Lecture 8 Part 1

Twentieth Century American Literature

Survey Course Instructor: Mihai Mîndra

American Modernism Prerequisites

American Modernism – Prerequisites 

World War I made the United States a world power  European nations tried to recover from the war, the United States had overseas territories, access to markets, and plentiful raw materials.  Formerly in debt to European investors, the United States began to lend money abroad.  At home, the economy expanded:    

assembly-line production mass consumption easy credit and advertising characterized the 1920s.

American Modernism – Prerequisites 





American zeal for reform waned; business and government resumed their long-term affinity. not all Americans enjoyed the rewards of prosperity. A mix of economic change, political conservatism, and cultural conflict  the 1920s a decade of contradictions.

Poster representing post-WW I America

World War I 



The Triple Alliance (Central Powers): Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy (to opt out of the alliance and be replaced by the Ottoman Empire) The Triple Entente (Allied Powers): Britain, France, Russia. 



The first wartime use of modern weapons with high range of efficiency leading to many casualties (military and civilian: 37 million): machine guns, tanks, airplanes. Europe had lost a generation of young men, its confidence, and stability

Mobilization--August 1914

Civilians join German soldiers on their first mile's march towards Paris

Mobilization--August 1914

French Soldiers, also joined by civilians, on their way to Berlin

Mobilization--August 1914

Russian soldiers with band in St. Petersburg

Mobilization--August 1914

Berlin students on their way to enlist

The Somme, 1916

British troops on their way to the front. June, 1916. The citizen armies raised in Britain from 1914 to 1916 were confident of victory. They were all volunteers, and made up in solidarity what they lacked in military experience

The legendary Krupp's Big Bertha, a German 42cm howitzer of the type used to crush the Belgian fortresses in 1914.

German soldier standing next to a giant rail gun shell

World War I - The American Reaction 

Antebellum intellectuals: 







transformation of the American dream from

religious mission to secular social and material success: manifest destiny/city on a hill/New Jerusalem replaced by individual liberty and material well-being. Service to man instead of service to God 1914 concludes a period of unprecedented material growth, domestic reform: the future is bright. American intellectuals: their responsibility to lead the nation upward and onward (reform and utopia) Optimism, belief in the natural rights of man.

World War I - The American Reaction After / during the War:  antebellum intellectual mythical vision exploded.  European nations behaved aggressively tribal: 



they “have reverted to the condition of savage tribes roaming the forests and falling upon each other in a fury of blood and carnage to achieve the ambitious designs of chieftains clad in skins and drunk with mead.” (New York Times, August 2, 1914)

American intellectuals engaged in the Progressive movement: stunned.

World War I - The American Reaction 

W. Wilson proclaimed U.S.A. neutral, as it was a European war:  







continue trade with both camps try to secure peace.

However: U.S.A. identified culturally more with Britain than with Germany (democratic tradition). As soon as the war began: the British, the French turned to the United States for war supplies. The U.S. economy, which had been languishing in 1914, enjoyed a boom. Bankers began to issue loans to the Allied Powers.

World War I - The American Reaction 

Wilson’s 1916 peace initiative:  





A vision of a new world order. Relations between nations would be governed by negotiation rather than war. Justice to replace power.

In a major foreign policy address (May 27, 1916), Wilson formally declared support for what he called the League of Nations.

World War I - The American Reaction 

Response:  Many American pacifist groups supported Wilson’s efforts:  To commit national prestige to the cause of international peace rather than conquest  To keep the United States out of war.

World War I - The American Reaction 

Actively opposed the war:  Carrie Chapman Catt (President of the National Women Suffrage Association)  Jane Addams (founder of the Women’s Peace Party)  the nation’s Protestant clergy  Midwestern progressives [Robert La Follette, William Jennings Bryan, George Norris]  leading socialists: Eugene V. Debs

World War I - The American Reaction 

April 1916: many of the country’s most prominent progressives and socialists joined hands in the American Union against Militarism and pressured Wilson to continue pursuing the path of peace



On December 16, 1916: Wilson sent a peace note to the belligerent governments Wilson initiated secret peace negotiations with both sides



World War I - The American Reaction 



Speech before the Senate - January 22, 1917:  reaffirmed his commitment to the League of Nations.  “peace without victory”; “only a peace between equals can last.”  listed the crucial principles of a lasting peace: freedom of the seas, disarmament, the right to self-determination, democratic self-government, and security against aggression revolutionary change in world order; views rarely expressed by the leader of a world power.

