Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

A so-called “new woman” had begun to show dissatisfaction with the idea of women as passive nurturers relegated to the private sphere. In 1920 women won the right to vote in America and on the heels of this victory came a new image—that of the flapper—“independent, assertive, pleasure-hungry” (Mintz and Kellogg, p. 111). Again the image hardly represented the reality for most women: “In the 1920s women acquired some sexual freedom and a limited amount of opportunity outside the home, but the... hopes that accomplished the suffrage amendment remained unfulfilled” (Nash, p. 802). Most women continued in the role of homemaker and nurturer, feeling driven to these socially acceptable roles, though the seed had been planted for alternative options. In any case, Pearl, the novel’s protagonist, who comes of age during the 1920s, maintains attitudes that place her in the mainstream, rather than the groundbreaking avant-garde. As a young woman, she focuses on her inability to catch a husband and throughout she subscribes to an unchanging ideal of the American family, though she is unable to create it. The ideal, held by the population at large, consisted of a husband who supported the family financially and a wife who ran the household and provided emotional sustenance.