Context Flashcards
Prohibition
Volstead Act
18th Amendment
Immigration
1924 Immigration Act
Nativism
Post-reconstruction American obsession with race and identity after new immigrants began to arrive from Europe
Edith Wharton’s life
Unrequited love for a bachelor - failed marriage with Edward Robbins as he had no interest in the arts
She divorced him and had an affair with William Fullerton
Old money
Masculine interests - travel, architecture
Social Darwinism
People are poor bc they dont work hard
Jim Crow Laws
Lynching of black people becomes common in Southern States because of the 1870s amendment allowing black people to vote (15th amendment)
America in crisis
trying to break free from Europeanism to make its own identity
American exceptionalism
Idea that America is superior to other countries and can be excused from crimes
New York recession
1873-74 - Why Beaufort loses his money (investments fail)
New woman
Coined 1894
Fitzgerald’s life
Party life with wife before settling to write TGG
Published TGG in 1925, set in 1922
Inspired by T.S. Elliot’s The Wasteland
Lived through the Jazz Age
Believed transcending class was a lie
Dropped out of Princeton to fight in FWW
Ginevra King’s family deny Fitzgerald’s marriage to her because he is poor
The Lost Generation
Life is meaningless, can end at any moment (post FWW literary movement)
