ABSTRACT
If Barbara Egger Lennon's (Barbe’s) much-used Kodak camera could have captured one snapshot encapsulating her life only two years later, her 1919 self may have scarcely recognized that 1921 image. By 1921 the nation had largely retreated from a commitment to massive social change in exchange for the hope of a return to “normalcy;” yet what normal meant was not always clear, for modernity and conservatism wrangled for preeminence in American society. For women these contradictions existed side by side in the 1920s New Woman. Despite the growing acceptance of single working women, most people still assumed that a woman’s true calling was as family caretaker, whether as daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Barbe’s emotions had continued to be conflicted, as she worried about the effect her return to work had on John Brown Lennon, especially given that as a woman, she could have stepped away from her job without societal judgment.
