Suburban Housewife Quotes

It's easy to see the concrete details that trap the suburban housewife, the continual demands on her time. But the chains that bind her in her trap are the chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off.

In river rescues, members of the Kansas City Fire Department rescue squad yell profanity-laced threats at victims before they get to them. If they don't, the victim will grab on to them and push them under the water in a mad scramble to stay afloat. "We try to get their attention. And we don't always use the prettiest language," says Larry Young, a captain in the rescue division. "I hope I don't offend you by saying this. But if I approach Mrs. Suburban Housewife and say, 'When I get to you, do not fucking touch me! I will leave you if you touch me!' she tends to listen.

The suburban housewife—she was the dream image of the young American woman and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife—freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.

... I think it possible that I have watched too many blue movies for it to have a lasting hold on me. If you grow accustomed to wall-to-wall, even the slightest shred of mystery or plot can become an agitation. Who cares why these people have found themselves in this banal, suburban tract home in Burbank? He is not a delivery man; she is not a bored housewife. They are not the stars---their orifices are. Let them open.

It is easy to see the concrete details that trap the suburban housewife, the continual demands on her time. But the chains that bind her in her trap are chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off. How can any woman see the whole truth within the bounds of her own life? How can she believe that voice insider herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the women I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the experts. I became aware of a growing body of evidence, much of which has not been reported publicly because it does not fit current modes of thought about women-evidence which throws into questions the standards of feminine normality, feminine adjustment, feminine fulfillment, and feminine maturity by why most women are still trying to live.

The antecedents of Friedan's version of feminism also bear revisiting in light of the new information. Her infamous description of America's suburban family household as "a comfortable concentration camp," in The Feminine Mystique, probably had more to do with her marxist hatred for America than for her own experience as a housewife and mother. Her husband, Carl, also a leftist, once complained to a reporter in 1970 that, far from being a homebody, his wife "was in the world during the whole marriage, either full time or free lance," lived in an eleven-room mansion on the Hudson with a full-time maid, and "seldom was a wife and a mother." Of course, no one paid much attention to the family "patriarch" when he supplied these interesting details, because as a male he was deemed guilty before the fact.

Oh, by the way, security told me earlier that some guy showed up, claiming to be your assistant.” “Already? What time is it?” “It’s almost one o’clock,” he says. “Are you telling me you actually hired someone?” My heart drops. I shove past Cliff, ignoring him as he calls for me, wanting his question answered. I head straight for security, spotting Jack standing along the side with a guard, looking somewhere between disturbed and amused. “Strangest shit I’ve ever witnessed in Jersey,” Jack says, looking me over. “And that’s saying something, because I once saw a chimpanzee roller skating, and that was weird as fuck.” “I’m going to take that as a compliment, even though I know it isn’t one,” I say, grabbing his arm and making him follow me. It’s about a two-and-a-half hour drive to Bennett Landing, but I barely have two hours. “Please tell me you drove.” Before he can respond, I hear Cliff shouting as he follows. “Johnny! Where are you going?” “Oh, buddy.” Jack glances behind us at Cliff. “Am I your getaway driver?” “Something like that,” I say. “You ever play Grand Theft Auto?” “Every fucking day, man.” “Good,” I say, continuing to walk, despite Cliff attempting to catch up. “If you can get me where I need to be, there will be one hell of a reward in it for you.” His eyes light up as he pulls out a set of car keys. “Mission accepted.” There’s a crowd gathered around set. They figured out we’re here. They know we’re wrapping today. I scan the area, looking for a way around them. “Where’d you park?” I ask, hoping it’s anywhere but right across the street. “Right across the street,” he says. Fuck. I’m going to have to go through the crowd. “You sure you, uh, don’t want to change?” Jack asks, his eyes flickering to me, conflicted. “No time for that.” The crowd spots me, and they start going crazy, making Cliff yell louder to get my attention, but I don’t stop. I slip off of set, past the metal barricades and right into the street, as security tries to keep the crowd back, but it’s a losing game. So we run, and I follow Jack to an old station wagon, the tan paint faded. “This is what you drive?” “Not all of us grew up with trust funds,” he says, slapping his hand against the rusted hood. “This was my inheritance.” “Not judging,” I say, pausing beside it. “It’s just all very ‘70s suburban housewife.” “That sounds like judgment, asshole.” I open the passenger door to get in the car when Cliff catches up, slightly out of breath from running. “What are you doing, Johnny? You’re leaving?” “I told you I had somewhere to be.” “This is ridiculous,” he says, anger edging his voice. “You need to sort out your priorities.” “That’s a damn good idea,” I say. “Consider this my notice.” “Your notice?” “I’m taking a break,” I say. “From you. From this. From all of it.” “You’re making a big mistake.” “You think so?” I ask, looking him right in the face. “Because I think the mistake I made was trusting you.” I get in the car, slamming the door, leaving Cliff standing on the sidewalk, fuming. Jack starts the engine, cutting his eyes at me. “So, where to? The unemployment office?” “Home,” I say, “and I need to get there as soon as possible, because somebody is waiting for me, and I can't disappoint her.

The house sits on a gentle curving street that ends in a cul-de-sac. The surrounding houses are all equally attractive and well maintained, and relatively similar. People who live here are successful and settled; everyone's a little bit smug.

In the same year, the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique added fuel to the fire of a growing feminist discontent. The author spoke to middle-class White women, bored in suburbia (an escape hatch from increasingly Black cities) and seeking sanction to work at a “meaningful” job outside the home. Not only were the problems of the White suburban housewife (who may have had Black domestic help) irrelevant to Black women, they were also alien to them. Friedan’s observation that “I never knew a woman, when I was growing up, who used her mind, played her own part in the world, and also loved, and had children” seemed to come from another planet.

What if, Elliott suggested, The Stepford Wives was more than just about housewifely ennui but also about the alienation and unending tedium of all modern work - of a moneymaking need that expands to fill the time available? Why else this constant repetition and reinforcement of a fiction that reality keeps refuting but that fiction keeps reimposing: the fiction of progress, the feeling that we are going somewhere, getting somewhere, that our lives have meaning, that we are not caught in a constant recursion, an infinite loop? Is there progress? What is progress? What if author Ira Levin was not ripping off Betty Friedan but was on her side? What if he was calling back to her, saying, 'I feel you, sister! Fuck the patriarchy!' What if, as Elliott suggested, The Stepford Wives was an allegory for the lives not just of suburban housewives but of global corporate capitalism? of working ceaselessly with nothing to show for it at the end? What if it represented anxieties about lives of pointless repetition with no progress, no end result, and no possibility of transformation? If it wasn't just the housewives' problem, or a problem caused by housewives who ceased to perform their housewifely duties, but everyone's problem? What if 'the problem that has no name turns out to be caused by the life that has no more plot?

To some "housewife" has become a dirty word.

Lorenzo married a local English woman called Patricia Brown, who was also getting used to life's disappointments, having exchanged her dream of being an actress for the mundane, daily theatre of the suburban housewife, and whose culinary skills were forever under the ghostly shadow of her dead Puglian mother-in-law and her legendary spaghetti dishes, which, in Lorenzo's eyes, could never be surpassed.