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- Title
"Is IT RIDICULOUS FOR ME TO SAY I WANT TO WRITE?": Domestic Humor and Redefining the 1950s Housewife Writer in Fan Mail to Shirley Jackson.
- Authors
Neuhaus, Jessamyn
- Abstract
Letters to author Shirley Jackson from fans of her domestic-humor literature offer important new evidence about the complexities and contradictions of gender norms in the post-World War II era. They bolster scholarship that acknowledges the power of postwar domestic and gender ideology, but also locates the sites where women, however tentatively, questioned the limitations of Betty Friedan's feminine mystique. This article demonstrates that women read such domestic-humor literature as Jackson's in contradictory ways. On the one hand, these letters support, at least in part, Friedan's assertion that the so-called housewife writer and domestic-humor literature reinforced domestic gender norms. On the other hand, these letters also demonstrate that the figure of the housewife writer represented a very specific strategic response to the rigid gender norms of the feminine mystique. The housewife writer blurred and subverted the line between the work of the "housewife" and that of the writer.
- Subjects
JACKSON, Shirley, 1916-1965; HOUSEWIVES; LETTERS; FRIEDAN, Betty, 1921-2006; WOMEN authors; WOMEN in literature; HOUSEWIVES as authors; GENDER; HISTORY
- Publication
Journal of Women's History, 2009, Vol 21, Issue 2, p115
- ISSN
1042-7961
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/jowh.0.0071