World War I - The American Reaction 

May 7, 1915, without warning, a German Uboat torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania, en route from New York to London.  ship sank in 22 minutes killing 1,198 men, women, and children, 128 of them U.S. citizens Americans.

World War I - The American Reaction 

 

March 1916: a German submarine torpedoed a French passenger liner Sussex, there was heavy loss of life, and a few injured Americans February 1, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. Wilson continued to hope for a negotiated settlement until February 25, when the British intercepted and passed on to the president a telegram:  The Zimmerman telegram: The German government tried to provoke a war between the United States and Mexico.

World War I - The American Reaction 1917: America enters the conflict (April 2 Wilson’s declaration before Congress, April 6 Congress vote). Justified by the concept of mission: joining the side of Great Britain and France would further the ideals of freedom and peace. The national mission: defending American ideals wherever they were threatened. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921): war

would make the world “safe for democracy.”

World War I - The American Reaction 





Initially most intellectuals accept this attitude and support:  The war  The super-patriotism at home Some scholars (economists, political scientists) left their academic jobs and offered their expertise in Washington. Others supported the American intervention in writing. John Dewey, a pacifist three months before the American participation (Creative Intelligence [collective volume, 1917]: the observation of the practical consequences of believing in an idea should determine its value.

World War I - The American Reaction 



Scientific method, not force, should be the basis of belief. Immediately following the American April 1917 entrance into the conflict, starts publishing a series of articles in New Republic arguing that war and his variety of pragmatism are compatible: 



Pacifism: emotional, idealistic, personal rather than social. Concrete action was to be taken as a practical, objective response to a specific situation.

World War I - The American Reaction 

J. Dewey - “The Social Possibilities of War” (the Independent, June 1918) another reason supporting the intervention:  The general state of emergency & its accompanying spirit of private sacrifice for public ends would hasten the advent of the socialization of the means of production and distribution.  This will lead to the central government’s control over the private sector of the economy & the kind of social and economic justice for which the Progressives had labored with only partial success.  The end result of the mobilization effort: a permanent “democratization of industry”.

World War I - The American Reaction 



Most American intellectuals followed Dewey’s reasoning. An exception: Randolph Bourne (1886 1918) - articles in Seven Arts:  





War: a national tragedy. Blamed the intellectuals who had rationalized the war. While Europe was fighting America might have developed / clarified the meaning of democracy / discover “a true Americanism”. The whole era had been spiritually wasted.

World War I - The American Reaction 





Horrified by the role played by the American intellectuals encouraging war (turning it into a holy crusade). The instrumentalist/pragmatist approach (Dewey’s theory that ideals entail sacrifices) focused on winning the war without considering whether the postwar world would be worse. The problem with pragmatism: while effective in terms of practical means of fulfilling ideas it did nor question or explain the very ideals: “We

suffer from a real shortage of spiritual values.” 

“The old ideals crumble; new ideals must be forged.”(“Twilight of Idols”, 1917)

World War I - The American Reaction 







At his death (1918) Bourne was experimenting with a vision of American society as a model to replace belligerent nationalism with peaceful pluralism. Still: no despair, cynicism, bitterness (as attributed to the “lost generation”) > the urgency to create, not to resign.

The first “total” war: the U.S.A. government had to pursue an unprecedented high degree of industrial control and social regimentation. Labor shortage: expansion of production for the war, decrease of immigration, drafting (military conscription).

World War I - The American Reaction 



Result: considerable migration  To the North (1916-1920) from the South (AfricanAmerican and white)  To the Southwest: Chicanos in agriculture, mining, railroad jobs from revolution-ridden Mexico.  In the North: approx. 40,000 northern women hired as streetcar conductors, railroad workers, metalworkers, munitions makers replacing men. Women in clerical work in the government war bureaucracies. A million women engaged in war-related industries. Labor organizing (unions): 1916-1920: more than one million workers on annual strikes: asking for higher wages & shorter hours. “Industrial democracy” becomes the battle cry of an awakened battle labor movement.

World War I - The American Reaction  

  



Patriotism & Democracy: 1917 Wilson set up the agency called the Committee on Public Information (CPI): to publicize & popularize the war (war propaganda). Profound effect imparted to many:  Deep love of country  Sense of participation in a grand democratic experiment  New spirit of protest Workers rally for “industrial democracy” Women fighting for suffrage African-Americans wishing to get rid of second-class citizenship status However, the war opened up new social &

cultural divisions.

