Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound
Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound weaves two traditional narratives of the fifties -- suburban domesticity and rampant anticommunism -- into one compelling historical argument. Aiming to ascertain why, unlike both their parents and children, postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment, May discovers that cold war ideology and the domestic revival [were] two sides of the same coin: postwar Americans' intense need to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future. (May, p. 5-6, 10) According to May, "domestic containment" was an outgrowth of the fears and aspirations unleashed after the war -- Within the home, potentially dangerous social forces of the new age might be tamed, where they could contribute to the secure and fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired.(May, p. 14) Moreover, the therapeutic emphases of fifties psychologists and intellectuals offered private and personal solutions to social problems. The family was the arena in which that adaptation was expected to occur; the home was the environment in which people could feel good about themselves. In this way, domestic containment and its therapeutic corollary undermined the potential for political activism and reinforced the chilling effects of anticommunism and the cold war consensus.(May, p.14)
May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...
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...suburban home ownership, they were homeward bound. But, as the years went by, they also found themselves bound to the home." (May p.207)
In the end, it is clear that in recent decades, the domestic ideology and cold war militance have risen and fallen together. Immediately after World War II, stable family life seemed necessary for national security, civil defense, and the struggle for supremacy over the Soviet Union. For a generation of young adults who grew up amid depression and war, domestic containment was a logical response to specific historical circumstances. It allowed them to pursue, in the midst of a tense and precarious world situation, the quest for a sexually-fulfilling, consumer-oriented personal life that was free from hardship. But the circumstances were different for their children, who broke the consensus surrounding the cold war and domestic containment. Whether the baby-boom children will ultimately be more successful than their parents in achieving fulfilling lives and a more just and tolerant world remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: gender, family, and national politics are still intertwined in the ongoing saga of postwar cultural change.
Thomas Paine constructs Common Sense as an editorial on the subject of the relationship between the Colonies and Great Britain. Through the paper, he hopes to educate his fellow Americans about this subject. In his introduction, he says he feels that there is 'a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong'; which 'gives it a superficial appearance of being right'; (693). He is alluding to the relationship, also calling it a 'violent abuse of power'; (693). This choice of words is similar to those of Jefferson, who asserts that the king had established an 'absolute tyranny'; over the states. Both men set an immediate understanding about their feelings towards the rule of Great Britain over the States. However, where Common Sense seems to be an opinionated essay, Thomas Jefferson writes somewhat of a call to battle. Paine generally seems to be alerting his readers to the fact that there is more going on than they are aware of. Jefferson, on the other hand, begins his declaration by stating, 'When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another'; (715). Unlike Paine, this seems to presuppose that readers are aware of the plight of the nation, and Jefferson is announcing that the time has come to take a stand.
In the 1950’s becoming a wife, having and raising children and taking care of the home was the primary goal for most women. Post war brides were marrying young, having children at significant and unrivaled rates, and settling into roles that would ultimately shape a generation. This ideal notwithstanding, women were entering the workplace like never before and changing the face of American business forever. In the movie The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit directed in 1956 by Nunnally Johnson, we get an inkling of the type of voice American women would develop in the character of Betsy Rath. We are introduced to a wife and mother who leverage her role in the family to direct and influence. The decade of the 50’s signify the beginnings of the duplicity that women would embrace in America, being homemakers and independent women.
