Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) led in changing perspectives about sexuality in the 20th century with the first of several books, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Freud’s belief that sexuality was innate in women as well as in men helped expand Victorian concepts about sexuality. The physician Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), in his book On Life and Sex (1920), emphasized "the love-rights of women," and his seven-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex regarded any sexual practice—including masturbation and homosexuality, previously considered "perversions"—as healthy so long as no one was harmed. Theodore Van de Velde (1873-1937) stressed the importance of sexual pleasure in his popular marriage manuals.
*Our primary sources for this material are Czuczka (2000) and Glennon (1999).
While ideas about the "proper" role of female sexuality were changing, the woman suffrage movement began in the late 19th century. Its goal of giving women the right to vote grew out of several related developments, such as the abolition of slavery and the demand that women be permitted to attend universities and hold property. The passage in 1920 of the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote but did not usher in a new era of equality.
However, subsequent historical events and technology brought new sexual perspectives and possibilities. U. S. involvement in World War I created an environment for increased equality and flexibility of gender roles, as thousands of women left the traditional homemaker role and took paying jobs for the first time. American men serving as soldiers in Europe were introduced to the more open sexuality there. Soon after the soldiers returned home from the war, Henry Ford’s mass-produced automobiles of the 1920s provided increased independence and privacy for young people’s sexual explorations. The advent of movies presented romance and sex symbols for public entertainment. The "flappers"—young, urban, single, middle-class women— rejected the ideals of Victorian restraint for short, slinky dresses and the exuberant, close — contact dancing of the Roaring Twenties. The changes in sexual mores consisted mainly of the prevalence of kissing and "petting" (sex play short of intercourse) among young unmarried people that went beyond acceptable Victorian standards, but women usually avoided premarital intercourse to prevent pregnancy and jeopardizing their reputations.
A return to more restrained behavior came with the Great Depression in the 1930s. Conversely, the hardships of the time also led to new laws mandating the right of women to have access to contraceptive information and devices. Before the development of penicillin in the 1940s, no effective treatment existed for life-threatening sexually transmitted infections. Once penicillin became available, another feared consequence of sex became less harmful. During World War II, housewives once again filled the gaps in the workplace left by men who were fighting overseas and encountering more open European sexuality.