Culture theme concepts and applications

¶ … Spheres: Men and women and the 'battle of the sexes' before and after the film

Adam's Rib

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence.

-Lord Byron, Don Juan

The history of the Separate Spheres ideology

The cultural theme of the separate nature of men and women is an old one. However, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the conception of the sexes as inexorably polarized became even more exaggerated. The late 18th and early 19th century Romantic poet Lord Byron's succinct summary of love being the sum total of women's existence epitomizes the notion of the Separate Spheres ideology. Women were seen as emotional, romantic, and obsessed with the 'private' aspects of human existence. Men, in contrast, were 'of the world' and public life, and relegated romance to a relatively small and enclosed part of their existence. Long after the 19th century had ended, this stark view of men and women as almost entirely different emotional species would persist in cinematic culture. Films such as Adam's Rib revolved around the question, articulated by Freud: "What do women want?"

The Separate Spheres in the 18th and 19th centuries

Before the Industrial Revolution, of course, there had often been substantial inequalities between men and women codified into the law. Women, once they were married, effectively functioned as 'property' of their husbands, and could not own separate land, goods, or even have possession of the couple's children in most European nations. This was the common complaint of many feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote The Vindication of the Rights of Women, demanding equality for the genders, and attributing any 'inferiority' manifested by women to the fact that women were deprived of an education. However, in an agricultural context both men and women tended to perform relatively similar types of labor on the family farm. And private life, or economic life, was mutually shared. However, "the Industrial Revolution and all its technological innovations resulted in a major economic transition. The workplace and the home which had previously been the same now began to separate. As the workplace moved outside the home, male and female spheres of activity also separated. Thus women, still the primary caretakers of the children found themselves assigned to the private, or domestic sphere, while men were forced to follow their jobs into the public sphere" (Ali 2010).

On one hand, women found themselves elevated to some degree by this ideology. "The ideology of Separate Spheres was developed to explain why this separation was necessary, by defining the 'inherent' characteristics of women. These traits supposedly made women incapable of functioning in the public realm. Women were classified as physically weaker, yet morally superior to men. This concept was reinforced by religious views of the mid-nineteenth century. It was women's moral superiority which best suited them to the domestic sphere. Women were also expected to teach the next generation the necessary moral virtues to ensure the survival of the society" (Ali 2010). In many books written in the 19th century, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, the men in the novel are instructed by women who are physically and socially disempowered, but morally strong.

For example, in Stowe's melodramatic novel (widely credited with mobilizing the 'free' north's sentiment against the enslaved antebellum south), a wife named Mrs. Bird tries to convince her husband Senator Bird to help a married, enslaved couple freeing slavery. It is said Mrs. Bird never brought up issues of politics ever before but because of her womanly sentiment of feeling for Eliza and her husband and child, Mrs. Bird convinces her husband to do 'the right thing.' Harriet Beecher Stowe does not suggest that it would be better if Mrs. Bird were in politics herself. Rather Mrs. Bird shows her womanly nature by using influence in the home to make her husband change his mind. Mrs. Bird, a motherly figure says that although she is a Senator's wife, she knows nothing about politics, only the Bible, and that is enough. Bible-reading figures prominently in the novel: sentimental characters, who know little about anything else other than faith and compassion, such as Little Eva and Uncle Tom, triumph even after death (Haug 2010).

Also, "in Uncle Tom's Cabin, when Mrs. Shelby asks to help her husband with the plantation finances he replies, 'O, ridiculous, Emily! You are the finest woman in Kentucky; but still you haven't to know that you don't understand business -- women never do, and never can & #8230; You don't know anything about business, I tell you' (Stowe, 372). Even though Mrs. Shelby is very intelligent and has 'a force of character every way superior to that of her husband' (Stowe, 372), because she is a woman her husband will not even entertain the idea of allowing her to directly help him with business affairs; her place is in the domestic affairs of their home. Although women were perceived to be insignificant and completely unattached to the business affairs of men, Stowe suggests that this was not the case. Instead, she argues that, as wives and mothers, women have the ability to shape the morals, values and actions of the men around them" (Haug 2010). Other novels of the 19th century show female aspirations to exert direct influence in politics in an absurd light. In Bleak House by Charles Dickens, a woman named Mrs. Jellyby is parodied for being obsessed with charitable efforts, forcing her daughter to act as her secretary, yet letting her house fall into a state of complete disrepair (Purdue 2010). Mrs. Bird's way is the 'correct' method for women to exert their influence.

Late in the 19th century, concepts of New Womanhood begin to challenge the Separate Spheres ideology, such as Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," in which the female protagonist Nora leaves her domestic situation after realizing how little she knows about the world. Nora illegally borrows money so her workaholic husband can take some time off from his job, take a vacation, and preserve his health. She works secretly to pay back the loan, after forging her husband's signature on the loan. Her frugal husband is horrified but Nora is even more shocked to discover how little her husband loves her, and how he would willingly turn her in to the authorities to preserve his honor, despite the fact that she committed a crime out of love for him. "A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men, and with counsel and judges who judge feminine conduct from the male point-of-view," wrote Ibsen ("The New Woman," Ibsen Page, 2009).

