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C O N C L U S I O N Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many southern and eastern European immigrant women became “child brides,” and many couples married “upon not too long acquaintance” because of the living conditions with which they had to contend. Apart from family and community and unaccustomed to their surroundings, which generally included cramped tenement flats, untold numbers of boarders, and miserably poor wages, working-class men and women eagerly rushed into wedlock to find the security for which they had been looking and to help them cope with and manage their new lives in America . The streets offered some relief, as did the picnic groves and parks that surrounded many of their neighborhoods. But their parents were often close behind or quick to accompany them, making it almost impossible for them to establish their own norms of behavior to govern courtship. By the 1920s, many changes were apparent. The expansion of the economy, changes in women’s work, and the rise of commercial amusements expanded immigrants’ leisure opportunities and gave rise to a heterosocial peer culture. Dance halls, in particular, offered young men and women the chance not only to couple up on the dance floor or in a back room or dark hallway but to do so without the added annoyance of intrusive parents or other community. In particular, the physical and sensual feeling of dance, the different use of the body, and the dress and demeanor women and men adopted both on and off the dance floor allowed them to call into question their parents’ ideas about intimacy and leisure, or what they considered to be the antiquated system of chaperonage and the practice of arranging marriages. Yet, while the mores of the dance halls contrasted sharply with the customs their parents favored, dance halls did not necessarily provide young men and women the refuge for which they may have been looking. On the one hand, men and women confronted middle-class reformers and their endless rules and restrictions designed to regulate the intimacy, al-| 234 | cohol, dance, and the slumming gentleman who was eager to make working-class dates. On the other hand, dance halls seemed only to exacerbate the tension surrounding mixed-sex leisure. Some men avoided dancing altogether because of the potential humiliation and frustration they faced. Other men successfully made dance dates but ended up with partners who were better at the task at hand or simply had their own ideas about the next step or variation. Off the dance floor, men and women claimed that their dates were either “unresponsive” or overbearing . While men complained that women demanded too many treats and then failed to “come across,” the demands men consistently made and their rough and unruly behavior appalled the women with whom they were eager to dance. The problems associated with dance halls affected men and women in two ways. First, it compelled them to collectively organize their leisure time. In many cases, they worked together to challenge middle-class reform efforts and to watch more carefully for cops and other potential intruders when they coupled up for intimate moments in the dance hall’s dark hallways, back rooms, and balconies. Other men and women smuggled in alcohol and appropriated certain sections of the dance hall in order to drink it; and they favored ensemble and mass dances or simply danced collectively to provide the cover they needed to engage in sexually expressive moves. At other times, men and women drew upon their homosocial ties and relationships to challenge each other. Men dressed alike, performed the same dances, and imitated the rough and unruly behavior typically associated with other all-male get-togethers such as saloons , poolrooms, and street corners in order to contest women’s claim to public space and to intimidate men of other class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Women, on the other hand, often ignored the men with whom they shared the dance hall. They often danced together or used the sensual and physical side of dance to defy the version of womanhood with which many men were comfortable, and they roamed around in groups to ensure their own protection from unsuitable men and to negotiate the system of treating that governed male-female relationships. Second, the problems young men and women faced with commercial leisure led them to search out their own leisure spaces and to establish social clubs. In the privacy of their own basement hangouts, workingclass men...

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