Class notes
Required reading:
Riis, How the Other Half Lives
Peiss, Cheap Amusements
Required viewing:
The New City, The West
Written assessment:
Quiz 6
Please remember to make use of the recommendations for writing effective quiz answers that the student groups created in class earlier this semester.
Written assignment due:
web response paragraph - K. Peiss, Cheap Amusements:
How does leisure activity (such as dancing in dance halls) "offer a window into social practices often obscured in other areas of human experience"? And what does examining dance halls let Peiss say about "the cultural handling of gender among working-class people"?
Please remember to make use of the recommendations for writing effective response paragraphs that the student groups created in class earlier this semester.
10 comments:
In her book, Cheap Amusements, Kathy Peiss looks at the society of early twentieth century and its ways to spent leisure time. She focuses on working middle-class especially on women. With the beginning of the twentieth century there was a fundamental change in the perception of leisure and of gender relations. The society shifted from homosexual to heterosexual and the social relations between single men and women changed. This was also caused by the new “dance madness” and the need to involve women in this kind of leisure activity.
However, as Peiss shows, those changes were often very painful. Many dance halls would even employed people to patrol the dance floor to avoid promiscuous sexuality and outlawed suggestive dancing. Those are just examples of the previous Victorian culture trying to stop the “social revolution”. In her book reader can see how complicated was the history of women’s socialization.
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Leisure activities are one of the most pure forms of human expression. Other social activities, such as work, managing household, are limiting pure social activities by compensation. By giving up their free time, they would be compensated what they had worked in mostly financial way. However, leisure activities does not have does kind of limitation, which enable us to see the social practices often obscured in other areas of human experience. Leisure activities show the true face of human being.
Social change, such as earning wages and the commercialization of leisure, according to Kathy Peiss, brought women to devote their leisure time more being outside than household leisure. Dancing places, which were relatively easier to access, especially in financial way for female, dominated a lot of working class leisure activities.
Dancing hall culture “dramatizes the ways in which working-class youth culturally managed sexuality, intimacy, and respectability” (pg, 89-90) also, “offered a novel kind of social space for their female patrons, enhancing and legitimating their participation in a public social life.”(pg. 90) Much social interaction between genders and trend were made and exercised in dancing places and shows true cultural handling of gender among working-class people.
From the beginning of Peiss’ work or study, we can see the important mental shift from Victorian to “modern” society. This affected the working class women more than high society, because high society is always guarding their social convention and habits. Working class was the pioneer of the woman’s labor, so it is logical that this change affects this class the most.
The more and more popular mass entertainment during the leisure time helps to burn the boundaries between Victorian image of woman and the modern idea of emancipated and self confidant woman. On the other hand we can see the ambiguity of women’s behavior. They still want to be respected among others in their society however “girls just want to have fun”. (page 185)
They try to protect themselves by being escorted by lady friend or just being supervised, and at the same time they like to present themselves as the object of sexual attraction to men. Or as written above to have fun such as some of the “charity girls”. And these are only parts of the ambiguity in the early 20th century feminine society.
Peiss also describes the differences of public and commercial halls which are also determined by the dancing styles such as spieling, tough dancing and pivoting in contrast with the old-fashioned waltz. Women’s smoking, drinking, flirting and shaking on the dance floor also determined the shift from the image of traditional married or young woman.
What Kathy Peiss describes as scandalous we now take as normal thing and we probably wouldn’t, if there wasn’t this change of perception and loosing the conventional images of women as a whole.
Through out Kathy Peiss book, Cheep Amusements, she tracked the social groups leisure activity in the 20th century and observed woman’s social practices and how it relates to the urban working-class life. In side of saloons, social clubs, dance halls, Peiss could conclude how cultural transformation was taking place at that time and how we can make connections to the working class by watching there social behavior on there free time. “Public discourse affirming enlightened companionship between modern men and women… which… reformulated woman’s Subordination” (Peiss, page 8), The behavior between men and women were changing as well as the coming of different sexualities that, in turn, is shaping the popularity and recognition of these dance clubs and leisure activities.
Besides from this revolution of fun and dancing in the social classes there were also some odd social practices unmerging that are not seen in other areas of human experience. Homosexual interaction, sexual dancing, “Dancing Madness”, excessive drinking and disorderly behavior were difficult to control with in these establishments and made social life uncomfortable and yet revolutionary for the working class-women. Public attention was questioning the cultural handling and “competing conceptions of gender” (Peiss, page 185), at that time, wondering if it would be positive or negatives on the traditional purity of the classic woman. Even though it was a drastic change it was needed for a stronger and more socially valuable woman for our future. It was the beginning of a new age of entertainment, change (both men and women) and commercialization.
