Wife and Mother Portrayal The women of the 1950’s are portrayed as happy, lovely, domestic, the cook, the maid, a mother, and loyal wife to their breadwinner husbands. The husbands worked at their well-paying jobs while the women’s role was to stay home, cook, clean, and take care of the children. These women are well dressed in elegant dresses, high heels, pearl necklace, and always looking like they were ready to go somewhere, and portraying the joy of a clean home or a new appliance. The roles started to shift in the 70’s with “Mary Tyler Moore” as an independent woman who was single, living by herself, working and forming bonds with friends and co-workers. These friends were like a surrogate family to Mary. This later shifted to more female roles and men becoming more like accessories on these shows, only there to help …show more content…
They can swap with men, they can be single, ambitious, or sit at home and rule the kitchen, but they always have to go back to their gender. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule of the roles, but as the saying goes the exceptions help strengthen the rule. I shall say it would be impossible for any sitcom to portray any woman as “rightfully” as a specific role or force them. We can let them be individual human beings doing whatever type of lifestyle they choose. Many women today are capable of creating, directing, writing, funding, marketing and selling their own forms of entertainment. The mother of all funny ladies, Lucy Ricardo was equal parts, naïve, silly and scheming, always trying to achieve her goal only to be put back in her domestic role. Women seem not to ever be enlisted as comedians, or the focus of a TV show, because they say females are preoccupied with family and personal issues. Women characters always show emotions, lack of strength, independence, and complex, and thus will be stereotyped by the
Before I watched 'A Midwife's Tale', a movie created from the diary found by Laurel Ulrich chronicling the life of a woman named Martha Ballard, I thought the women in these times were just housewives and nothing else. I pictured them doing the cleaning and the cooking for their husbands and not being very smart because of the lack of education or them being unable to work. My view on the subject changed however when I watched this specific woman's life and her work.
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 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...
In the 1950s sitcoms, men and women had very distinct roles which differ in today's changing society. Back then, men usually worked to support the family, women would marry and raised children. As shown in sitcoms, "gender roles became much more predictable, orderly and settled in the 1950s" (Coontz 36). It was ideal to families that men worked and women stayed home. However, gender roles have changed today. Women have better rights to work now; many are no longer staying home. From "Gilmore Girls" Lorelei, owns an inn to support herself and her daughter, Rory. She is an independent and highly respected woman in the show. This shows that women and child...
“Women in the early 1950s family were weak, secondary characters, and as such were usually dominated by their husbands and their own conceptions of marriage” (Hastings, 1974). Certain episodes of these shows always tried to prove that women should stay at home. When I Love Lucy came out with a woman as the main star, they still had her stay at home, cooking and cleaning, but still made her seem useless. “Women characters frequently were shown as less mature and less capable human-beings and their husbands often took a quasi-parental role by scolding them” (Hastings, 1974).
Like stated earlier, gender roles in the 50’s were very strict and narrow-minded. That being said, women were extremely limited in their role in society. First of all, women were expected to be homemakers. By homemaker, I mean the women w...
Gender roles are being conformed for television viewing, for example, In episode 2, Raymond stated “I get my exercise and babysit at the same time” when he lifted his twin boys in his arms like a gym equipment’s in front of his friend smiling. Why does a man has to be the one to do something idiotic like that when there would never be a television universe, where a mother would ever do something like that, it just wasn’t a “female” thing to do. Why was Debra the one who had to ask her husband to say, “I love you”? When in reality either one of them could have ask something like that without stereotyping the female. In episode 1, Ray boasted, “Look, I cleaned the house” and Debra was very happy to see that actually happened. Again, why does it had to be a surprise when this was something both males and females do in everyday life without being “surprised” by it or making such an accomplishment out of getting the house cleaned. Television is too much of a stereotype ground field when it comes to gender role and has been for a
... for your life. If a woman wants to be a housewife who focuses on raising her children or a career woman, it is her choice ultimately. If a man wants to be equally involved in his career and family, it should be his choice too. It should not matter what the gender stereotype is and this show helps women and men believe that the individual feeling is often more important than the typical societal belief.
In 1970, CBS premiered a new television series called The Mary Tyler Moore Show. By no means was it considered the first of the “working woman” sitcom to air during prime-time, but it is “generally acknowledged as the first to assert that work was not just a prelude to marriage, or ...
Over the years, the roles of women have drastically changed. They have been trapped, dominated, and enslaved by their marriage. Women have slowly evolved into individuals that have rights and can stand on their own. They myth that women are only meant to be housewives has been changed. However, this change did not happen overnight, it took years to happen. The patriarchal society ruled in every household in earlier times and I believe had a major effect on the wives of the families. “The Story of an Hour”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Trifles all show how women felt obligated to stay with their husbands despite the fact they were unhappy with them
On television today you will see stereotypes of male and female roles in society. These stereotypes are exemplified in many TV shows and even children's cartoons. Some shows which stereotype sex roles include, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, and almost every sitcom on television. When many American children grow up, they are introduced to cartoons. A few of the most popular cartoons for children are stereyotyoing male and female roles.
Time flew by and as the war ended in 1918, the 1920’s decade of change soon approached. The year was famously known as “The Jazz Age” and “The Roaring 20’s” because of the newly found freedom, social and political changes, and the time of prohibition. Among these powerful new changes was the freedom that women were finally able to vote and enjoy what was about to come. Instead of being confined at home, the women joined labor forces, worked with wages, and experimented with different types of behavior that would have been unreasonable a few years back. Along with these dramatic changes were their fashion styles. This style changed their rights and relationships with others completely. With that change, a new woman was born. There were not many ways for women to stand up for themselves and what they believed in. They had no voice but in the 1920’s, women found a way of freely expressing themselves and changing their relationships with others all with the start of fashion.
In American society, the woman has always been viewed in the traditional viewpoint of what role she should play in the home; that she is the homemaker or caretaker. Even when women break from the stereotypical role of "housewife" and join the workforce, they still are not given an equal opportunity at acquiring a job that is seen to be as advancing or of higher recognition, as they would like to have. Men usually already take those positions.
That is why for years to come women will still be seen as motherly, passive and innocent, sexual objects, or they are overlooked or seen as unimportant entities. Whether it’s motherly birds on kids TV shows or scantily clad dancers on Monday Night Football, the portrayal of women has yet to catch up with what real life women are like. There are single women, obese women, and smart women. Women who are single mom’s, lesbians, or don’t have any children at all. Women are able to do the same type of work as men without being manly.
What is a wife? Or what is a wife’s role in the family? People have many different ways to express about a wife; a wife can consider that a woman is married with her man, and they are a partner for whole life when they are live together. However, people can also understand a relationship between a wife and a husband because a husband and a wife are the voluntary in their marriage. Sometimes, many parents of a man or a woman do not follow the rule, and they force their children to marry someone else. After that, they are a couple; a woman becomes a wife in this family. It is not easy to write an argument definition about a wife; this essay will focus on what a wife is, what a wife’s role in the family, and how a wife builds a happy family.