53 pages • 1 hour read
Michael McGerrA Fierce Discontent
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 7-8 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Disturbance and Defeat”
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Promise of Liberation”
McGerr begins Part 3 with a discussion of the backlash against progressivism. In the first two decades of the 20th century, it became clear that the way of life ushered in by progressive reform had become intolerable for many Americans. The expansion of government regulation of public and private life and the growing populations of towns and cities felt confining, restraining, and oppressive. Some Americans, like the writer Sherwood Anderson, felt a desperate need for liberation from the many confinements—including upon an individual’s identity—of progressive America. Similar to Anderson’s, the various pursuits of liberation at the beginning of the new century showed that “the 20th century would not be quite so regulated and orderly, so progressive, after all” (606).
Americans embarked on new pursuits of personal space, openness, and mobility during the 1910s, as exemplified by open, simplified architectural designs—such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs—new technological developments, and a revolution in transportation and communication. For example, though still primitive and somewhat difficult to operate by the 1910s, the automobile gave Americans a sense of individual power and freedom from the rigidity of progressive life.
Many felt that the automobile—and other technologies that seemed to disintegrate the confines of space and time—would mend the divisions caused by class conflict, racial strife and segregation, and the clash of rural and urban life. Around 1916, when automobiles became affordable due to improved manufacturing practices, it seemed that everyone—even previous naysayers—sought to own one. Urban dwellers wished to escape the dizzying pace and crowds of cities; rural dwellers sought to experience the pleasures associated with urban life. For those who could afford one, the automobile provided the liberation many people needed to have these experiences.
Liberation, however, was a complicated dream. Given the prevalence of automobile accidents and other dangers, the government regulated driving by mandating speed limits, required vehicle registration, and the construction of traffic lights. Many men sought to keep women from driving. Moreover, with so many people owning automobiles in urban areas, the notion of the traffic jam emerged. Wildly and freely speeding through the streets was simply not possible.
Other technological developments in communication gave people the opportunity to hear and see beautiful and strange things from faraway places. The wireless telegraph, the telephone, increased publication of photographs in magazines and newspapers, the phonograph, and, later, the motion picture, enabled people to hear and see news from around the world, talk to people who were a continent away, listen to recorded speeches and music, and watch silent pictures. These experiences served to collapse the rigid cultural categories of the Victorian Era; in the process of seeing and hearing new things, many Americans became more open to coexisting with people who were different than they were, as well.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Pursuit of Pleasure”
In the 1910s, Americans found new, liberating outlets for the pursuit of pleasure while accommodating middle class morality and commercialized pleasure (676). The new fascination with pleasure also “broke down segregating barriers, reshaped personal identity, and exalted individualism” (675). In Chapter 8, McGerr describes these new pursuits and their implications for American life at the turn-of-the-century.
Changes in economic conditions—including a shorter work week, increased productivity, the new provision of vacation time, and better wages—afforded many Americans more time and money to spend on a whole new world of pleasures in the 1910s. These social changes also spurred a revolution in commercial amusements. Americans now had affordable access to fairs, vaudeville shows, dance halls and traditional theatre, new types of music, and motion pictures.
The pursuit of pleasure challenged progressivism’s emerging values and practices, and it seemed that almost everyone—minority groups, children, and women—was able to experience a greater sense of liberation in the 1910s. One of the defining features of many new forms of entertainment was promotion of social mixing across classes. Moreover, motion pictures and professional sports reinvigorated an interest in individualism and the individual; for instance, people were interested in knowing and following their favorite baseball players and movie stars. Sports and films provided a sort of vicarious experience for everyday people: Actors and baseball heroes were larger-than-life examples of the ways that people could remake themselves. This practice subverted the progressive reform effort to remake other people because it insisted that each person could remake him/herself.
Not all Americans welcomed this emergent culture of pleasure. Some reformers found the new pleasures debaucherous, and the federal government regulated certain activities in order to make the enjoyment of them more palatable for the more pious members of society. Others saw the new pleasures as a better alternative to the old ones; for example, it seemed more respectable and less threatening to the home and society if men spent their afternoons in movie theatres rather than at saloons or with prostitutes.
Those who thoroughly enjoyed the new culture of pleasure began associating reformers with bigots and voyeurs—people who nosed into the lives of others with the agenda of controlling their choices and behaviors. Society, however, was beginning to reimagine certain aspects of private life as being mostly irrelevant to the wellbeing of society as a whole and, thus, being solely the business of the individual.
Part 3, Chapters 7- 8 Analysis
In first half of Part 3, McGerr turns the focus of his book to the disturbance and eventual defeat of the progressive movement. Americans’ newfound desire for liberation and a life filled with pleasurable pursuits disturbed the progressive movement.
Progressives worked hard to get the federal government to intervene on their behalf to regulate both private and public life in America around the turn of the century. This meant that new laws, policies, and mandates increasingly dictated people’s domestic, social, financial, and political behavior. At the same time, industrialization rapidly continued. Cities became increasingly crowded. The federal government often divided open frontier into smaller parcels, and previous open space became dominated by industries seeking to tap into its natural resources. People worked long, challenging days. Life in the Progressive Era began to feel stifling and constricting for many Americans. Such feelings can often provoke rebellious behavior, and this was certainly the case for Americans who wanted to escape the “trap” into which they felt progressive reforms and federal regulation had forced them.
Inherent in this rebellion against the boundaries set by progressive reform was a reassertion of individualism. Though many Americans still believed in the importance of association, they also felt that individuals should pursue intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual fulfillment on their own terms, without the government or fervent reformers attempting to pry and intervene. As new technologies and tools for communication became readily available to most Americans, so did the means to pursue individual fulfillment. It seemed that progressive reformers had worked so hard to reform the external environment of American life that they forgot people live much of their lives internally as well—in the spaces of their own hearts and minds. Americans longed for the freedom to nurture and explore their internal space in addition to the public spaces of society.
At first glance, it may seem like Americans’ renewed desire for liberation and pursuit of pleasure was staunchly individualistic. However, Americans truly demonstrated that the progressives’ idea of what collectivism meant was simply a single form of collectivism. By consuming the same types of entertainment in public places, crossing boundaries to pursue intellectual interests, and exposing themselves to different cultures through new media, Americans began to reconfigure collectivism in a way that did not include the social and racial boundaries touted by progressive reformers. This was disruptive to the progressive movement: If people could find their own ways to work past their differences without the guidance of strict boundaries, then how necessary would progressivism be to American society?
