Ragtime Themes

Let's face the cold, hard facts: when you set a book beginning in 1902, the characters are going to be pretty prone to bucket-kicking. Besides the obvious fact that 1902 was a looong time ago, turn...

Ragtime has its finger on the pulse of turn-of-the-century women's rights. And dang did things need fixing back then. From not being able to vote to being constricted into those strange metal tortu...

The Victorian Era is synonymous with being uptight. No one talked about sex. Everyone buttoned up: men wore stuffy wool clothes despite the heat, and women wore so many petticoats they looked like...

Ragtime portrays a world that is chock full of injustice. You want racist injustice? Look no further than the fire house's treatment of Coalhouse Walker. You want xenophobic injustice? There is the...

The turn of the century was a massive time of change; it came at the end of what was called the freaking Age of Invention, and right before what got to be known as the Progressive Era. Yup: squashe...

In Ragtime, time is the steady left hand bass line of a ragtime song. But the right hand is playing all sorts of things that make that passage of time special. Doctorow is kind of a wizard. He's ab...

Ragtime is set during one of the hugest immigration waves in American history: we'll bet you a box of glazed donuts (just so you know we're not messing around, because donuts) that you know someone...

The era of Ragtime overlaps with what is known as the Progressive Era. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what that means: tons o' progress. This means worker's rights and women'...