; they're all dominated by social expectations, pressures, and judgments of the trend-heavy world around them.

Competition

Girls can be competitive. In "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," social competition becomes a matter of life and death. The two main characters unintentionally become fierce competitors in the brutal game of popularity, and when it becomes apparent that an eligible bachelor is the prize, they pull out all stops. What results is a chain of events that is by turns horrible and hilarious.
Betrayal

the antagonist of "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" flips instantly from mentor to metaphorical murderer. The end of this story hinges upon a vicious act of betrayal, and in its aftermath, nothing can possibly be the same again. The story rather uncomfortably asks us to examine just how quickly things can go from ideal to awful – and how the twin demons of competition and jealousy can instantly change the nature of a relationship.

Jealousy

Jealousy plays a central role in "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." Even though its antagonist, a girl who seems to have it all, realizes full well that she has it all, she still can't help but be jealous. In "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," jealousy is simply a fact of life, especially when the person in question is a popularity-obsessed teenager who's used to getting everything she wants. Fitzgerald reminds us of the bitter truth – even when we don't realize it, we're often jealous of someone. It sneaks up on us unawares, and sometimes we don't even recognize it until its too late. Once released, though, jealousy is almost impossible to rein in.

Plot Analysis

Initial Situation

Bernice visits her cousin, Marjorie, for the summer.
The set-up to this story is simple – Marjorie is a ten, but her cousin Bernice is a zero. We see evidence of this at the country club dance, where Marjorie basically has to flirtatiously blackmail people into dancing with the boring Bernice. The difference between the two cousins couldn't be more obvious. We get the feeling that Marjorie just can't wait to get her cousin off her back and enjoy the rest of her summer.
Conflict

Bernice overhears a conversation
(about herself) between Marjorie and Mrs. Harvey; Bernice and Marjorie quarrel.
The conflict here is quite a literal one – Bernice, who overhears her cousin trash-talking her, confronts Marjorie, and the two of them get into a (verbal) fight. Marjorie's sharp-tongued attacks on her rather feeble cousin are effective, and we see what the two of them are really made of – at this stage, at least. The conflict between cousins sets us up to view Marjorie as the strong character and Bernice as the weak, submissive one. This kind of throws us for a little loop when the "Complication" comes along…

Complication


Motivated by Marjorie's criticism, Bernice decides to try to learn how to be popular.
Bernice's change of heart certainly throws a big fat wrench into the works here. While we were ready to accept Bernice's anticipated return home to Eau Claire, she throws us a curveball and decides to stay. We're not sure what's going to happen as these two antagonistic cousins attempt to work together to reinvent Bernice's image, and, like Bernice, we feel some trepidation about it.

Climax
Under Marjorie's tutelage, Bernice becomes a social success – so much so that Warren transfers his affections to her. Marjorie confronts Bernice about Warren.
Things are going well, but there's trouble in paradise. As soon as Bernice threatens her status as queen bee, Marjorie turns against her cousin. This flip from mentor to antagonist is a distinct landmark in the story – we know that things will never be the same between Bernice and Marjorie.

Suspense

Marjorie exposes Bernice's "line" about bobbing her hair at a party.
This scene, which takes place at an afternoon bridge party, is one of the greatest moments of discomfort in the story. Marjorie, jealous of Bernice's success, reveals the fact that Bernice doesn't actually intend to cut her hair. The resultant challenging curiosity that she faces from all of her new friends throws her into a position of anxiety and uncertainty.

Denouement(anti-climax)

Bernice bobs her hair.
Finally, here it is – the moment we've all been waiting for since the title. Bernice does in fact go to the Sevier Barber Shop and bob her hair, and the story shows us at last what we've been alternately hoping for and dreading all along. The haircut is a disaster, and everything Bernice has worked for is immediately destroyed with the snip of a pair of shears. All of a sudden, Bernice is alone – her new "friends" abandon her (including Warren), and there's no way she can return to her old, sedate life.


Conclusion

Bernice takes revenge on Marjorie by chopping off her hair.
This incredibly satisfying conclusion settles the score: Marjorie gets her comeuppance for being a manipulative, jealous, and cold-hearted villain. The conclusion is both resolution and irresolution, for while we get the undeniable thrill of seeing Bernice get her revenge, we're also not sure about her own future. That's part of what makes this story so enjoyable, though – the uncertainty is exciting and strange, and we hope that Bernice goes out with her new-found determination and will and becomes strong woman she has the potential to be.

To get into the "vibe" of those times,watch these videos!

Berenice Bobs her Hair

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered together with Gertrude Stein and Enrnest Hemingway, a member of the "Lost Generation" of the Twenties. He finished four novels, including The Great Gatsby and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development.The Great Gatsby, considered his masterpiece, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, notably Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway looked up to Fitzgerald as an experienced professional writer. Hemingway greatly admired The Great Gatsby and wrote in his A Moveable Feast "If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one" .

Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and his wife Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. As did most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire, and sold movie rights of his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. Many of these stories act as testing grounds for his novels.

Fitzgerald wrote frequently for The Saturday Evening Post. This issue from May 1, 1920, containing the short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair", was the first with Fitzgerald's name on the cover.
And this is the story by Scott Fitzgerald we are going to read in our course. So click HERE and download it....Good reading!!!



A big thanks to Bárbara Bezuch who found the link!!!

source:www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/bernice/