Document Type

Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Spring 2017

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English Literature

Committee Chair

Christopher Schedler

Second Committee Member

Laila Abdalla

Third Committee Member

Christine Sutphin

Abstract

The Lost Generation was forced to develop their own principles regarding gender identity in an environment of ever-shifting cultural norms, which called into question all of their predetermined ideas on femininity, masculinity, and the ways in which members of the opposite sex should interact with one another. Although much of their writing is set amid and seems to embrace the evolving social culture of the early twentieth-century, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway largely criticize the gender revolution of the 1920s and blame evolving gender roles for the collapse of their generation. Nevertheless, I argue that Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s cultural critique ironically contributed to the growing popularity of the same transgressive gender roles that they sought to criticize.

Language

English

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