Change in Ragtime

Doctorow addresses a lot of social changes in the book Ragtime, and he does it through the reaction of his characters. Starting in the 1900s and so on, the society and the norms were in constant change. African Americans were trying to fight for their equality with creation of groups like the NAACP that was created in 1909. Those groups were fighting for the civil rights, education and the equality of black people in the community. Other important movements were the ones fighting for the recognition of women. Through the feminist movements, women were able to have more importance in everyday life and in the industries. Women were determined to have more importance than just being mothers and staying at home taking care of their children. They wanted to take action in the political and industrial life. In Ragtime, Doctorow talks about those changes through the thoughts of characters such as Father and Mother. After Father’s return, Mother is happy because she has more responsibilities and she proved to Father that she could do everything he does. “Mother could now speak crisply of such matters as unit cost, inventory and advertising. She had assumed executive responsibilities.”(112) She knows what she is doing and she is more confident because she speaks “crisply” of unit cost and she “assumed responsibilities". While Mother is really happy about the changes, Father has a hard time accepting it. “Everything she had done stood up under his examination. He was astounded.” Father is “astounded” and surprised of that changes, he cannot accept it. Father also cannot accept the inclusion of Coalhouse into the community. So through the thoughts of his characters, the reader can understand what was going on at that time and how it was hard for some men to accept the fact that women started to play a bigger role in the society.

By Kevin Roy

Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A history of the American People. Concise Sixth Edition. Wadsworth Cendage Learning, Boston.

Layton, Utah. NAACP: Celebrating a century: 100 years in pictures/NAACP and the crisis magazine. Gibbs Smith, 2009.

Discovery Education. Women of the Century, 1900s. Social Studies. U.S department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (www.discoveryeducation.com)