May argues that “the depression thus paved way for two different family forms: one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated.” In the latter form the father would have earned a “family wage” while his wife would have been responsible the children and their home, only working if it was necessary to supplement her husband’s income. This trend was caused mainly by two factors. During the financial strain of the depression, marriage and birth rates were much lower than they had been in the previous decade while the divorce rate was much higher. Young men of the time were afraid that they would not be able to provide for their new families and chose not to get married. While young women on the other hand, encountered an employment boom that allowed them to gain a sense of economic freedom that allowed them to not feel compelled to marry. This new single woman was glamorized by Hollywood during the 1930s. However, families tended toward choosing a life with the husband earning a “family wage” with the wife at home. Why? May concludes, "for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women." Films from the 1930s like Gone with the Wind and His Girl Friday portrayed strong female leads that had to choose between their independent working life and domestic happiness, as it seemed that both could not coexist in their lives. Another cause for this were the programs implemented during the New Deal Era. Such programs aimed to raise male employment levels and often did nothing for female employment. Men had become embittered during the depression when women
In the novel, The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson, the author capitalizes upon society’s expectation of a character to emphasize the struggle to achieving his goals. Ian, one of the central characters in the plot line, is heavily impacted by these expectations, which hold a substantial influence upon his decision’s regarding his future. To teenagers an expectation: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future, is nothing but a restriction upon them. Ian believes he is contained within these expectations; to the point where he does not wish to follow this given path. In a time of adolescence, teenagers are compelled by the strong desire to denounce that which is expected of them; Ian is no exception to this. Societies expectations create a negative influence upon Ian’s struggles to achieve his goals. These effects are due to the following expectations: to leave Struan for a superior education, to obtain the opportunity to become successful; to strive for a medical career, since he excels at the trade already; and to settle into a happy relationship, to raise a family.
His exceptional writing and simple style reached many receptive ears across the Colonies. He also spoke plainly as was with de Crevecoeur yet tended away in his writing from the rural and the pleasant and more towards politics and the ugly truths that were part of colonial life. Consider his most famous work “Common Sense” it is an agitation against the crown of England, this would become a pattern with the man. In its most basic form “Common Sense” is a call to arms and revolution. It is also a great if very lengthy argument for what should happen after the war is won establishing a republic. “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom; but of a continent—of at least one-eighth part of the habitable globe. ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time by the proceedings now” (Paine 136). This is Paine’s original thoughts on the matter and his beginning argument. He continues with “We have boasted the protection of Great Britain without considering that her motive was interest, not attachment; and that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will always be our enemies on the same account.” (Paine 137). It seems a pretty simple argument to the author that Americans are only entangled in foreign wars because of the association with Great Britain. He makes another assertion that “America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power taken any notice of her. The commerce by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.” (Paine 137). Paine’s call to a republic
Unlike most “victimized” cultures of Western European domination, the Ottoman Empire was considerably successful and powerful for many years, particularly in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century under the rule of Sulayman the Magnificent (Haberman, 132). By 1520, the Ottoman Empire had secured much of the Arab Middle East, Belgrade and most of Hungary (Haberman, 132...
In “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” Jacquelyn Hall explains that future generations would need to grapple with the expenses of commercialization and to expound a dream that grasped financial equity and group unanimity and also women’s freedom. I determined the reasons for ladies ' insubordination neither reclassified sexual orientation parts nor overcame financial reliance. I recollected why their craving for the trappings of advancement could obscure into a self-constraining consumerism. I estimated how a belief system of sentiment could end in sexual peril or a wedded lady 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, in any case, should cloud a generation’s legacy. I understand requirements for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the section of ladies into open space and political battles beforehand cornered by men all these pushed against conventional limitations even as they made new susceptibilities.
From the 18th century through the beginning of the 19th century, European influence was a significant force in various aspects of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Iran. Although the reforms, coined primarily by Gelvin as “defensive developmentalism,” were initially intended to centralize governmental control and strengthen the military, the actual effects were much broader. Based on varying pre-existing conditions and unique approaches to governorship, this process of modernization affected each region differently. This essay will explore the manners in which European influence shaped each territory, the primary areas of civilization, politics and culture that experienced reform, and the degree to which that influence was significant, or in the case of Iran, insignificant.
Due to the idealization of domesticity in media, there was a significantly stagnant period of time for women’s rights between 1945 and 1959. Women took over the roles for men in the workplace who were fighting abroad during the early 1940s, and a strong, feminist movement rose in the 1960s. However, in between these time periods, there was a time in which women returned to the home, focusing their attention on taking care of the children and waiting on their husband’s every need. This was perpetuated due to the increasing popularity of media’s involvement in the lives of housewives, such as the increasing sales of televisions and the increase in the number of sexist toys. During America’s involvement in World War Two, which spanned from 1941 until 1945, many men went off to fight overseas.
