STARLIT HOUR

In order to escape the pressures of Twenty-First Century life I enjoy returning to the Jazz Age, and the beginning of what we know of as Modern Times. Why then? It's the period in which I feel most at home. It's the time when women in the western world were first liberated. A time when both my grandmothers and my great aunts were young women. The choices they made in their lives wouldn't have previously been possible, and I'm standing firmly on their shoulders.



Women first voted, and bobbed their hair then; they worked outside the home, in large numbers in jobs and careers that enabled then to earn their own incomes, but more importantly they experienced the power of their own creativity and sexuality more openly than before. The period after World War One (WWI), ending with the rumblings of World War Two (WWII) - roughly 1920 to 1939, established the cultural foundation for our times.