The Alimony Panic

Abstract

Chapter One examines concerns about alimony in the late 1920s, a moral panic at which gold diggers took center stage. Historians have described the first two decades of the twentieth century as the “first sexual revolution,” a time period which drastically altered attitudes about love, marriage, and divorce. The acceleration of romantic love as the primary justification for marriage coupled with new social and economic roles for women, prompted a rise in the divorce rate. As the divorce rate increased, and as the economic basis for family life changed, many Americans expressed widespread concern about men falling victim to alimony-seeking gold diggers. Coinciding with these changes, the parameters of who was considered “white” were in flux, and cultural negotiations of whiteness occurred in gendered and sexualized spaces, like advertising and popular entertainment. Specific white women, like former Ziegfeld star Peggy Hopkins Joyce, came to embody the gold digger and the problem of extravagant alimony awards. Well-publicized stories of greedy gold diggers focused on the high alimony awards sought by Joyce and others but, in reality, alimony payments had not substantially increased. Rather, the social panic about alimony reflected Progressive-Era angst about gender, class, and race.