1955 Good Housewife's Counterculture

Counterculture
When analyzing the 1950s, it is clear that racial segregation, strict sexual mores, oppressive women’s rights, and high materialism were considered normal. The 1960s counter-culture was all about rallying against these. This paper argues that despite the values of the 1950’s that the counterculture sought to reject, issues under the surface would help pave the way for the 1960’s counterculture.
The 1955 Good Housewife’s Guide is one great example of what the 50s was about. The guide was oppressive of women, and when reading in this modern period, it can be considered shocking and scary. The guide listed down rules that wives need to follow to be considered “good.” Notably, women were tasked to know their place - at home and

The protagonist, Cathy Whitaker is the epitome of a 1950s wife and mother while her family is the flawless American family that people at the time aspired to. She is a proud mom as well as a loving wife whose days were spent mainly on making her husband and son's lives as pleasant as possible. The house is kept immaculate, the kid is raised to be polite, and the husband, Frank Whitaker has a good job at a local advertising company. However, the movie revealed that all of these are only on the surface. The first sign that all of these are just appearance comes in he form of Frank’s increasing “workaholism" —working long hours under the guise of wanting to move up in the company. Cathy, being the perfect wife, is always ready to smooth things over in the household and make apologies and excuses on Frank’s behalf. On the film, it can be seen how wives were completely submissive to their husbands. In a scene, women can be seen discussing at lunch how much they have sex with their husbands as if they are discussing a duty (Gill,

Instead of being free, Cathy remains secretive of her relationship with Deagan because she wants her divorce to be finalized first. Finally, when it was finalized, they still did not end up together because Deagan realized that they could not be together nor seen together, as society dictates. It became apparent through the film that even though the 1950s sounds like a perfect and euphoric era because it was a prosperous time, it was also a decade operating under a set of cruel and unjust societal rules and expectations. All of these rules and expectations in the 50s were not going to be tolerated any longer by college aged adults. This led to protests and movements in the 1960’s, instead these adults chose to stand for what they thought were right and move against what had been previously accepted by