| Description |
1 online resource (x, 249 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Machine derived contents note: Table of contents for Becoming modern : young women and the reconstruction of womanhood in the 1920s / Birgitte Sland. -- Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog -- Information from electronic data provided by the publisher. May be incomplete or contain other coding. -- Acknowledgments ix -- Introduction 3 -- Part I: From Victorian Ladies to Modern Girls: The Construction of a New Style in Femininity 19 -- Chapter l The Emergence of the Modern Look 22 -- Chapter 2 Fit for Modernity 46 -- Part II: The New Eve and the Old Adam? The Creation of Modern Gender Relations 65 -- Chapter 3 Good Girls and Bad Girls 69 -- Chapter 4 Beauties and Boyfriends, Bitches and Brutes 91 -- Part III: "A Great New Task ": The Modernization of Marriage and Domestic Life 113 -- Chapter 5 From Pragmatic Unions to Romantic Partnerships? 117 -- Chapter 6 "A Most Important Profession" 144 -- Conclusion 169 -- Notes 177 -- Select Bibliography 227 -- Index 247 -- Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Women Denmark History 20th century, Sex role Denmark History 20th century, Feminism Denmark History 20th century |
| Summary |
Annotation In the decade following World War I, nineteenth-century womanhood came under attack not only from feminists but also from innumerable "ordinary" young women determined to create "modern" lives for themselves. These young women cut their hair, wore short skirts, worked for wages, sought entertainment outside the home, and developed new attitudes toward domesticity, sexuality, and their bodies. Historians have generally located the origins of this shift in women's lives in the upheavals of World War I. Birgitte Sland's exquisite social and cultural history suggests, however, that they are to be found not in the war itself, but in much broader social and economic changes. Sland's engrossing chronicle draws on a rich variety of sources--including popular media and medical works as well as archival records and oral histories--to examine how notions of femininity and womanhood were reshaped in Denmark, a small, largely agrarian country that remained neutral during the war. It explores changes in the female body and personality, the forays of young women into the public sphere, the redefinition of female respectability, and new understandings of married life as evidenced in both cultural discourses and social practices. Though specific in its focus, the book raises broad comparative questions as it challenges common assumptions about the social and sexual upheavals that characterized the Western world in the postwar decade. In a remarkably engaging fashion, it shows why the end of World War I did not lead to the return of "normal" life in the 1920s |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-245) and index |
| Notes |
English |
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Print version record |
| Subject |
Women -- Denmark -- History -- 20th century
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Sex role -- Denmark -- History -- 20th century
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Feminism -- Denmark -- History -- 20th century
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SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies
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Feminism.
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Sex role.
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Women.
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Denmark.
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| Genre/Form |
History.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
0691049270 |
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9780691049274 |
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9781400839278 |
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1400839270 |
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