Analysis of the 1950s Housewife
In studying social constructions in United States History, myths[1] are an important facet of American popular culture that depict the social climates for that era. This is because they are defined as stories that stem from a society’s repeated prominent ideology. For example, by studying the creation of the American myth, the 1950s Housewife, the social constructions of gender roles in the 1950s became more apparent because the myth exists as a direct reflection of the majority population’s ideology. The social historians, Omi and Winant[2], discuss the importance of a racial identity in determining where the identity of an individual rests within the greater part of the society. Because of this unwritten societal rule, Americans over their history have unconsciously established myth-making a natural and integral part of society in order to institute the bounds for necessary racial identities. In the case of the 1950s Housewife, young women were raised with this ideal and goal in mind.
The book When Your Marry by Duvall and Hill was an instructional manual for women on how to execute the wife’s position as a dutiful companion to the husband. On top of running a tip-top household the wife was responsible for balancing their life at home (which is identified as the women’s sphere). The happiness of the entire family was dependent on her and her abilities as a mother and housewife. The novel emphasizes that those women who make excellent housewives do not normally good companions. However, in no way does this give women a choice to either fill the companion or housewife role. Women are still encouraged to run a good home and to have pleasant personalities fit for a loving relationship. A popular culture depiction that hit the masses in the fifties of the ideal 1950s Housewife myth was June Cleaver from the show Leave it to Beaver[3]. Mrs. Cleaver was able to encompass all that the training manual When You Marry recommended, as if she was the model after which it was created. Her calm and cool composure never waivered as she was invested in her children’s and husband’s lives outside of her own work. She was a woman who understood the complexities and the art of balance in the home and therefore has continued to be a textbook representation of the ideal 1950s housewife.
In a retrospective view on the 1950s housewife the film Mona Lisa Smile depicts the journey of a socially rebellious professor at Wellesley College from 1953-1954. In this film, the professor Katherine Watson (played by Julia Roberts) finds herself surrounded by students who exemplify the ideals in When You Marry. The institution of Wellesley is depicted for its leniency towards newly married students and has traditions that center around the promise of marriage and child bearing. Watching this film fifty years after the era that it reflects further emphasizes the difference in social constructions between then and now. Although the woman’s role in 1953 differs greatly from that of a 21st-century woman, women still are shown unfairness in the office and discrimination in daily life. It is no surprise that the myth of the 1950s housewife still resonates in today’s culture in America. It has been woven into our society and without it our society would probably enter a state of instability.
[1] Slotkin (p.5) - “Myths are stories drawn from a society’s history that have acquired through persistent usage the power of symbolizing that society’s ideology and of dramatizing its moral consciousness – with all the complexities and contradictions that consciousness may contain.”
[2] Omi and Winant (pgs. 21-2) Race and Ethnicity
[3] Billingsley, Barbara, perf. Leave It to Beaver. CBS. Fall-Winter 1957-1963.
Netflix. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
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