I think, even though he's done some extremely questionable things, he's fundamentally a more decent person than Betty, but that could simply be that my perceptions of her are colored by what we've been permitted to see of her.

I wonder what Betty would be like if she weren't a wife and a mother. I don't think she's a bad person, but she's horribly unsuited for the life she's living. Her comment to Don that it "must be nice, needing time and just taking it" was so telling.

Her comment to Don that it "must be nice, needing time and just taking it" was so telling.

Could you flesh that out a little? What do you think it tells? I think she's a whiny 'yotch, myself, but that may not be what you're saying.

The Feminine Mystique: 1963

Don disappeared for three weeks leaving Betty to take care of the kids and the house completely on her own (okay, with Carla). He is not accused by anyone (in the show) of being a bad parent or a bad spouse for doing this.

Imagine the situation reversed - if Betty had done exactly the same thing and left the kids with Don (okay, really with Carla) for three weeks, she'd have been put in a straightjacket the second she got back. Don gets to "take time" because he has zero responsibilities at home.

God, can you imagine how angry she would be if she knew what we know about what he's been doing? Not that I'd blame her. Oh, and Jess. also, poor betty has to field all the "where's Daddy?" questions and watch as the kids greet him like Santa Claus. That pisses me off for her...prickly and difficult as she can be.

Don gets to "take time" because he has zero responsibilities at home.

But, right then, up to that minute, Don wasn't at home anyway because Betty kicked him out. Right that minute, I can't see her having any bone to pick.

In the general, though, yeah. Men got free passes in many things, women were definitely more bound by social constraints. Women may have got the vote in 1920, but they sure didn't get emancipation with it.

Re: the Feminine Mystique. I didn't realize that came out in 1963, I thought it was later than that, early 70s or so. I wonder if that's going to play any part in the next season? It would be great to see Betty reading a copy of it in bed.

I wonder if that's going to play any part in the next season?

I'll bet it will (hence the oh-so-cryptic phone post from the car when I thought to look up the date). It was squarely aimed at women in just Betty's situation, and I keep thinking that the tragedy of Don and Betty is that we keep having glimpses of what Don really wants in just about every other woman we see him with, but he's just as incompatible a match for her, and there is no "would have been better off with" except... the hooker ex-roomie? the modeling she's now aged out of? That and the Miltown got me to Mystique, and that got me back to my wicked wicked wikipedia ways.

that got me back to my wicked wicked wikipedia ways

That's straight where I went when you posted. I wasn't sure if that was the actual date or if you were saying, version 1963 as compared to when it did come out. Much earlier than I realized! There had to be something else that came out in the early '70s that I'm blanking on the name, I just can't think what.

the modeling she's now aged out of?

But she didn't age out of it. Don put the kabosh on it, when it looked like she might actually suceed. At least, that's what I took out of that particular episode.

Betty's very much trapped by social expectations, but I also think she's a very scared, immature girl. Even when she thinks she wants to make a stand, she backs down every time. She could have tried to find some other work, even volunteer work with a charitable organization, if she felt work would fulfill her in some way. She doesn't seem to have any drive to do anything that may require some skill, typing, running a cash register, sales clerk in a department store, whatever was typical for the day. She's locked into the role of being "the pretty one" and moving outside of that, I think, scares her to death.

It's the same with her saying she can't have a baby right now. She says this more than once, Francine even gives her pratical advice on how to do it. She's been signing Don's paychecks and using the money, how hard would it be for her to ask Carla to watch the kids for a weekend and take a trip out of state? Or, she could take a stand and tell Don she's pregnant, but she'll be just fine with a hefty alimony and child support payment and he can do a disappearing act again. She had no problem signing his checks for him while he was gone, so as long as the checks keep coming, she'll be just fine. She's got agency, she keeps refusing to take it because she won't look like a good wife or a good mother.

I think scenes that really point up the subtleties of what Don and Betty want were shown in a couple of episodes this season. At one point, before a dinner party, Betty reminds Don that she asked him to fix a chair and he says he'll get to it. Later, after Don is moved out and Betty is all liquored up, she takes the chair and totally breaks it to pieces. In the next to last episode, you see Don fixing a chair for Anna. It's interesting that Don blew Betty off about the chair, yet felt quite comfortable fixing Anna's for her. Was it because of who he was fixing it for or was it his realization that he needed to be there for the other person as much as they were there for him?

There had to be something else that came out in the early '70s that I'm blanking on the name, I just can't think what.

Germaine Greer? The Female Eunuch?

"The title is an indication of the problem," Greer told the New York Times in 1971, "Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality. They've become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for example, who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives — to be fattened or made docile — women have been cut off from their capacity for action. It's a process that sacrifices vigour for delicacy and succulence, and one that's got to be changed."

This sure sounds like Betty:

Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to Sex and Destiny 14 years later, namely that the nuclear family is a bad environment for women and for the raising of children; and that the manufacture of women's sexuality by Western society was demeaning and confining. Girls are feminised from childhood by being taught rules that subjugate them, she argued. Later, when women embrace the stereotypical version of adult femininity, they develop a sense of shame about their own bodies, and lose their natural and political autonomy. The result is powerlessness, isolation, a diminished sexuality, and a lack of joy:

Did Gloria Steinem publish anything in the early 70s? Her name keeps rattling around the brain pan.

The only other thing that pops up, but for the early 60s is Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl." Maybe that's what I'm thinking of and put into the 70s. That's when the movie came out.