Sentenced to everyday life : feminism and the housewife /
Lesley Johnson and Justine Lloyd.
- x, 182 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-175) and index.
Only a housewife -- Defining the housewife : contemporary feminism -- Defining the housewife : early second wave feminism -- Reviewing the 1950s -- Feminism and the subject of modernity -- Good-enough feminists? -- Whom does she represent? -- The future in her hands -- As housewives, we are worms -- The meanings of home -- At home and at work -- Dream stuff -- The housing problem -- The housewife speaks -- The importance of looking -- On the kitchen front -- The view from the kitchen window -- The three faces of Eve -- Homework and housework -- Definitions of melodrama -- Putting on the apron -- The childless housewife -- A doubled plot of femininity -- Harpies like Mildred -- Boredom : the emotional slum -- Time to burn -- Housewife's corner -- Finding time -- Declining audiences : an afterword on the housewife.
"Drawing on research and evidence surrounding the housewife figure of the 1940s and 1950s, Johnson and Lloyd address the question of why the housewife has been such a problematic figure in feminist debates since World War II. Starting with an exploration of why the housewife of the 1940s became associated with drudgery, this book covers such topics as the ways in which magazines and advertising attempted to articulate an innate connection between women and the domestic sphere, while later films of the 1950s explored the constantly shifting boundaries between social, family and individual desires and constraints for women in the home. Johnson and Lloyd also examine how the home has been a site of boredom, and what happens to the balance between work and family in the modern world. In moving into contemporary debates, the authors explore the uneasy tension between the construction of the modern self and women's efforts to transcend the domestic sphere." "By situating their examination in a still unresolved contemporary topic, Johnson and Lloyd offer us both a backward glance and a forward-looking perspective in domesticity and the modern self."--BOOK JACKET.
1845200314 9781845200312 1845200322 9781845200329
2004020621
Feminism--United States Second-wave feminism Housewives--United States