Word to the Wives and Hamilton
The 1950s saw especially traditional gender roles in a sort of backlash to the wartime employment trends. Housewives and stay at home mothers were the norm. All you need to do is to take a look at some advertisements from the era to see these ideals reflected.
A Word to the Wives is a short film produced by the National Association of Home Builders and the Woman’s Home Companion magazine in 1955. The setting is an updated kitchen in a 1950′s suburb. Housewife Alice is showing off her new appliances to her friend, Jane. Jane longs for an equally updated kitchen, so they come up with a plan, to convince Jane’s husband, George, to buy a new home with a new kitchen.
The plan is to leave for the weekend and have George fend for himself and their son while Jane is away. George soon realizes that he is incapable of simmering rice, refilling the ice tray, and taking out the trash without spilling it everywhere.
Finally, George sees the light and buys a new house with a new Kitchen, just like Jane and Alice had planned. It is implied, cheekily, that they tricked him into buying a new kitchen.
The kitchen is seen as the woman’s place. The husband, George, was only made aware of the poor state of the kitchen when his wife unexpectedly left him with no choice but to occupy her space. His failure to do simple tasks says more about traditional gender roles than it does about the outdated appliances.
Similar to Word to the Wives, is an advertisement found at http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/household-ads-1950s/6 . The ad was published in 1959 by Hamilton Manufacturing Company. In the ad, a woman and her husband are posed three different ways next to their new Hamilton Washer. The first frame shows the woman reading while her husband gets ready for work. The middle frame shows the man reading the newspaper while his wife refills his coffee. The final frame shows the woman kissing her husband goodbye as she does the laundry.
Both of these ads embody traditional gender roles perfectly. Kitchen and cleaning appliances are of no concern to anyone in the family other than the mother. Hundreds of ads depicting similar situations proves that the women are meant to stay home, keep the house, tend to her husbands needs, and the men are off to do the bread winning.
Sarah Kitchens HIS 275 Fall 2015