Authors of the Roaring 20’s
In a time when a home library was a great investment and being well read was valued, literature was a major game changer in society. When television was still considered science fiction, people only had access to printed material for current events and entertainment. Literature from the 1920’s serves us today as a way of understanding what it was like to live a life during the prohibition, the Great Depression and so forth. Writers such as Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway tell captivating tales of the struggles and joys of living in the Jazz Age.
More than anything, the novels of the 1920s challenged the traditional morals set by our predecessors and provoked readers to ask questions about why circumstances were what they were.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence demonstrates how literature challenged what used to be the ‘norm’. This novel, telling of an upper class couple’s marriage and scandal, questions the morals set for society back in the 1870s. Wharton was born into the upper class of New York City’s society during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Growing up as a voracious reader, she learned to use irony and wit to illustrate her beliefs about the rigid morals she was surrounded by. …show more content…
Newland Archer was happily engaged to a debutant, May, who was the epitome of class and poise. Enter her cousin, Countess Olenska, who Newland eventually falls in love with. Because of his association with the countess, Archer is assumed to be improper and looked down on. However, the irony is that throughout the time in which he falls more in love with her, he always did what was honorable and stayed true to his family. This novel examines the virtues and morals held by the upper class and criticizes its
In a time when a home library was a great investment and being well read was valued, literature was a major game changer in society. When television was still considered science fiction, people only had access to printed material for current events and entertainment. Literature from the 1920’s serves us today as a way of understanding what it was like to live a life during the prohibition, the Great Depression and so forth. Writers such as Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway tell captivating tales of the struggles and joys of living in the Jazz Age.
More than anything, the novels of the 1920s challenged the traditional morals set by our predecessors and provoked readers to ask questions about why circumstances were what they were.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence demonstrates how literature challenged what used to be the ‘norm’. This novel, telling of an upper class couple’s marriage and scandal, questions the morals set for society back in the 1870s. Wharton was born into the upper class of New York City’s society during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Growing up as a voracious reader, she learned to use irony and wit to illustrate her beliefs about the rigid morals she was surrounded by. …show more content…
Newland Archer was happily engaged to a debutant, May, who was the epitome of class and poise. Enter her cousin, Countess Olenska, who Newland eventually falls in love with. Because of his association with the countess, Archer is assumed to be improper and looked down on. However, the irony is that throughout the time in which he falls more in love with her, he always did what was honorable and stayed true to his family. This novel examines the virtues and morals held by the upper class and criticizes its