[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 two interestingly stereotypical characters at distinct places on the sympathy spectrum, and a secret third thing.
I haven’t conducted a poll or anything, but I would wager that the most famous literary housewife of the 19th century remains Emma Bovary, title character in Gustave Flaubert’s hugely influential novel Madame Bovary (1856-57). It’s a great book and she’s a well-constructed character, but I believe the fame is due in large part to how much she embodies (and helped popularize) the enduring cultural stereotype of the bored housewife who turns to adulterous affairs as an escape from the ennui. American literature has plenty of examples of that type as well, but none is more prominent, nor more interestingly drawn, than Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). Edna is quite a bit like Emma Bovary, just in New Orleans and the Creole resorts on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana so with a number of interesting local color factors thrown into the mix. But innovations in realistic third-person narration in the forty years between the two books, as well as Chopin’s prodigious talents, allow her to create a fascinatingly ambiguous narrator who at one and the same time creates significant sympathy for Edna (more than Flaubert does for Emma to be sure) while asking the reader to take a critical look at her limitations and tragic failings.
Far less sympathetic, and likewise quite prevalent in 19th century literature, is the character of the wealthy white housewife who actively and destructively discriminates against those she perceives as below her (which generally includes both people of color and those of lower social classes). An example of this type about whom I’ve thought a lot in recent years, as I’ve taught the novel in a couple Grad classes, is Mrs. Norval in Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s satirical novel of manners (and historical novel about the Civil War) Who Would Have Thought It? (1872). The Norvals are self-proclaimed abolitionists, yet Mrs. Norval is consistently bigoted, hateful, and exploitative toward Lola, the novel’s young Mexican American heroine who is rescued and adopted by Mr. Norval. She does so for reasons closely connected to her role as a stereotypical housewife: seeking the best marriage prospects for her daughters; worrying about how the neighbors will perceive the family; and generally trying to successfully navigate the social situation of the upper classes in mid-19th century America. But while Ruiz de Burton’s skillful inclusion of those layers does allow us to understand Mrs. Norval, her narrator’s satirical and sarcastic tone never lets us forget how hypocritical and horrible this woman is.
As I hope this whole series will explore, even the most stereotypical characters often have layers that make them more interesting (and certainly even more worthy of analysis) than they might superficially seem. But of course there are also fictional characters that defy stereotypes in fascinating and important ways, and it will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that the incomparable Charles Chesnutt created such a character in my favorite American novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901): the wealthy white housewife Olivia (Merckel) Carteret. Olivia certainly expresses many of the same types of prejudices as Mrs. Norval, especially toward her unacknowledged, mixed-race half-sister Janet Miller; and her inherited wealth allows her husband, Major Philip Carteret, to found and edit a white supremacist newspaper, The Morning Chronicle. But Olivia goes through a complex and compelling arc in the course of the novel’s events, one aided by what she learns about her father and the past, by her own new motherhood and the ways it reframes her perspectives on humanity, and by her willingness to rethink her prejudices when they butt up against outside realities. All of those are traits that challenge our stereotypes of housewives, a useful lens to consider throughout this blog series.
Next HousewifeStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Cultural housewives you’d highlight?
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