Feminists have accused domestic magazines published during the 1950s of helping to establish a culture in which married women have no alternative to full-time housewifery. This post examines their accusations as they relate to Woman’s Weekly, a weekly magazine targeting housewives.
Throughout 1958, Woman’s Weekly gives the impression that full-time housewifery is enjoyable and fulfilling. Housewives in adverts and domestic advice columns look thrilled to be doing housework – one grins triumphantly as she holds aloft a bottle of Zal disinfectant, her spotless apron gleaming as brightly as the “kitchen, toilet, [and] bathroom” she has just cleaned, and another surveys her immaculate living room with pride. Captions on cookery editor Cécile’s recipes make cooking seem satisfying (“A Most Rewarding Dish!”); whilst consuming the delicious food readers have prepared, guests can admire their placemats, embellished, like their hostesses’ aprons, using Woman’s Weekly’s embroidery transfers. Developing skills that display their domestic prowess in their spare time, housewives demonstrate pride in their homemaking role.
But these glowing depictions of housewifery may be less positive than they appear. According to sociologists Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, images exalting housewifery in 1950s women’s magazines signify readers’ dissatisfaction, rather than contentment; their glorification of domesticity is persuasive, rather than reflective, of readers’ actual lives, “as if women [need] convincing that their lot is better than they thought.”
Betty Friedan makes a similar argument in The Feminine Mystique, her 1963 polemic that helped trigger second-wave feminism. She accuses domestic magazines in post-war America of using images of happy housewives to persuade women that their natural role is homemaking. This “feminine mystique” is causing depression in housewives who, believing themselves destined to be homemakers, are unaware that homemaking is producing their condition. Some are taking antidepressants; some have taken their own lives. Doctors and the media are baffled by “the problem with no name.” Housewives, Friedan argues, are trapped in a culture that recognises their discontent, but fails to acknowledge itself as its cause.
Presenting housewifery as enjoyable and fulfilling, Woman’s Weekly seems part of the culture criticised by Friedan. Although her subjects are American housewives, aspects of their predicament appear in the British magazine. Adverts for pick-me-ups target housewives with depression or suggest that, whilst housework can be difficult and frustrating, the fault lies with the housewife rather than the work itself. In a cartoon advert for Horlicks, Jean’s tiredness and lack of enthusiasm for socialising are putting her marriage to Jimmy under strain, so he takes her to the doctor. The doctor recommends Horlicks, and Jean soon returns to her old self, a brilliant entertainer worthy of compliment by Jimmy’s friends.
“Wonderful cook, wonderful woman. You’re a lucky man, Jimmy!”
Housework is hard work – the solution, as Friedan argues, is to become a better housewife. But Woman’s Weekly differs from the magazines criticised by Friedan in three significant ways.
Firstly, the publication acknowledges that the society to which its frustrated housewives belong is aware of their dissatisfaction, and its cause. “It is commonly supposed that the lot of the housewife, with husband and children away for most of the day, is a lonely and monotonous one. And so it may well be” writes male columnist The Man Who Sees. His acknowledgement distances Woman’s Weekly from Friedan’s magazines, which fail to appreciate its negative aspects.
Secondly, Woman’s Weekly accepts that some married readers have paid jobs. The number of married women in paid employment was rising during the 1950s, partly because aspirational lifestyle commodities were becoming more available and affordable. Advertising vacuum cleaners and washing machines, Woman’s Weekly brings these commodities within its readers’ reach, supplying wives with incentives to find paid employment. Letters to lifestyle columnists show that some are working; one, wondering whether she should find a job to help her family move from a rented flat into their own house, believes that her income could help raise her family’s status.
Finally, Woman’s Weekly anticipates a future in which husbands and wives will share housework and bread winning. The Man Who Sees objects to working wives on practical grounds – without expensive labour-savers, a wife cannot “keep a home shining […] and a family fed and clothed and comfortable” alongside doing a job.
“Perhaps the answer will be the changed status of men, and husbands of the future will accept without question their share of the cooking, cleaning and child care, as the women accept their share of bread-winning.”
Unfortunately, The Man Who Sees’ real identity is a mystery; this statement makes me wonder whether they were a proto-second wave feminist, bent on creating the culture they describe by inspiring readers to encourage their own husbands to help with the housework. Motive aside, they make it hard to categorise Woman’s Weekly alongside Friedan’s magazines.
Images glorifying housewifery in Woman’s Weekly during 1958 suggest that it shares a culture with those criticised in The Feminine Mystique. But by acknowledging housewives’ frustrations, accepting that wives have jobs, and (perhaps) encouraging husbands to do housework, Woman’s Weekly is more optimistic.
Encouraging housewives to question their domestic role, Woman’s Weekly offers – unlike the magazines criticised by Friedan – space for protest, as well as persuasion.
By Ellie Reed. Ellie is in the final year of her PhD at Roehampton University.
Works cited:
Friedan, B. (1963) The Feminine Mystique.
Myrdal, A. and Klein, V. (1968) Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Woman’s Weekly:
Anadin advert, 5 April 1958, 52
“Can You Make A Steak And Kidney Pudding?” 26 Apr 1958, 24-25
Embroidery transfer, 1 October 1958, 16-17
Horlicks advert, 4 January 1958, ii
“I Wish I Knew The Best Way,” 2 August 1958, 45
Letter from W. D., 4 January 1958, 56
“The Joys Of The Homemaker,” 9 August 1958, 32-33, 54-55
Zal advert, 21 June 1958, p. 44
