{"id":148,"date":"2017-09-20T17:46:25","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T23:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dight.dichmanndigital.com\/?p=13"},"modified":"2017-09-20T17:46:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T23:46:25","slug":"living-in-post-wwi-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/student-posts\/living-in-post-wwi-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Post-WWI London"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When one speaks of the 1920s, a certain image is almost always implied: one of extravagance, opulence, and pleasure. For many people, the 1920s are considered the “Roaring ’20s:” a short era in which morals began to loosen, dresses began to shorten, and a wealthy upper class began spending vast sums of money on luxurious spending. It is the age of the ‘flapper girl,’ the age of jazz, and the age of Gatsby. Unfortunately, this perception of the 1920s is deeply flawed, and based more in idealism than fact. The truth of the matter is, the so-called “golden age” of the ’20s is one of the darkest periods in human history.<\/p>\n

A lot of terrible things happened in the 1920s, including the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, which killed nearly 50 million people, and multiple economic ‘depressions’ (such as the German Great Depression, where hyperinflation caused currency in the country to become practically worthless). But perhaps the most profound aspect of the 1920s owes its causation to events that took place before the turn of the decade: the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1918, effectively ending what had up until that point been the greatest war mankind had ever seen. The “Great War” (as it was so called at the time) finally ended with nearly 18 million dead–a number which includes the 7 million civilians who died due to the conflict. Even still, it is not those who died in the Great War that had an effect on the 1920s, but rather those who survived it.<\/p>\n

The youth who served in World War I and managed to survive quickly became known as the “Lost Generation,” due to the war’s effect on their psyche. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or “Shell-Shock,” as it was then called, ran rampant among the men who had seen countless deaths to machine guns, gas, and artillery. When one looks past the idealistic belief that the 1920s were some sort of “Golden Age” for humanity, it becomes increasingly clear that depression, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts\/tendencies were qualities in nearly every young man of the time. The Great War literally shattered an entire generation.<\/p>\n

This brings us to\u00a0Mrs. Dalloway<\/em>. While at face value, this appears to be a novel exploring nothing more than a woman’s life in the city, closer inspection reveals that the text shares some heavy insight into life in post-war London. Virginia Woolf, and by extension, the character Clarissa Dalloway, have the unique role of women in the 1920s: thus, they were not made privy to the horrors of the Great War, but still experienced the fallout as their generation crumbled. Small side comments, such as how Dalloway makes longing references to the time “before the War” (e.g. “before the War, you could buy almost perfect gloves,” (11) and “she would have loved Miss Kilman! But not in this world” (12)) reveal a nostalgia for a time before the Great War that runs generation-wide. Most notable, however, is the public’s reaction to a car nearly breaking down in the middle of traffic-ridden London. After the initial rumor-fed speculation as to the nature of the car’s driver, the public collectively “looked at each other and thought of the dead; of the flag; of Empire” (18). The deep effect caused by this small occurrence shows the sorrow rooted into the general public as caused by the war. While it may not be forefront in their minds, every person in 1920s London has loss written upon their face. Regardless of intention, Woolf’s\u00a0Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> examines the public life of those living among the Lost Generation, and the effect the Great War has had on the people of London.<\/p>\n

(Media is from\u00a0https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/1920s-vintage-gif-london-4P2xurzf6kwGQ).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When one speaks of the 1920s, a certain image is almost always implied: one of extravagance, opulence, and pleasure. For…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9aQyB-2o","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":893,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}