The Revolutionary Road Sparknotes

Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” thematically illustrates the feeling of women being trapped in conformity due to stereotypes. In Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”, Friedan goes into depth on how women in the 1950s faced an even more oppressive culture. Yates character, April Wheeler, engages in outlandish activities, which represent her endeavors to attest what little freedom and control she can have with the regulation she encounters both as an individual from the American suburbs and as a 1950s housewife. This is embodied when April expresses that she never wanted to get pregnant right away and that her vision of a family came a little too soon. Another example is when her husband Frank Wheeler constantly tells her to

act like an adult. These actions reveal a larger significance relative to the presence of stereotypes, which demands the neglect of social identity, which can be seen in April feeling, lost within herself and everything around her.

It is also presented in April’s suicide which can be seen as a frantic handle at trying to be flexible in dealing with a double-dealing American culture fixated on containing it’s individuals under the appearance of opportunity. It’s also presented in the introduction of the book where April has discovered a calling past the drudgery of cooking and cleaning and watching over youngsters, and her rural group has seen her for it. However, Yates soon disseminates this hallucination; as the play starts to go into disrepair, so does April's façade. Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” thematically articulates how women feel trapped in conformity due to stereotypes, which demands the neglect of social

identity.
The thematic idea presented in Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” represents the concept in Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”.

It talks about the lives of a few housewives from around the United States who were troubled in spite of living in material solace and being hitched with children. Furthermore, Friedan scrutinized the ladies' magazine, ladies' training framework and sponsors for making this across-the-board picture of “idealistic” ladies. The deleterious impacts incited by this picture were that it limited ladies to strictly the local circle and drove numerous women to lose their own identities. Betty Friedan initially talks about the feeling of control relating particularly to ladies of this period. "The issue that has no name," as Friedan puts it, is the "sense of dissatisfaction" ladies found with their unfulfilling lives (15). Specifically, she tends to the predicament of the rural housewife choked by social desires and caught by her white picket fence. In spite of the fact that the issue was, to a great extent, overlooked or slighted for quite a while, "it is no longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women" (26). The double tightening influences of social and sexual control squeezed upon after war American ladies and introduced themselves as a rival to the opportunity of these ladies in the public arena. This regulation must be evaded by embraced assorted parts with expectations of discovering one that the two

rejects social tradition and mirrors the internal identity of the individual American lady. As we focus on Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” we look closely how women are depicted in this era socially and emotionally more specifically in April Wheeler life as she tries to juggle finding her social identity.
In Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” thematically illustrates how women feel trapped in conformity in the suburbs. This is shown through when April reveals the plan about escaping to Paris and admitting she wasn’t ready for a family. “According to their plan, which called for an eventual family of four, her first pregnancy came seven years too soon.” (Pg.65) April is desperate to leave the suburbs, she doesn’t care where she moves but she admits to Frank the night they got pregnant with their first child that she was not ready for a kid. April aspire to become an actress but gave her dream up by marrying Walter and having kids, she saw her pregnancy as failure due to her not becoming an actress and accepted it. This pregnancy made her feel trapped in a lifestyle of a boring and dreadful routine of husband cheats, wife cheats, fight over fight which concludes in either divorce or falling back in love. Although April first pregnancy was an accident, she continued to have another baby, “But I’ve had two children,” she said. “Doesn’t that count in my favor?” He let these words reverberate in the darkness for a while. “The very fact that you put it that way is kind of significant,”..”Don’t you think? As if having children were a kind of punishment?” (pg.238) April felt the pressured into society norms to have another kid so they can be that perfect four-paired family as to impress people. The last straw of their European arrangement comes in the acknowledgment that April is indeed incidentally pregnant. Now her kids turn into a very physical boundary to April's happiness.
Another example that Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” thematically illustrates on how women express the feeling of being trapped into conformity is presented through Frank Wheeler. Frank constantly tells April to act like an adult, but more specifically he’s asking her to act more suburban. “You mean I’m emotionally disturbed.” “I didn’t say that!”…”I mean it’s always been a wonder to me that you could survive a childhood like that,” he said at one point, “let alone come out of without any damage to your—you know, ego and everything.” (Pg.237-238) “A psychiatrist, I mean. Aren’t a lot of them supposed to be quacks? Well, but still I guess that isn’t really much of a problem, is it.” He held his breath. “Okay,” she said.” (Pg.246) Walter makes April feel like their something mentally wrong with her, when it’s completely normal to feel trapped in a society like this. He keeps constantly reminding April to act like an adult and unconsciously telling her that her feelings are invalid and that she shouldn’t be able to feel like this. There’s this huge stigma in this era about mental illnesses, you’re frowned upon or looked as ‘crazy’ if you seek help mentally. Frank makes April feel like that, therefore she feels trapped to not express her emotions.