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.
Did Gloria Steinam publish anything in the early 70s?
She's never really been as much of a book-publishing figure, but that's definitely her era -- she founded the National Women's Political Caucus in '71 and
Ms.
magazine in '72.
Ya know, so much happened before the time I actually thought it did. Maybe it's just that I didn't really feel the effects for myself until I was old enough for it to be felt, which was in my teens during the early 70s.
Betty could do lots of stuff outside the home. My mom didn't go back to work until the early 70s, but during our childhoods she took classes, worked for the League of Women Voters and volunteered for various policital campaigns and causes.
One thing that she tells me which the show glosses over a bit is that, yes, lots of women were home all day. However, because they all were home, there was a lot of childcare switching off, so individual women could have time to volunteer or work part-time or go to a matinee or whatever. I know her freinds were a rather smart lot, but it was the suburbs in the '60s and they all had outside interests.
Betty could do lots of stuff outside the home.
She could, but her default life is still "the home," and Don's isn't. She can kick him out, but she can't leave herself, because the kids and house are explicitly her responsibility and not his.
I think you're underestimating Betty's sense of social privilege and entitlement. She doesn't want a job.
We can see that she's bored and restless and unchallenged, but that's not how she perceives her situation or dilemma.
Her problem is that her husband cheats. At least, that's how she sees the problem.
Earlier we saw Joan renounce any ambition in the man's world, but later we saw her hopes crushed when got a taste of that and discovered the satisfactions of the work.
Betty has no glimmer of what would engage her outside her home. It's beyond her set of social expectations and she's only beginning to challenge those.
Betty has no glimmer of what would engage her outside her home. It's beyond her set of social expectations and she's only beginning to challenge those.
It's not just beyond her social expectations, I'd say it's beyond her intellectual expectations, too. Not that I think Betty is stupid, but she doesn't do anything to challenge herself. People with a true intellectual curiosity will seek out the things that challenge them.