The government of the Ottoman Empire was an absolute monarchy for a majority of the empire’s time period. During the last fifty years, change in government occurred frequently, due to the decline and lack of good leadership. The state was organized into two parts; military and civil administration, where the sultan, otherwise known as the caliphate held the highest position in the state. Though the sultan had complete and absolute control over the empire, most did not exercise complete control, usually leaving the work to the grand vizier who would lead and move forward with reforms and laws as the sultan asked (“Ottoman Empire”). Many of the sultans were men lacked ability, training or experience in leading an empire (Chambers).
Within an organization one of the key tools that they use is that of: communication. Communication is a primary key to any organization and without it there is no cohesion, no leadership, and no functionality. As communication begins to diminish, so does the organization – as one article puts it: “These new economic…. imperatives have significantly contributed to the demise of the old classic command-and-control bureaucracy…” (Tiernan et al, 2002, 47-48). From what this article states, the lack of communication has led to a semi-collapse of the mechanistic structure of an organization. Though communication does seem like a huge factor of an organization, communication does not come without its troubles within the inter-organizations; if there is communication going on in a company, there is going to also be a lack of communication. When a company has employed thousands of people (or maybe just a small amount) they are hiring a whole selection of individuals to work as whole group in unity – though this does seem like an amazing idea, these sets of individuals will have quite ...
The Tanzimat greatly extended the scope of types of reforms that were implemented, which included expansion and overhaul of administration, promotion of new civil and commercial codes, new state courts, and development of a public education system. Mahmud II also implemented a new militia which followed a European format, which he named “The Triumphant Soldiers of Muhammad”. The European influence did not stop with the military, though, as Mahmud II forced Europeanization on multiple branches of government, which created a high demand for those educated in European languages and western
The Ottomans did attempt to reform themselves on multiple occasions. The entire Tanzimat period from 1839-1876 was marked by extensive efforts to modernize and westernize the Ottoman government. Even before then, though, there were serious attempts to change society. Around the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1798, Sultan Selim III sought to modernize the Ottoman Army after the model of the highly successful French army. The Nizam-i-Cedid would have been a modern military force capable of standing up to European armies, unlike the hopelessly antiquated and disorderly Janissaries. Despite his best efforts, though, the Janissaries overthrew him in 1807. His successor, Mahmud II did succeed in reviving the Nizam-i-Cedid after massacring the Janissaries in 1826 (Gelvin 80). At the same time, Mehmet Ali implemented similar, though more successful, reforms in Egypt, then under the at least *de jure* rule of the Sultan. Mehmet Ali's army was perhaps the strongest in the Middle East and his forces intervened on behalf of the Ottoman Empire to crush the revolt in Greece. Despite that strength, though, European militaries were more powerful and at the battle of Navarino, a joint Anglo-Franco-Russian navy defeat...
These homemaking shows’ tactics were to encourage and show women that being a homemaker, wife, and mother is not a lonely life or a life full of drudgery and that having this status is not being an unproductive citizen. These shows had to incorporate these tactics because a decade before women’s role were vastly different to the roles they have now. Women before were working in jobs that were mainly solely for men, they were independent by earning their own wages, and being patriotic citizens by participating in the war effort by fighting on the home front or joining the military. Their work on both fronts were dangerous and life-threatening in which these jobs were predominantly for men; many were spies, others made bombs and weapons, and many flew planes and carried out dangerous missions. All of this changed during the postwar years in which their main occupations now were mothers and housewives. It may seem that women decreasing independence and their rigid gender and social mobility made them feel limited in
...higher score toward more realistic expectations) of the expectations of being a parent. More than 50% of the participants mentioned the rigor demands of parents and the additional responsibilities that are needed as a parent. Unfortunately this study used convenience sampling, was predominantly female, and had a small sample size.