Aims,
okay, to press you a little bit...
Betty Draper is perhaps unlike many housewives and mothers of that era because she was somewhat worldly before she got married. She had a bit of a career modeling, she spent time overseas. You see her yearning for a more cosmopolitan life at several points throughout the series. There are two points that come particularly to mind in the current season:
a) when Don thinks he is going to be promoted to England and talks to Betty about it, you can see she is thrilled with the idea.
b) When they both go to Rome (?) and have a marvelous time.
I think she is at once trying to be the wife and mother that society expects, but not willing to say openly (until toward the end) that she wants more - and does so by becoming involved in local politics.
What is interesting to me (my field is social science and not humanities, so I can't really help you with analyses in this way I guess) is how the show plays with notions of female desire as compared with what you see on modern tv. Joan is not a Size 0 and she is revered. Betty is obviously a mother, but this does not dampen her sexual power to other men. Don Draper is dealing with his own madonna/whore anxieties, but that isn't necessarily how Betty is scene by the characters around her including Roger (!) and her new, creepy man.
You just have to make a case, not believe it forever, and I totally think you can.
I think that Betty doesn't even really know that this is what she wants (finding her own power etc) - she just knows that she had what she was supposed to want and it didn't make her happy. (And she gets to blame Don's infidelity on her unhappiness - which probably distracts her from the actual source.)
As I see it, the reason Betty is an unsatisfying heroine to a modern audience is that we can identify with her dissatisfaction at home, but the things she wants instead are just as un-feminist as the traditional housewife role - she wants to be pampered arm candy, basically. She wants what Jane has - a rich husband, no kids, a swank apartment in the city.
Jessica,
given how much affection she has for baby Gene, I actually don't think she wants no kids. She isn't the best parent in the world, but I'm not sure she is aware of her limitations.
My question is: do you think she would have divorced Don if she hadn't found out his secrets?
Speaking as the mother of a two year old, there's a big difference between loving babies and loving parenting. Betty does not enjoy her older children.
Getting a divorce in NY is really hard (we're still the only state in the country without no-fault divorce), so I'd say no to your other question - without the box, she'd have no leverage against him.
I think though, that that what she
thinks
she wants. We've said before that her life with new creepy guy probably isn't going to satisfy her, either. Her dipping a toe into local politics seeming to satisfy her in a way that she can't quite figure out just now.
But I think she was taught that the way a woman picks her life is to pick her guy.
So she thinks "Different guy, different life,"
Even though it's really the whole domestic goddess baggage that is the problem(and, really, that nobody else can really be "your life,")
Although people still hate to hear mothers say that.
I agree with Jessica. Betty is frustrating because everything in her life points to a major feminist awakening, but she's been so warped in her expectations by her mother that she will never make that leap. Also, she sucks because she's an unempathetic narcissist. Just like, I suspect, her mother.
