Rosie The Riveter The Cold War

The United States formally joins World War II in December 1941 in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Because of the shortage of men, women were highly encouraged to go into the workforce for the duration of war. According to Lecture 8, women’s roles where on the “home front industrial front, and military” (Bufalino 4/26/18). Rosie the Riveter was one of the most famous figures for working women. She was a campaign directed at recruiting female workers for protection industries in World War II. The message the government attempted to convey was that by joining the work force, you would could acquire a living in the meantime and help your country, like Rosie the Riveter. The magazine advertisements, posters, and pamphlets of Rosie the Riveter

truly inspired American women. Women entered the workforce in exceptional numbers during the war, as national male enlistment left major openings in the industrial labor force. In 1945 “33% of workforce was female and 4% of skilled workers were female” (Bufalino 4/26/18). In the military, women were accepted in programs like “Voluntary Emergency Service (Navy), Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, and Women’s Army Corps” (Bufalino 4/26/18). The strong, bandana-wearing Rosie soon transformed into one of the most prosperous recruitment mediums in American history. Some even argue that Rosie portrayed the most exemplary image of working women during the era of World War II.
The Cold War – also known as the Atomic Age – begins with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

From 1945 to 1991, there was “conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union for global supremacy” and “on-going political conflict, occasional military conflicts, and mutually assured destruction” (Bufalino 4/26/18). In the 1950s, cultural conflicts started to arise. There was a “Baby Boom,” a period of McCarthyism, and a sudden glorification of domesticity. The rise of a new family structure and dynamic yet maintaining conventional family roles and qualities simultaneously resulted from Cold War tensions. The term nuclear family, characterized as parents and their children, expected a double meaning in the context of threat from Soviet nuclear attack, sustained by the media. This narrative of the nuclear family can be seen in the 1957 American sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. The sitcom is about a curious boy named Theodor “The Beaver” Cleaver and his life in his neighborhood, school, and home. In addition to Beaver’s family members, the show featured Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, his mother. With the Cleavers depicting the praised suburban family during the Cold War Era, the show achieved a significant amount of stardom in the United

States.
During post World War II, women had new potential: domestic obligations based on competence likewise served to give women in the home an elevated role at one with national reason, much as their work in defense industries amid the war had served a patriotic cause.

In Leave it to Beaver, June Cleaver is depicted as being very committed to her family. Her passions outside the house are school events like plays and meetings or social occasions like weddings. Although she is the ideal role of a woman in this era, she is not just a housewife. She is hardly one-dimensional is was very witty, funny, and sarcastic. This makes her one of the most intriguing characters on the show. She shows compassion towards her children and continuously forms the bridge between her husband Ward and their children. Her children are oftentimes afraid of their father Ward because he is a disciplinarian. She truly creates the peace within the household. Aside from her role in the household, she is smart, has a college degree, and got good grades in the boarding school she attended. Ward is sometimes ignorant to the fact that women at the time did not have to necessarily depend on a man. She always has equal say in the household and frequently explains that women can be just as ambitious as men. June Cleaver was an iconic character in this era because she was a representation of women who did not wish to be limited to just a

housewife.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath also addresses the tensions between expectations regarding traditional female roles and the increasing demands and opportunities of paid labor. In the summer of 1953, The Bell Jar opens. Esther Greenwood, a brilliant young woman, is functioning as an editorial intern at a famous women’s magazine in New York city. Although Esther has an academic promise and aspiration, she feels demoralized about her future and disconnected from society. In addition to her early symptoms, she also feels obligated to adjust to social desires for what a young woman should be: a virgin until marriage, a wife, and a mother. The reader can get a sense of Esther’s independent personality in many ways. For example, she demonstrates resistance when she says, “The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters” (76). Esther discloses her resistance for shorthand, which is the opposite of creative writing. Exploratory writing is important to her because it is an expression of her own individuality. In regards to Esther’s career and a husband, “The last thing [she] wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from” (83). Esther longed for “change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions [herself], like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket” (83). This one of the reasons why Esther did not want to get married. In this quote, Esther dismisses Mrs. Willard's figurative view of a woman being dependent on a man. Esther wishes to broaden her boundaries and discover the possibilities of life, rather than having her future characterized by long years of fawning over a husband.