[On October 15, 1951, I Love Lucy premiered on CBS. The show was many things, but at its heart it was a cultural depiction of a housewife—a common & complex category across our history to be sure. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of such fictional figures, leading up to a weekend post featuring my own wife’s phenomenal work on the subject!]
On what we can learn from two contrasting character arcs connected by core concepts of continuities after changes. [Some SPOILERS for Mad Men and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.]
When we first meet Elizabeth “Betty” (or “Betts,” or “Birdie”; if you know you know) Draper (January Jones), in the pilot episode of Mad Men (2007-15), she has left behind a successful career as a model to become a seemingly picture-perfect 1950s housewife (the show’s first season in set in 1960, but Betty has been performing that role for at least a handful of years by that time). Over Mad Men’s seven seasons Betty will go through a number of striking and significant experiences and they will certainly bring with them changes, but all of them will exist within that overarching frame established in the first episode: that is, she will remain a housewife throughout, occasionally taking steps toward more professional paths and futures (an early episode in which she briefly returns to modeling; later ones in which she does some political fundraising work) but always returning to the home. Her husbands change, her kids grow up, and of course America changes dramatically across the full decade in which the show is set; but Betty’s basic identity and status in the series finale are quite similar to what they were in that first episode.
When we first meet Miriam “Midge” Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), in the pilot episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-23), she is about to begin leaving behind her life as a seemingly picture-perfect 1950s housewife (the show’s first season is set in 1958) to embark on a fraught but ultimately successful career as a stand-up comedian. [To be clear, she doesn’t initiate that process, as it begins when her husband Joel abruptly leaves her; but of course Betty Draper’s contrasting shift from model to housewife was also directly caused by a man and a marriage.] Over Maisel’s five seasons Midge will go through a number of striking and significant experiences and they will certainly bring with them changes, but all of them will exist within that overarching frame established in the first episode: that is, she will remain a blossoming stand-up comedian throughout, occasionally taking steps toward more familial paths and futures (a first-season episode in which she and Joel briefly get back together; a later plotline in which she is briefly engaged to marry another man) but always returning to the stage. Her ambitions change, the form and media of her art evolves, and of course America changes dramatically across the half-decade in which the show is set; but Midge’s basic identity and status in the series finale are quite similar to what they were when she took the stage at the end of the first episode.
Those might seem like a pair of consistently contrasting character arcs, but I would argue that there’s actually a strikingly similar theme, or at least throughline, linking these two fictional women. Both seem to embody the enduring challenge of, as it is often phrased, women “having it all.” In the famous first chapter of her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan highlighted and analyzed housewives who had abandoned professional paths, and were feeling stymied and depressed as a result; the tellingly named Betty Draper fits that bill quite well. Midge Maisel, on the other hand, had always planned to be a housewife, but through a combination of circumstances and ambition ends up pursuing and achieving professional goals and successes; yet in the course of doing so she not only remains unmarried (choosing to do so in quite direct opposition to the possibility of a second marriage, for example), but also largely leaves her two small children behind. [It’s important to note that Betty Draper is also a consistently terrible mother, a reminder that there are no guarantees with parenting or family.] By definition a “housewife” is not a professional, and vice versa—but these two characters remind us that for it is quite challenging for women who do want to have it all, to balance such roles and settings, in the 1950s/60s and to this day.
Last HousewifeStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Cultural housewives you’d highlight?
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