Bernice Bobs her hair

“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” was a great story that represented much more than itself, mainly the time period of the story. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the role of men and women begins to change as well as the image of the women also changes she tries to remodel her self differently from the women of the past. The characters in the story helps create a picture of what F. Scott Fitzgerald believed about gender roles and societal values. He uses main characters like Bernice, Warren, and Marjorie to explore the mindset of society and how much of impact it makes within on man and women. The author’s tone shows a constant struggle between the new women and old women in dominate the image for the women, societal standard of women’s beauty and money, and where the man would rather place their women in the new or old image.

A valid point that the author tries to establish in the story is society places considers the beauty of women through their hair and their amount of or definition of femininity. In the story, Marjorie tricks Bernice into getting her hair cut into a “bob” which ruins Bernice’s chance with being with a man named Warren. It even affected Bernice’s self-esteem because she did not believe she was beautiful since her hair was more important than anything else. After her hair was cut, Warren’s attitude surprised her when he looked at her coldly and left with Marjorie. With this, Fitzgerald shows that the cutting or the bobbing of your hair is both shameful and mannish on the women’s behave. He mentions this when her aunt says, “in her paper on `The Foibles of the Younger Generation' that she read at the last meeting of the Thursday Club she devoted fifteen minutes to bobbed hair. It's her pet abomination”. This ideal shows society is confused on whether or not they are ready to accept the new woman who loosely does that she feels.
In the middle of the story, Fitzgerald points out in his story is the battle between the old women who is apart of the Cults of True Womanhood and the new women who breaks free of old ways. He also demonstrates the wants and effect of having the new women around the males. In the story, Marjorie represented the new woman while Bernice represented the old woman just like Marjorie’s mother. Bernice is a very intellectual and conservative while Marjorie is more of a party girl and eye candy for the guys. This idea represented society’s divide in the image of the women but how each tried to dominate in image. For example Marjorie tells her mother about her situation at a ball and in easily annoyed. Fitzgerald wrote, “Mrs. Harvey's voice implied that modern situations were too much for her. When she was a girl all young ladies who belonged to nice families had glorious times.” This demonstrates that as the women made a big transitional phase in history women still wanted to hold on and maybe even some males especially if they believe a woman talking about “feminine bathing an immoral subject”. Other conflicts between the two images of the women is the definition of femininity for men as well because they will either choose women like Bernice but would prefer Marjorie.
In this social circle that the characters associate with you come to realize the type of values they have which is not of the people that where here before them. Fitzgerald does not touch on the issue of religion, however if he did mention religion, money would be on their God. One reason this can be proving true is because at that time period major companies like the Railroads and Oil began to shape the American Dream for those who have not achieved the riches like others. This idea made those were already rich very shallow and showed the mind set of some of the women of that time. One character said, “as soon as Jim managed to hold a job for more than two months she would marry him”. This partially added the image of the new woman because she was more aggressive for what she wanted from a man.
We will never know who will become dominate as the permanent face for the woman however, what we do know is that it might always struggle to define the woman and her role with the male and societal obsession of money, whether it’s during our time or Fitzgerald’s.