The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife immerses readers in the Jazz Age, a period of dramatic social and artistic change following the trauma of World War I. The novel’s characters belong to the “Lost Generation,” a term Gertrude Stein coined to describe the expatriate American writers and artists in 1920s Paris who felt disillusioned by the war’s devastation. The prologue establishes this context, noting that for veterans like Ernest, “There was no back home anymore” (xv), and their art became a way to process what they had seen. This postwar alienation fueled a desire to break with tradition, both in art and in life. The Paris Wife mentions many of the seminal figures of the Lost Generation, including Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas), Ezra Pound (“In a Station of the Metro”), F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night), and James Joyce (Ulysses, Dubliners).

Simultaneously, the era continued the earlier generation’s movement toward the “New Woman,” a figure who challenged Victorian gender norms. The ideal came to the fore in the late 19th century, when women embraced their independence, financially, socially, and even physically, adopting dress and activities that ensured freedom of movement. After World War I, this ideal was embodied anew by the flapper. She embraced new social freedoms, from bobbed hair and shorter hemlines to greater independence in her personal and professional life. The novel contrasts Hadley, who initially sees herself as a “Victorian holdout,” with the modern women of their Parisian circle. Set against the backdrop of café society, where artistic ambition and romantic entanglements freely mixed, Hadley’s story explores the tension between her role as a supportive wife and the era’s emerging ideals of female autonomy, reflecting a central conflict of the 1920s.