Souvenir (Historical Context)

Historical Context

The 1970s: Youth Movements and Politics

Jayne Anne Phillips graduated from high school in 1970. This means that her teen years coincided with the last years of the 1960s. During this decade, youth culture became a dominant social force due to such phenomena as pop music, recreational drug use among the young, and such anti-establishment, unconventional youth groups identifying themselves in various ways: as hippies, yippies, or “Greens” for example. A prominent political position taken by many young people, and by many Americans of all ages, was opposition to the Vietnam War. The American public was deeply ambivalent about sacrificing young Americans in this conflict.

President Richard Nixon officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War in 1973. That same year he was discovered to have engaged in illegal activities and in 1974 became the first president to resign from the office. This scandal, known as Watergate, undoubtedly produced a permanent effect on the national consciousness, leaving Americans somewhat cynical regarding the honesty of public figures.

“second Wave” Feminism

While the history of feminism in the western world is a long one, it was in first decades of the twentieth century that women’s rights began to play an important role in United States’ cultural and political life. The right to vote, attend institutes of higher learning, university, and work in all professions, were achieved by the “first wave” of twentieth century feminists. Feminism’s “second wave,” beginning in the 1970s, addressed such issues as negative attitudes toward and demeaning treatment of women as well as legal, professional, and political issues, rallying at one point under the slogan “The personal is the political.”

Topics for Further Study

• “Souvenir” is a story about a middle-class American family, all of whose members live separately. Research contemporary demographic patterns in the United States. How often do people move now as opposed to several generations ago? How far away do they typically move? How large is an average family today compared to fifty years ago? What do you think these demographic patterns tell us about society?
• “Souvenir” is a portrait of a family. The bond between mother and daughter is highlighted. There appears to be a certain degree of rivalry between sister and brother. Reread the story closely, paying special attention to the development of the children’s relationship to their parents and to each other. To what extent have Kate and Robert become the adults that they are because of their responses to their parents’ expectations and to each other? Imagine a conversation between Kate and Robert during the hours that their mother is undergoing surgery. What grudges or resentments might they hold against one another? Do you imagine that this crisis would bring them closer or drive them further apart? Give reasons for your answer.
• Most hospitals employ medical ethicists to advise staff, patients, and family members facing the complex legal, moral, spiritual, and emotional dilemmas that modern medicine presents. These can include whether or not to perform surgery on a terminally ill person that may only add days or weeks of life; to offer or withhold artificial measures of sustaining life in comatose or brain-dead patients; and whether or not to use “heroic measures” to resuscitate a very old or terminally ill patient. Research the kinds of cases regularly faced by medical ethicists. Should family members have the right to withhold information from a competent person (as Kate and Robert do with their mother)? Why or why not? Would your answer be different if the patient were not mentally competent? To what extent should parents have the right to make all medical decisions regarding a minor child? Under what circumstances, if any, should parental wishes be overruled? Why?

Compare & Contrast

• 1970s: The birth control pill abets the “sexual revolution,” leading to widespread change in sexual mores.
  1990s: The sexual revolution is curtailed by the spread of incurable sexually transmitted diseases, including herpes and AIDS.
• 1970s: A numerical decline in the number of two-parent families in the U.S. begins in this decade. The decrease continues at a rate of about 4% per year.
  1990s: The decline in the number of two-parent families stabilizes in mid-decade and slowly begins to reverse, there are about 25.1 million married couples with children in the U.S. in 1995 — an increase of about 521,000 since 1990.
• 1970s: Teenagers and young adults become a distinct demographic with enormous buying power and hence, the power to influence popular culture. The choices, beliefs, and icons of a youthful generation are seen as significant historically.
  1990s: Economists note that people born in the post-World-War-II years who came of age in the 1970s constitute the first generation of Americans who will enter middle age less well off financially than their parents were at that point in their lives.