Gender Roles During The 1930's

During the 1930’s there was an overwhelming sense of preconceived ideas of gender roles and what place they maintained in society, men were expected to work in order to earn a living and provide for their families, while women were more likely to stay at home to look after the children and cook and clean until the man returns from work. For working class Americans and the poor, the situation was during the Great Depression and many people were out of work and had to resort to desperate measures in order to provide for their families. Contrast to the upper class of the time who went by greatly untouched by economic downfall and thus become increasingly more obliged to seek a wife in order to have a family and live what seemed to be the idea of a middle-class woman’s American dream to marry a wealthy man.

Laurence and Peabody are intelligent men with money who seem aware of the dangers within the feministic desires of the women provided from this scene where we get the men seen seemingly incapacitated from the night before as J. Laurence explains “we absolutely must make her think we are an easy proposition” suggesting an almost oblivious attitude to the fact that the women have already done this in getting them to buy them material things commonly associated with women. This scene shows the “intelligent” men of this era and yet the women have used both cunning and sensuality in order to make this worthless. J. Laurence oozes this idea of masculinity within this scene expressing “I belive I can make this girl transfer her affection from him to me” presenting the masculine idea of possessing this “alpha male” mentality of money, women and power, and yet when comparing this scene to that before, we see the men acting more composed and masculine than when in the presence of the women with J. Laurence standing tall with both hands placed on his hips. “But we’re not boys are