World War I - The American Reaction 

Wartime Repression: 





early 1918 the CPI campaign: inflamatory advertisements - called on patriots to report on neighbors, coworkers, and ethnics suspected of subverting the war effort. called on all immigrants, especially those from central, southern, and Eastern Europe, to pledge themselves to “100 percent Americanism” and to repudiate all ties to their homeland, native language, and ethnic customs. aroused hostility to Germans by spreading lurid tales of German atrocities and encouraging the public to see movies such as The Prussian Cur and The Beast of Berlin.

World War I - The American Reaction

The Prussian Cur, 1918

The Beast of Berlin, 1918

CPI Posters

"Liberty sandwiches" avoided reference to the German city of Hamburg.    

WW I Posters

World War I - The American Reaction 



 

Justice Department arrested thousands of German and Austrian immigrants whom it suspected of subversive activities Congress passed the Trading with the Enemy Act requiring foreign-language publications to submit all war-related stories to post office censors for approval. German American words were renamed German Americans became the objects of popular hatred: performances of Beethoven’s symphonies were banned; libraries removed works of German literature from their shelves; Patriotic school boards in Lima, Ohio, and elsewhere burned the German books in their districts

World War I - The American Reaction 



German Americans risked being fired from work, losing their businesses, being assaulted in the street The anti-German campaign escalated into a general anti-immigrant crusade. Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1917 (over Wilson’s veto): all adult immigrants who failed a reading test would be denied admission to the United States.

American Modernism – Prerequisites      

Productivity and Prosperity Mass Culture Political Conservatism Political Conflicts The Great Depression The New Deal

Productivity and Prosperity 

CAR PRODUCTION  





Ford Assembly Line early 20th century, the AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY symbolized the potential of industrial growth for the United States 1916 – 1929: annual car sales tripled; 9 million motorized vehicles on the road became 27 million by the end of the 1920s the popular black Model T.

Ford Assembly Line

Model T, 1908

Model T, 1908

The 1929 Graham Paige DC Phaeton shown here featured an 8-cylinder engine and an aluminum body.

Productivity and Prosperity 



Assembly-line techniques: cut production costs  cars less expensive & more available to average citizens. The effects of auto production:  industries that made steel, glass, rubber, and petroleum.  exploration for oil  new corporations, such as Gulf Oil and Texaco (the 1920s domestic oil production grew by 250 % , as well as oil imports).  State-funded programs to build roads and highways  the nation’s landscape.

Productivity and Prosperity 





isolated rural areas filled with tourist cabins and gas stations. new suburbs with single-family homes on small plots of land arose at the outskirts of cities; the construction industry soared. new ways to distribute and sell products: advertising & the installment plan

Productivity and Prosperity 







Industry produced new home appliances: refrigerators, washing machines & vacuum cleaners families spent larger portions of their incomes to buy these goods; items previously considered luxuries now became necessities. chain stores, such as A&P, put local retailers out of business canned goods and commercial breads replaced homemade products

Productivity and Prosperity 

 



advertising industry (appeared in the late 19th century): desire for consumer goods. extensive credit  consumerism. American corporations became larger: the end of the 1920s, 100 corporations controlled nearly half the nation’s business Affected workers & agriculture

1920s

Harley – Davidson Bikes

1920s Advertisements

1920s Advertisements

1920s Telephone Ads

Wrigley, 1925

Mass Culture 

One symbol of the 1920s: the

flapper 





young woman with a bobbed haircut, short skirt, and makeup. youthful rebellion, carefree attitudes, and female independence. celebrating the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s

1890s Bicycle Suit

The earliest images of changing roles for women appeared in the press in the 1890s. The fashion symbol known as the "Gibson girl," taking her name from artist Charles Dana Gibson, revealed women's changing appearance. Discarding heavy corsets, petticoats, and frills, the Gibson girl sported a shirtwaist (blouse) and long skirt, which better enabled her to play tennis or ride a bicycle. She appeared confident, capable, athletic, and flirtatious. Fox watered silk, ribbon-weave gown, c.1895

The Flapper

Colleen Moore, the silver screen's first flapper

Mass Culture 







the flapper represented much of what typified the Jazz Age of the 1920s:  youthful rebellion  female independence  exhibitionism  competitiveness  consumerism. Although a symbol of liberation, the flapper was in fact the ultimate consumer, dependent on a variety of products: bobbed hairdos, short skirts, makeup, and cigarettes supported the industries of the 1920s: the beauty parlor, the ready-made clothing industry, cosmetic manufacture, and tobacco production. Consumerism linked the carefree, adventurous mood of the Jazz Age with the dominance of large corporations and their conservative values.

