CAUSES OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: ECONOMIC CHANGE & LITERARY DEVELOPMENTS ECONOMIC CHANGE

For a variety of complex reasons that are beyond the scope of this book, Western economic practices changed after the war from what had previously been a conservation-oriented value system to a consumer-oriented economy. Americans, about to realize the greatest degree of affluence in the history of civilization, became, with their increased buying power, a more pleasure-oriented society. Americans now had more things and more leisure time to enjoy them. The self-control, denial, and abstention of the Victorian period gave way to the self-indulgence of the fifties, sixties, and seventies; and sexual gratification was well up on the list in the search for pleasure.
LITERARY DEVELOPMENTS
A more direct confrontation with traditional sexual morality after World War II was expressed in literary form. Although American novelists such as Edna St. Vincent Millet, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis had challenged conventional sexual morality in the twenties, it was not until the end of the war and shortly thereafter that a number of major breakthroughs occurred. Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber titillated a sexually repressed society in this account of the sexual exploits of a French courtesan, and in From Here to Eternity author James Jones described the use of prostitutes by soldiers.
But it was Norman Mailer's book The Naked and the Dead, published in 1948, which, for the first time in American literature, vividly and realistically depicted the sexual language, behavior, and fantasies of men involved in armed combat. In addition to the powerful sexual themes described by Mailer, the book introduced the euphemistic term "fug" in the dialogue of male characters, closely reflecting, at long last, the true character of masculine speech under such circumstances. Mailer's book would appear mild in comparison to the completely explicit novels of today, but in terms of the lingering Victorian remnants of the forties it had a revolutionary impact.
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