Domestic Goddesses

There’s an e-mail going round the world right now with a copy of an article from Housekeeping Monthly of May 13, 1955. It’s entitled “The Good Wife’s Guide,” and I assume it’s authentic because it sounds about right. Basically, it advises the woman to not ask her husband questions about his actions or question his judgment because he knows best and because she has “no right to question him” and that, as a good wife, she should “always know her place” because his “topics of conversation are more important.” Behaving in this way, the article assures the reader—presumably women—will provide “immense personal satisfaction.”

To his enduring credit, Sid read it and laughed. He said he’s never seen anyone’s marriage like that and thought the article had to be satirical. I knew differently. Like most other young women during the fifties, I was bombarded by these stereotypes and I saw firsthand the awakening caused by books such as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which suggested that being a domestic goddess (remember Marabel Morgan and fascinating womanhood?) was not only unrewarding but also soul-deadening.

The idea of submissive women, a particular favorite of evangelical Christianity, made absolutely no sense after WWII, when women discovered that the domestic goddess within them could produce ships, aircraft, and armament. They worked full days, raised children, and made their own decisions. Hence all the propaganda right after the war about trying to reestablish domestic relations. But even in the face of reality, the traditional view was seductive probably because it was familiar. Even my mother, fiercely independent and competitive as she was (she once advised me not to clean my husband’s boots or press his trousers under the mattress??), she who had nursed during the war under bombing and blackouts used to talk contemptuously about women who got beyond themselves, all the while going her own wayward way. Oh Mum. Then as now the evangelical ideal produced hypocrisy.

I had a personal run in with it as an undergraduate at the university. I went to an honor’s seminar presentation by a professor of education who read from his unpublished book. He couldn’t understand why no publisher wanted it. His thesis was that women wanted a strong man to make all the decisions for them. He asked for a show of hands from the women: how many women really wanted a man like that? Some hands went up. I was amazed. He saw that mine hadn’t. So he asked the reverse question: who didn’t? I put up my hand. I could see he was annoyed. He asked me what I wanted. “I want a partnership” I replied. Now he was contemptuous. “If you find an apartment that you like but he doesn’t, who makes the decision?” He smiled smugly. He thought he had me. “Money,” I replied crisply. The room—full of students and faculty—erupted in laughter. I found out later that the professor’s wife was definitely not a domestic goddess.

In the early years of my marriage, I tried to be a domestic goddess in my own way. Except that I’d call it more like trying to be super woman. I did the cleaning and housework, took care of my baby, and was a full-time student. I thought that was what I was supposed to do because my husband was “allowing” me to continue my schooling. I don’t know how I still managed to get good grades. Then one day I came home from school, picked up my boy from the babysitter, and had a major attitude adjustment session with my husband. I credit that moment with the real start of a partnership that lasted thirty-eight years. I don’t blame him for his assumptions. I blame his upbringing. He thought that’s what women did. The “ideal” of womanhood had turned me into a servant and held him in a state of perpetual adolescence.

I look around me now and marvel at the progress women have made since the 1955 article for wives. Two-salary families are often a necessity, studies show that domestic duties are more nearly shared, and while there are traditional families where the woman stays home to raise the children, there are options open to her. Universities are now composed of over half women and they are making their way in professions that have been seen as traditionally male. They are doing so well that I feel sad for the remaining societies that repress women because they are losing half of their brainpower. One of these days, a woman will lead this country because it is part of the inevitable progression from the 1950s and the Women's Liberation movement, which was never just about women but also about freeing men as well.

I will concede one thing to that 1955 article though. When anyone—male or female—comes home from work, it’s nice to find dinner waiting and someone glad to see him or her. It's even better, however, when both of them work together to make it.