American Culture In The 1920's

Almost immediately after the war, America’s wealth grew vastly within the nation which essentially put most Americans under a “consumer” bracket of socio-economic status. This meant that the people could now largely share the same interests and luxuries which allowed them to create a common culture per se. Consequently, the nineteen twenties represented a huge shift in American culture, hence why this period is commonly known as the “Roaring Twenties.” This new phenomena was exemplified through the changing role of women, speakeasies and jazz, and the change of common American thought. Before the roaring twenties, women were held to many uniform expectations and stricter social rules. The typical “Woman’s place” was being at home, cooking, cleaning, and caretaking along with the expectations that she be modest and essentially under the word of the man. However the 1920s portrayed women finally obtaining jobs of their own and the stigma or belief that a woman
One of the big changes of thought was shifting the focus from law breaking to the reasoning of the crime. This is best exemplified by the Leopold and Loeb trial, two young men accused (and guilty) of murder. Normally, murderers would simply face the death sentence for such crimes, but in this trial a more human perspective is brought in where humanity and the mind were considered. This was extraordinary because it a was a completely new way of of looking at people through a non-superficial point of view. A second and bigger shift of thought was exemplified through the John Scopes trial, also known as the Monkey trial, which tackled the “big guns” of common American thought: religion. Americans started challenging the Biblical story of creation and considering Charles Darwin Theory of Evolution, so religion depleted as more people switched to this idea of