Domestic Abuse In The 1920's

Domestic Abuse in the 1920s

In order to contextualize the texts of both groups, it is necessary to understand

the social atmosphere of the 1920s as it related to domestic violence. In his book What

Trouble I’ve Seen: A History of Violence Against Wives, David Peterson del Mar notes

that the 1920s witnessed a rise in incidents and acceptance of domestic violence for a

number of reasons. For one, the consumer culture and popular psychology of the 1920s

emphasized a lack of restraint. Popular psychology identified “the positive aspects of anger” and encouraged couples to communicate their desires to one another.

Sometimes this anger and communication, coupled with a lack of restraint, resulted in

violence. Additionally, changing gender social codes

may have contributed to a rise in
domestic violence. Popular novels for men began celebrating “muscular primitivism.”
Authors began depicting men as “naturally” rough and tough, and displays of their
physical prowess were occasionally directed towards romantic female partners.
Peterson del Mar quotes the character Jim from the popular novel Brawny-Man to make
this point.

Jim claims “that his girlfriend liked ‘that I was burly and rough, and would

use my muscle to make her sit on my lap, and would pick her up in my arms and swing

her around, head down, while she clawed and wiggled and has as much fun of the

rough-house as I did’ . . . ‘Any real girl likes for her man to use his muscle on her’”

(115). Feminine social codes also changed, encouraging women to exercise

independence and voice their desires. When their desires differed from their husbands,

some husbands countered with violence. Violence against women may have also been a

backlash against women’s increased freedom in the social sphere. Men sometimes cited

jealousy as an excuse for beating their wives; violence became a way for husbands to

control their wives and keep them at home (Peterson del Mar 107-126).

Scholars interested in domestic violence report that social attitudes about it were

mixed in the 1920s. Jennifer Jones asserts that domestic violence was, for the most

part, accepted by society. Jones discusses Abraham Myerson’s The Nervous Housewife

(1920) to illustrate the medical community’s acceptance of abuse. According to

Jones,
Myerson “reasons that a woman’s neurosis caused her to make unreasonable demands
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on her husband’s patience, which in turn poisoned the marriage relationship and led to the disintegration of the family” (41).