Prime Time 8. Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks, Schulbuch

did, it was a sign that she would be up to no good there. The only proper way for a girl to achieve independence from her family was to put herself under the protection of a husband. […] For unmarried young women, sex was more than adventure, more than a broadening of experience; it was a high-risk act with sometimes fatal consequences, given the inadequacy of birth control. To get a diaphragm in those days from the Margaret Sanger Clinic, an unmarried woman would have to appear wearing a wedding ring (purchased at the Five and Ten) and be prepared to fill out a form detailing the number of times a week she had intercourse with her fictitious husband. “Don’t discuss your marriage with your classmates,” a friend of mine who married at nineteen was warned by a dean at her college. For Fifties women, all this repression made sex a very charged and anxious thing. You were breaking the rules. You could lose your place in the world, you could even lose your life. With so much at stake, feelings became very heightened. […] Yet, in 1957 when On the Road was published, thousands of Fifties women experienced a powerful response to what they read. On the Road was prophecy, bringing the news of the oncoming, unstoppable sexual revolution – the revolution that would precede and ultimately pave the way for women’s liberation. It was a book that dared to show that men too were fed up with their traditional roles. It suggested that you could choose – choose to be unconventional, choose to experiment, choose to open yourself up to a broad range of experience, instead of simply duplicating the lifestyle of your parents. […] By then I had begun my relationship with Kerouac, but even before that, I’d had my immersion in real life. I’d defied my parents to have a painful affair with Donald Cook, left home, broke with my family, found jobs, had an abortion and had my first taste of despair. Still, I wouldn’t have turned back if given the choice. At twenty-one I felt I’d gone to the bottom and floated up; I had the lightness of feeling there was nothing left to lose, so I’d let Kerouac come home with me the first night I met him. Quite the little existentialist, as my Barnard professor once wrote. Or perhaps my state of mind approached the original definition of Beat. “Come on down, I’m waiting for you,” Jack had written to me from Mexico City that July. “Don’t go to silly Frisco. First place, I have this fine earthquake-proof room for 85¢ a night for both of us, it’s an Arabic magic room with tiles on the walls and many big round mirrors (solid with marble floors) – we can sleep on the big clean double bed, have our private bath … it’s right downtown, we can enjoy city life to the hilt then when we get tired of our […] sultan’s room we can go off to the country and rent a cottage with flowerpots in the windows – Your money will last you 5 times longer & in Frisco you wouldn’t be seeing anything new & foreign & strange – Take the plane to Mexico City (bus too long, almost as expensive too), then take a cab to my hotel, knock my door, we’ll be gay friends wandering arm-in-arm …”. How could I resist such an invitation? (From: Joyce Johnson, “Beat Queens: Women in Flux”; abridged) 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 b) Write down differences between the 1950s and today that come to your mind after having read Joyce Johnson’s memories of her youth. Use the grid below and compare it with your partner’s. In pairs you should: • discuss what it was like being a female adolescent in the 1950s • compare and contrast the lives of teenage boys and girls in the fifties and nowadays • speculate on the advantages and disadvantages of each generation 1950s Today 37 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv