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 Soland's exquisite social and cultural history suggests, however, that they are...
In the decade following World War I, nineteenth-century womanhood came under attack not only from feminists but also from innumerable "ordinary" yo...