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(Volumes I and H) White, Kevin Francis, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1990 Copyright ©1900 by White, Kevin Francis. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Aibor, MI 48106 THE FLAPPER'S BOYFRIEND: THE REVOIAJTICW IN MORALS AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICAN MALE SEXUALIIT, 1910-1930 VOLUME I DISSERTATK»! Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of PhilosojAiy in the Graduate School of the (Siio State University. by Kevin F. White, B.A., M.A. ****** The Ohio State University 1990 Dissertation Committee Approved by Leila Rupp John C. Bumliam Warren Van Tine Adviaier History Copyright Kevin White 1990 To the Lane Avenue "Gang." i i ACKNOWLEDG^IENTS I express sincere appreciation to my advisor Professor Leila J. Rupp for her diligent work on this project. Further gratitude must be extended to Professor John C. Burnham for his rigorous efforts with this manuscript; his efforts have extended well beyond his role as a second reader. Also, I am thankful for several insights offered by my third reader, Professor Warren Van Tine. I am grateful to Michael Clark for granting me access to the papers of his mother, Freda Kirchwey; and to Maria Mazon for preparing the manuscript. Finally, this dissertation could not have been written without the sustenance offered me by the Lane Avenue "gang," and its many transient members; and the "hobo. " Quite appropriately it is dedicated to them. iii VITA August 22, 1959.................. Born, Shoreham, Sussex, U.K. 1 9 8 1 ........................... B.A. (Hons) Dunelm, U.K. 1983 ................. ...... .M.A. The Ohio State University 1981 - 1986...................... Teaching Associate, The C*iio State University History Dept. 1986 - 1990...................... Lecturer, OSU, Center for Comparative Studies PUBLICATiaJS "Men Supporting Women: Male Women's Suffragists in Britain and America, 1909-20." Maryland Historian 17 (Spring/Summer 1987): 47-59. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDG^IENTS..................................... iii VITA............................................... iv LIST OF TABLES........... ......................... vi CHAPTER PAGE I. INTOODUCTK»)................................... 1 II. THE œiGINS OF THE MODERN IDEA OF AN ATTRACTIVE MAN IN AMERICA, 1910-1930 ............................. 27 III. MODELS OF MASCULINITY IN THE WCfiLD OF YOUTH, 1910-30. 72 IV. MALE IDEOLOGY AND THE ROOTS OF THE SEXUALIZED SOCIETY, 1910-1930. ............................... 118 V. THE WCMJKING-CLASS YOUTH-œiENTED PUBLIC WCRLD OF LEISURE, CHICAGO AND NEW YŒÎK, 1900-1930 ........... 171 VI. THE FAILURE OF THE FEMINIST OPTICM: MEN AND THE FEMINIST NEW WOMAN. PART 1........................ 231 VII. THE SUCCESS OF THE FEMINIST OPTICW: MEN AND THE FEMINIST NEW WOMAN. PART II....................... 278 VIII. MODERN MALE SEXUALITY: THE 1 920s................... 318 LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 1. Percentage of Men Who Experienced Pre-Marital Intercourse. 186 2. Percentage of Men Who Petted to Climax. 186 3. Percentage of Men with Homosexual Experience to Orgasm. 198 4. Percentage of Total Petting Experience by Generations. 326 5. Percentage of Petting to Climax by Generations. 327 VI CMAPTER I INTRMXJCTIOJ Historians, even before the presait generation of scholars of women, recognized the "flapper" as one of the major figures of early twentieth century American social history. H.L. Mencken's memorable term referred to the stereotypical "New Woman" of the "Revolution in Manners and Morals" of the first decades of the twentieth century.^ For early scholars of this period, changes in female behavior marked this revolution. The "flapper," in imitation of mem, smoked, drank, swore, * freely petted and dated, was obsessed witii the new psychology of Freud (if only as misinterpreted by its American popularizers), and, vAien she married, built her relationship according to the strictures of companionate marriage. Reading these writers, one is reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald's conception of the "flapper" as "lovely and expensive and about nineteen."2 She is a mere stereotype. In recent years a number of women's historians, aware of the inadequacy of descriptions of the "flapper," have begun to address the question of what the reality was behind this stereotype. The "flapper" 1 has thus become the "New Woman," the focal point of the feminist reinterpretaticm of the "revolution in morals." She appears in recent literature not merely as the "flapper," but as the "charity girl," the "Mannish Lesbian," the "Androgyne," to name but three of her guises.^ Iftiderstandably, her apparent difference from the Victorian stereotype of "passionlessness" and the "Cult of True Womanhood" has inspired much interest recently among women’s historians. But her boyfriend hsis received less attention.^ The pace of revolutionary change that had affected the social relations between the sexes in these years was the product of a number of factors. By 1920, over 50% of Americans lived in cities. Here a mass production, consumer-oriented economy replaced an earlier entrepreneurial society of small businessmen and farmers with a "new middle class" that in its growing leisure time embraced an ethic of therapeutic release and pleasure.5 The Victorian values of hard work, rugged individualism and thrift that had held sway, albeit ever more precariously, until the second decade of the twentieth century became less influential: a heterosocial leisure world that was geared towards youth and vitality emerged as amusements grew up in the cities to cater to the demands of young people. These were the changes which produced a New Woman, and, one might speculate, must have produced a "New Man." For Indeed the question of men’s part in this "revolution in morals" is an important one. How were men affected Wien the bourgeois sexual system of Victorian America, Wiich gave men the alternatives of either purity or use of prostitutes before marriage, crunbled? Surveys by Peter Filene and Joe Dubbert, as well as a number of works on the movies, nmrriage, divorce, college youth, courtship and the new amusements, touch on the roles of men in this cultural revolution and offer excellent reasons to expand on the problem which no work has yet addressed squarely: who was the New Man to accompany the New Woman? Increasingly, we know more about the Victorian backdrop to the revolution. Steadily a picture is emerging of both men and women’s position in the Victorian system of morality that was dominant among the middle class of American society up to around 1912. As America industrialized, the old Victorian Protestant bourgeoisie, the harbingers of this system of morality, presided over a dynamic expanding economy vAiere the chances of class mobility were more real than in the twentieth century.® Victorians believed in self-help, sobriety, thrift and rugged individualism: they, as George Mowry puts it, disliked "bigness, diversity, the exotic, leisure, elegance and personal indulgence. Restraint and moderation marked every aspect of their lives.The members of this production-oriented society were able to delay gratification because of the genuine possibility of material rewards down the line If thrift were practiced In the present. Besides, the men of this class revelled In the pleasures and prestige of membership In It. Victorians devised a rigid system of morality idilch ccmslsted of a separation of spheres between men and women and the twin pillars of the conspiracy of silence about sexuality and the sexual double standard. In short, here was a society designed to benefit Its male members, vdio devised the system of socled relatlcxis to accentuate their dominance within It and vdio constructed styles of masculinity to suit best the continuance of that system. Thanks to the work of several scholars, we know more and