The Battle of the Sexes: The 20th century

The 'New Woman' of the post World War I era, epitomized by the flapper, seemed to challenge Separate Spheres ideology. The 'New Woman' was not just radical in her compassion, like Stowe's women. She was a factor in the public realm: "The most prominent change was their increased presence in the public arena. Whereas the lives of most 19th century women - especially middle-class women but also domestic servants and slaves - tended to revolve around home life, modern women ventured into jobs, politics, and culture outside the domestic realm" ("New Woman," Clash of Cultures 1910s and 1920s, 2010). Securing the right to vote was a profound step in ensuring that women had a real voice in the political system. But the New Woman was not simply a voter. Rather she was "a conglomeration of aspects of many different women from across the nation who lived between the 1890s and the 1920s. Among them were glamorous performers, female athletes, 'working girls' employed in city factories and rural textile mills, middle-class daughters entering higher education and professions formerly closed to women, and reformers involved in women's clubs, settlement houses, trade unions, and suffrage" ("New Woman," Clash of Cultures 1910s and 1920s, 2010).

This notion of an 'image' is important to remember, because despite Separate Spheres orthodoxy promoted in the Victorian media, working class women were always more apt to be earning their living than not working: African-American women had toiled in the fields during the antebellum era (as memorialized in Sojourner Truth's famous feminist speech "Ain't I a woman," as she catalogued all of the back-breaking labors she had performed). But women's work as paid domestic labor, as it uncomfortably contradicted the image of the middle-class woman as the primary nurturer of the home and tender of the hearth, was simply ignored. In the 1920s, young, middle-class women entered the public sphere, and given their increased power as consumers they could no longer be ignored. "The New Woman typically values self-fulfillment and independence rather than the stereotypically feminine ideal of self-sacrifice; believes in legal and sexual equality; often remains single because of the difficulty of combining such equality with marriage; is more open about her sexuality than the 'Old Woman'; is well-educated and reads a great deal; has a job; is athletic or otherwise physically vigorous and, accordingly, prefers comfortable clothes (sometimes male attire) to traditional female garb" ("The New Woman," Ibsen Page, 2009).

In the cinema, women were often sexual, powerful vamps and flappers, portrayed by actresses like Louise Brooks and Clara Bow. Flappers cut off their long hair and shed their long skirts for a more athletic and empowered appearance. However, although the flapper was culturally significant in terms of her image and power, her time in the limelight was relatively brief. Born of the prosperity of the Roaring 20s, during the Great Depression, women faced more sober circumstances. Still, many women continued to work, often because they were now the primary breadwinners for impoverished households. But working away from the home and female independence was less idealized. Films such as The Gold Diggers of 1933 showed women looking to marriage as a way of relieving their economic despair.

Katherine Hepburn: The Next New Woman

While some of the stars to emerge during the 1930s were decorous and feminine, others, such as Katherine Hepburn, showed strength and independence. Hollywood seemed ambivalent to such representatives of femininity. On one hand, Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle could ascend the corporate ladder. But it was always portrayed as a hollow victory when women pursued careers, because they were compelled to give up love and romance to do so. "In The Philadelphia Story, her [Katherine Hepburn's] 'fire and ice' heroine is castigated by every character in the movie for being too haughty, too frigid, and somehow made to take the fall for the flaws and missteps of everyone around her. In Woman of the Year, in penance for her worldliness, her ambition and her mothering inadequacies, she has to prepare a scrambled-eggs breakfast for mensch-husband Spencer Tracy, thus proving she is 'just a woman' after all. Remember [Spencer] Tracy's prophetic threat when told by George Cukor that his future co-star was taller than he. He promised the director he would 'cut her down to size'" (Haskell 2003).

Woman of the Year famously shows the 'career woman' Hepburn burning the eggs she is cooking for her husband, and is utterly incompetent at making a simple breakfast. The message is clear: women cannot have it all, and cannot be feminine in the private sphere and competent in the public sphere. However, the fact that Hepburn was shown having successful on-screen careers and dominating her male colleagues cannot be denied, even though the films she starred in had to give her a 'comeuppance' at the end.

Adam's Rib, a film about a married couple, two lawyers, representing the male and female sides of a case where a woman who committed a crime of passion against her cheating husband, is perhaps the most ambiguous of Tracy and Hepburn's films. "Relying on audience familiarity with legal and cinematic conventions, the film opens up new possibilities for the public perception of women in law. At the same time the film's fictional legal system and cinematic techniques reinforce each other in upholding conventional, patriarchal social order" (Kamir 2010). Hepburn wins the case. However, at the end of the film, when she is caught in a compromising position with another man, she shouts out 'you have no right,' which Tracy argued in court, against the supposedly defensible crime of a woman's anger at seeing her cheating spouse. Hepburn's words validate Tracy -- but in the private, rather than the public sphere of the couple. This seems to feminize Tracy's character. On the other hand, Hepburn's argument that a woman who is betrayed is so emotional that she cannot help herself but lash out in violence also seems to confirm male-female stereotypes.