Amusements such as dancing described in K.Peiss book were an interesting cultural and social experiment of the late 19th early 20th century. Indeed it broke many stereotypes and rearranged sex roles in the society of those days. Peiss argues that most of the activities undertaken by labor force were clearly sex divided. As the author points out, a typical working women of that time was young and single. Industrial way of production clearly divided “work from life”. Harsh city life and hard working conditions made cheap amusements very attractive to those women. It was sort of an escape from everyday struggle. “The important catalyst in this cultural process was the intensive commercialization of leisure…” (186). Commercial bases for amusements made it more democratic and mass. On the dance halls women and men were searching for freedom of “expression and movement”. In fact “working women pioneered new manners and mors”. Males and females started to look for socializing on dance halls that they were missing in real life, so the dancehalls became a new “social institute” in “handling of gender among working-class people”.
The book Cheap Amusement, written by Katy Peiss, looks at the young working women at the turn of the century. The main focus is on the way they spent theit leisure time as well as on the way society changed from strict Victorian to a more modern one.
In leisure places such as dance halls, women were able to experiment with new “cultural forms”. It was easier to interact and get closer to the opposite gender while dancing than on the street or at work. These dance halls present a view at the changing social practices and the whole society, which was becoming more “modern”.
For them the dancing and socializing was a way of escaping from everyday life and work. The mass interest in dance halls within young working women was also increased by the fact it was so cheap.
Though the society was changing, some parts of the old Victorian culture were still there. For example, dancing crowed was watched and controlled. This was to prevent the men and women from dancing too suggestively or form getting too close to each other. Despite this, it was a large shift since before the women could date only a men approved by their parents.
Kathy Peiss in her book describes the 1900’s typical family, how in the end in 19th century and in the beginning of 20th century working class was spending their leisure time. She describes the everyday life of working woman. She said that hard work day woman were dressing nice dresses, shoes and were going to dancing halls. We can see that dancing and night life has a big history and it take action in Manhattan. Lots of dancing halls were opening but the number of young ladies and gentlemen was also rising.
There is also one important fact that in that time in America ladies and feminine gender was much more active and important then male. The firs example is that according to some research the nine girls from ten in the class said that they know how to dance while only one-third of boys answered same answer. Another good example is that entering in dance hall for woman were 10 cents and for gentlemen quarter. So we can see that in the beginning of 20th century female had a great economic status. The dancing business mostly was depended on feminine gender. If we consider female in nowadays life situation is radically different. Today there are places mostly for man. Only clubs and restaurants are available for female. But there are also a lot of places which can visit only male. So the business mostly works on male gender.
But as a whole book if we consider life of 19th century and 21th century there is no big difference between styles of amusement. Only the new places were invented and it’s normal.
One of the key ways to feel the zeitgeist and the atmosphere of certain era is probably know how people were spending their free-time and how the culture of spending this time was evolving. In her writing, Kathy Peiss contrasts the old-fashioned, Victorian ways of spending time and expressing self to more modern, twentieth century tendencies. We see that middle and lower classes were more open to accept the innovations and evolution in gender role and contemporary ideas, while the higher echelons of the society were more reluctant to change and preferred more conservative and old-fashioned ways.
The point, however, is that in the 1910s and especially in 1920s, women found a new role in society, getting right to vote, as well as gaining more social freedom and enforcing a stereotype of new, free, twentieth-century woman, instead of cold and detached Victorian stereotype.
Kathy Pies, in the book “Cheap Amusements” describes the life of young working women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s, who have meager wages that was rarely allowed for entertainment expenses and for bare subsistence.
Amusement came in different forms such as: dancing halls, social clubs, variety shows, cheap theatre, nickel dumps, Coney Island amusement parks and also saloons. Leisure places such as dance halls were opening at these time and number of women and men were rising. In the dance places woman can do everything herself, women were drinking a lot, shaking, dancing in different types and also flirting with some men, no matter married or single men were. During this novel we can see that dance halls was cheap amusement for women, the entrance for them was cheaper that for men, women at these time were more active in the contrast of men.
Heterosexuality operation was extremely disputable and Kathy Pies sites this as important hang-up in the changing of female leisure activities. As younger women had started to work in the same conditions as young men, women have acquired the right to participate in entertainment as the person will be.
Sociological research of sexual relations is presented in Kathy Peiss book “Cheap amusements”. She describes leisure of the young working women living in New York during last nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, investigating occurrences of young working class of a female and the conflict of the woman with face traditions of "Old World". The benefit of cheap entertainments makes a sense for a place of the woman in a society and for strengthening of its place. Peiss studies custom, values, public styles, and ritualized interactions expressed in leisure of women of working class, living in New York. Free activity from work time of poor workers was short, casual, and noncommercial. Entertainment was cheap. Entertainment was included into a variety of forms, such as: social clubs, dances, a variety show, amusement parks, cheap theatre and even standing on a street corner. It was a women's movement in “modern America”. The public life of working class has been divided into a gender. Married female leisure tended to be separate of public area and not so differed from work, but has been connected with internal duties and family relations. Young unique working women have experienced time and a labor similar man's, instead of married female. Young women have found pleasure in dancing halls and in amusement parks. For them dancing halls was kind of break away from everyday routine. And that activity does not have any limitations and this attracted women’s most. Dancing places were easier to access in financial way because of cheapness for female. In her book she investigates the culture working women, and how she carved out for themselves in the city, at the studying by their world of leisure.
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