A Look At Cheap Amusements

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20th centuries.
What does Peiss have to say about women s roles at the turn of the century? Peiss argues initially that young women experimented with new cultural forms in terms of sexual expressiveness and social interaction with men, linking heterosocial culture to a sense of modern individuality and personal style. Creating this style was an assertion of self. Peiss
quickly discounts these assertions by saying that without economic independence, such freedoms are hollow. Peiss s essay claims to focus on the role of working women in fostering change from a homosocial to a heterosocial culture, but as we can see from the earlier quote, there is still what seems to be a hint of male dominance in preventing the experience of true leisure. By this we can see that Peiss believes women were challenging gender norms, but doing so under the implied watchful eye of the male-dominated culture.
One very interesting point that Peiss makes is that there is now a market for leisure ...

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70 percent of them to be employed in domestic and personal service while the vast majority of their daughters worked in stores, offices, and factories (Cheap Amusements, 39). The significance of this change lies in the resulting change in attitude about leisure time. Now, a clearer distinction between time spent at work and
personal time could be made. Prior to this shift in the workplace, domestic workers would catch small breaks to gossip while still caring for their employers children. Now, with set times of arrival and departure to and from the workplace, later parts of the day are spent in clear separation of the work environment. So again, a leisure market seems an inevitable ...

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