I Always Feel Like Grandmother's Watching Me Analysis

I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me: A New Historicist Approach to 1925

A quick Google search of family life in the 1920s reveals sepia toned photographs of perfectly positioned children surrounded by a set of doting parents or perhaps an entire doting family. They smile back from their sofas or dining tables or from tourist-packed beaches. Deeper digging might lead to PowerPoint presentations touching the surface of the “main points” of the 1920s in a brief overview of the 20th century. Women had a new role and more control over their bodies than ever. Children grew up alongside new psychological parenting techniques. Along with new household innovations, forms of communication, and a highly consumer-based economy, the American family

It is not to say that parties did not exist during the 1920s; the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald is proof enough that parties existed, but this New Historicist view seeks to question other facets of human history with what Gallagher and Greenblatt call “counterhistories” (52). These views do not “discredit” the past; rather, they de-mechanize the history of a world written only by the victors of conquests. The losers get to speak about history for once and speak about how they influenced the course humanity has followed. For example, January 1st of 1925 marks the beginning of a new year for the Roaring 20s, but Representative Frank D. Scott and his wife have been locked in the same divorce battle for almost three years by this time.. The instability of their marriage has dozens of possible origins, but the fact that this battle existed and thrived as reading material for American citizens nationwide as reporters covered it in the New York Times for almost the entire year disparages the familial institution’s worth and mirrors the the rapidly changing gender roles and the role of divorce in everyday