Publication Date
12-3-2018
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Schlegel, Emily, "If He Can Do It, Why Can’t I?: Women’s Struggles into Early Automobility" (2018). English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018). 20.
https://research.library.kutztown.edu/englisheng366/20
Included in
Fiction Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons
Comments
In early 1900’s America, the advent of cars became a strictly masculine escapade, and women were deemed unable to drive. By the time females finally earned the right to drive, they faced questioning from the men they displaced. From the days when there were no roads leading up to the 1950’s, cars became household appliances for stay-at-home wives. Advertising shifted to promoting limited female empowerment; enough to entice them to buy cars without making them too independent. Looking at texts written by women and men alike from the early invention of cars up to 1960’s, an objectification of women happens in the way men write women and the way women are forced to write.