From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 17:12:29 -0400 (EDT)

Great point Megan, and, indeed the "women kept at home" line is really dist inctly white and Protestant: African-American women certainly worked -- in the fields (in the South) or as domestics or both. In graduate school I rea d a particularly revealing book about the history of Catholics in America. It pointed out that our usual story of the Jazz Age was, again, a Protestan t story -- the idea that women, college age and up, were now free to leave the farm and find work in the cities, leading to flappers, car ride, etc. T he book argued that, by the 20s, Irish Catholic families who may have come over in the second half of the 19th Century, finally had enough money so th at their daughters and mothers no longer had to work as domestics, teachers , or secretaries. Being able to stay at home was a sign of middle class acc omplishment -- and this is a story repeated in many immigrant groups. So ev en the story arc of women trapped at home and freed to work, true as it is for many, was not true for women who nee ded to work -- often under difficul t conditions -- and finally felt free to stay at home. In a way, you could see Make Lemonade as a version of this story -- when Jolly stops working fo r a sexual predator she begins her life.

Marc Aronson
Received on Thu 12 May 2011 05:12:29 PM CDT