The Jazz Age - F.S. Fitzgerald’s “Echoes of the Jazz Age” 

The ten-year period that, as if reluctant to die outmoded in its bed, leaped to a spectacular death in October, 1929, began about the time of the May Day riots in 1919. When the police rode down the demobilized country boys gaping at the orators in Madison Square, it was the sort of measure bound to alienate the more intelligent young men from the prevailing order. We didn't remember anything about the Bill of Rights until Mencken began plugging it, but we did know that such tyranny belonged in the jittery little coun-tries of South Europe. If goose-livered business men had this effect on the government, then maybe we had gone to war for J. P. Morgan's loans after all.

The Jazz Age - F.S. Fitzgerald’s “Echoes of the Jazz Age” 

But, because we were tired of Great Causes, there was no more than a short outbreak of moral indignation, typified by Dos Passos' Three Soldiers. Presently we began to have slices of the national cake and our idealism only flared up when the newspapers made melodrama out of such stories as Harding and the Ohio Gang or Sacco and Vanzetti. The events of 1919 left us cynical rather than revolutionary, in spite of the fact that now we are all rummaging around in our trunks wondering where in hell we left the liberty cap—"I know I had it"— and the moujik blouse. It was characteristic of the Jazz Age that it had no interest in politics at all.

The Jazz Age - F.S. Fitzgerald’s “Echoes of the Jazz Age” 

It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire. (..) We were the most powerful nation. Who could tell us any longer what was fashionable and what was fun? (…) This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers, the generation that corrupted its elders and eventually overreached itself less through lack of morals than through lack of taste.

The Jazz Age - F.S. Fitzgerald’s “Echoes of the Jazz Age” 

A whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure. (..) The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first sex, then dancing, then music. It is associated with a state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big cities behind the lines of a war. To many English the War still goes on because all the forces that menace them are still active — Wherefore eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.

Mass Culture 





Leisure industries - turned to mass production as well: Rural / urban, Americans nationwide: masscirculation magazines (full of advertising): The Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, or The Ladies’ Home Journal. listened on the radio to the same popular music, comedy shows, and commercials, broadcast by new radio networks such as National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)

Motion pictures gained vast urban audiences: 1927 Al Jolson’s film The Jazz Singer introduced sound to movie audiences. Produced by Warner Bros. and the Vitaphone Corporation for $500,000, released in 1927 by Warner Bros. and grossed $2,500,000. 88 minutes

The Jazz Singer, 1927, Premiere

Sound Films 



not the first sound film, but one of the first successful sound movies of the Jazz Age:  Eugene Lauste made sound films 1910-1914  Edison made kinetophone films in 1913  Western Electric showed "The Audion" at Yale on Oct. 27, 1922, and made "Hawthorne” in 1924  Warner made the Vitaphone short "The Volga Boatman" May 24, 1926, and released "Don Juan" on August 6, 1926. F  Fox began releasing sound newsreels Jan. 21, 1927 The "Jazz Singer" opens with young Jakie Rabinowitz, the son of a Jewish cantor, singing in a saloon. His father demands that Jakie become a traditional cantor. Jackie runs away from home and becomes the jazz singer Jack Robin, played by Al Jolson.

The Press





The press tracked celebrities: movie stars & other celebrities - Charles Lindbergh, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda (epitomized the 1920s flapper) See text on next slide 1920: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Marry at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

The Press 



On April 3, 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, married Zelda Sayre at the rectory of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue at 50th Street in Manhattan. The wedding took place a week after Scribner’s published Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise. Zelda wore a dark blue suit and matching hat and carried a bouquet of orchids and white flowers. No music played, no photographs were taken, and only four guests attended: two of Zelda’s sisters, one with her husband, and Scott’s best man, Ludlow Fowler. Zelda’s third sister and her husband arrived late and missed the ceremony. There was no reception, but the newlyweds honeymooned at the midtown Manhattan Biltmore Hotel.