A generation between emancipation and the beauty cult. - Summary of a lecture by Nadine Rall
If you think of the Roaring Twenties, these images of bob-wearing women in fringed flapper dresses, swinging their limbs wildly, a dainty cocktail glass in one hand and a graceful cigarette holder in the other, immediately spring to mind. These images are inextricably linked to the age of jazz and came to symbolise an entire generation. A generation that endured and survived the primal catastrophe of the young 20th century - the First World War. A caesura after which nothing has been the same again, and without which female emancipation would have taken years to take hold of itself in the same way as in the post-war period of the 1920s.
Judith Mackrell already sets out this weighty background in the foreword to her book Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation for her six protagonists. She gives an exciting and entertaining account of why this period had to produce these female figures and draws us into this field of experimentation.
Six portraits of six extraordinary women
Her portraits of Lady Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tamara de Lempicka, Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker begin accordingly skilfully with their family origins, which were often characterised by the boredom of the prevailing social etiquette at the turn of the century. As readers, we eagerly await the time when something finally happens, when the escape from the gilded cage or - as with Josephine Baker - from the oppressive misery of the black ghetto succeeds.
Mackrell presents a kind of character study for all six protagonists, which very quickly reveals not only the nature of the women, but above all their inner drive. At times, they even lose ‘sympathy points’ as a result and are shown in their egotism to the point of self-centredness. If we realise that all six women pursued their own goals in a male-dominated, conservative and superficial to sensationalist society, these negative aspects are also in an understandable (personal) context.
Coupled with the emancipatory departure into a new era, excessive parties with thrills such as drug consumption and libidinous escapades with partners of the opposite or same sex appear to be an inevitable habitus. They are just as much a part of the image of the flapper as the new beauty ideal of the curveless, slim, even boyish figure of the so-called garçonne. In almost all of the six biographies, Mackrell shows how gruelling and even self-destructive this lifestyle could be.
This can be seen in the example of the Fitzgerald couple: hardly any other author has placed the flapper's attitude to life at the centre of his literature in such a contemporary way as F. Scott Fitzgerald. His novel The Great Gatsby is the book of the American flappers and has shaped the literary image of the 1920s like no other. In her two chapters on Zelda Fitzgerald, Mackrell emphasises how highly autobiographical the work is, how closely the main characters are always interwoven with the real people Scott and Zelda, and how obsessive the couple's self-presentation was.
In general, the division of the portraits into two parts is a skilful narrative device: Judith Mackrell describes the six biographies in two chapters each, interrupted by the other protagonists. If you follow the intended sequence of chapters, the parallels between the women as well as their shared social circles become (more) obvious. Diana Cooper and Nancy Cunard, for example, moved in the same upper-class British circles, their families were acquainted with each other and had social and friendly relations. It was presumably easier to rebel here and there if a woman knew she had an ally at her side, or at least in spirit.
Paris - City of the Flappers
In addition to America, Paris in particular exerted a great attraction on the flappers. Here, Nancy Cunard found the literary life, including all the important contacts, that she had longed for since her childhood. But two female figures in particular are inextricably linked to the city: Josephine Baker and Tamara de Lempicka. While the former is probably the best known of the six protagonists and became the personification of the Jazz Age, Tamara de Lempicka's paintings are still icons of the emancipated, dangerous woman of the 1920s. Hardly any other artist created female figures that were both more sensual and artificially cool than she did. To this day, her paintings are regarded today as symbols of Art Deco and Art Moderne.
The end of the Flapper - And now?!?
Like her contemporaries, Tamara de Lempicka had to cope with a rapid decline in the flapper lifestyle by the end of the 1920s at the latest. The self-confident and self-determined female figures she primarily portrayed were no longer en vogue and were even increasingly frowned upon due to the growing conservative attitudes and the increasing shift to the right in society, whose image of women contradicted exactly that of the emancipated garçonne. Accordingly, Judith Mackrell marked the end of her portraits at the beginning of the new decade.
For all six protagonists, change was already apparent in the second half of the 1920s, so that they tried to shift their focus to a new purpose in life: for Diana Cooper, Zelda Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker, it was to lie in motherhood and family, while Nancy Cunard devoted herself entirely to her own publishing company. Tallulah Bankhead and Tamara de Lempicka, on the other hand, hardly changed their established roles, even if Tallulah Bankhead temporarily tried out a change of image with serious theatre roles. Tamara de Lempicka finally seized the opportunity of a very favourable marriage and went to America in 1938 in anticipation of a new beginning.
The Flappers - not so rebellious after all?
It is precisely in this change in private concepts that Judith Mackrell shows that the generation of flappers - despite all their desire for emancipation - could not completely leave behind the typical female role models of wife and mother. Many of the women struggled with the ‘old’ expectations and their new roles, feeling the burden of the biological task of motherhood. Some of them rightly worried about their lives. Previous abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, but also the consequences of drug use had imposed clear limits on their bodies and made pregnancies and births quite dangerous. In addition, the fact that the sometimes hard-earned boyish, curveless female body changes as a result of pregnancy(s) was also an obstacle that should not be underestimated. Diana Cooper and Zelda Fitzgerald, who experienced these changes, reported on them in an outraged and panicked manner.
The flappers - a role model for emancipation
In her book Flappers, Judith Mackrell shows us women who confidently assert themselves in professions that were previously almost exclusively reserved for men: They are publishers, painters, actresses, authors and dancers and earn a living doing so. Of course, this was not possible without being surrounded by scandal. But on closer inspection, so were the men in the same industries - with the difference that they were allowed to do so at no cost.
After two chapters, however, Mackrell does not simply leave us in the middle of the biographies. In the epilogue, she follows the lives of her protagonists beyond the caesura of the 1930s to the end. She continues to weave the contemporary social context of mainstream and conventions around the individual portraits, whereby the book simultaneously deals with those relevant topics that were not only decisive for the protagonists. It is precisely this successful mixture that shows that our six female characters, their families, husbands and lovers of both sexes, as well as their entire immediate environment, are representative of an entire generation: An unprecedented generation of unmarried, independent women who did everything they could to live self-determined lives.*
*Quote was translated and was taken from the German edition: *Judith Mackrell: Die Flapper - Rebellinnen der wilden Zwanziger, Berlin 2022, S. 12
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