BORED TO DEATH: WILLIAM INGE’S WOMEN AND THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
A Thesis by
Kendra Unruh
Bachelor of Arts, Sterling College, 2003
Submitted to the Department of English
and the faculty of the Graduate School of
Wichita State University
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
May 2006
BORED TO DEATH: WILLIAM INGE’S WOMEN AND THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
I have examined the final copy of this Thesis for form and content and recommend that it
be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts with
a major in English
___________________________________
Dr. Wineke, Committee Chair
We have read this Thesis
and recommend its acceptance:
___________________________________
Dr. Quantic, Committee Member
___________________________________
Dr. Okafor, Committee Member
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ABSTRACT
Ever since Robert Brustein’s review of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs in
November 1958, the role of the female characters in William Inge’s plays has been of
interest to a number of critics. At that time, Brustein claimed that Inge’s female
characters were “men-taming women” who were castrative to their husbands. After the
publication of his review, many critics followed in suit and also described Inge’s women
in the same terms; however, only one of these critics, Janet Juhnke, examines the
correlation between Inge’s female characters and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine
Mystique. Junke takes issue with Brustein’s claims and disagrees with his label of the
female characters are predatory, castrative wives. While Juhnke makes some good
points, her analysis of Inge’s most well-known plays lacks much depth. Even Come
Back, Little Sheba, which she spends the most time discussing, has not been completely
explored for its connections to the trends presented in Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.
In fact, a compromise between Brustein’s and Juhnke’s observations may be possible in
that Friedan found that women trapped in the feminine mystique often did become
castrative wives. Thus, this thesis will take a close examination of the comparisons
between William Inge’s female characters and the women Friedan describes in The
Feminine Mystique. It argues that these women exhibit symptoms similar to those
Friedan describes: boredom, a preoccupation with sex, and unhealthy mother-child
relationships.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
Page
I. BORED TO DEATH: WILLIAM INGE’S WOMEN AND THE FEMININE
MYSTIQUE
1
II. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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iv
Bored to Death: William Inge’s Women and The Feminine Mystique
The women in William Inge’s plays are bored. Some of them childless, some of
them spinsters, some of them living in failing marriages—the female characters lack
excitement in their lives and are tired of their daily routines. As R. Baird Shuman claims,
Inge knew how to present with astounding veracity and authenticity the
oppressive banality, the utter commonplaceness of the lives of his
characters. The events in their daily lives occur and recur with the nervetightening regularity of a dripping faucet. Inge’s female characters
especially are overwhelmed by the bathos, repetitiveness, restraint, and
futility of their lives. (Schuman 2)
Even though critics in the past have observed this boredom, few have explored the reason
behind it—what Betty Friedan in 1963 labeled “the feminine mystique.” While Friedan’s
book might be considered out-of-date by current practitioners of feminist theory, her
work, and therefore her perceptions, are contemporaneous with Inge’s, and through an
investigation of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, one can see a number of
correlations between the women Friedan observes and the female characters in William
Inge’s plays.
Serious criticism of William Inge’s plays perhaps began with Robert Brustein’s
“The Men-Taming Women of William Inge,” written as a review of The Dark at the Top
of the Stairs for Harper’s Magazine in November, 1958. Even though this article was
written as a review of the last of Inge’s four major plays, Brustein attacked Come Back,
Little Sheba, Picnic, and Bus Stop as well. His main assertion is that The Dark at the Top
of the Stairs is “dry, repetitive, and monotonously folksy” and that the plot line is very
similar to those of Inge’s other major plays (52). In fact, this repeated plot line “revolves
around a heroine threatened either with violence or sexual aggression by a rambunctious
male” (53). However, the female character eventually realizes that “he is riddled with
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doubts, loneliness, and need” which she can then use to “domesticate him without
difficulty” (53-54). In Brustein’s opinion, these plays reinforce the idea that in marriage
the husband “must give up his aggressiveness, his promiscuity, his bravado, his contempt
for soft virtues, and his narcissistic pride in his body and attainments, and admit that he is
lost in the world and needs help” (56). At the same time, “[t]he woman’s job is to
convert these rebels into domestic animals,” and “[t]he hero has been made to conform,
not to his own image of maleness but to the maternal woman’s” (56). In fact, Brustein
goes so far as to claim that Inge is “the first spokesman for a matriarchal America” (57).
Along with these criticisms, Brustein ends his article by claiming that “William Inge is
yet another example of Broadway’s reluctance or inability to deal intelligently with the
American world at large” (57). Though other reviews of Inge’s plays were written
previously, none of them held the same weight or malice; in fact, this article perpetuated
the criticism on Inge, particularly the criticism of Inge’s heroines as predatory females.
Some critics believe that Brustein’s article was one of the reasons for the decline in
Inge’s career after The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (Juhnke 107).
Though a few articles were written after Brustein’s, criticism of Inge’s plays did
not surface again until about 1986 when an entire issue of Kansas Quarterly was devoted
to William Inge. Perhaps in response to the establishment of the annual William Inge
festival in Independence, Kansas in the early 1980’s, the late 1980’s proved important for
scholarship on Inge.
The 1986 issue of Kansas Quarterly included Janet Juhnke’s
“Inge’s Women: Robert Brustein and the Feminine Mystique” which revisited the issue
of William Inge’s portrayal of women. In this essay, Juhnke challenges Brustein’s
equation of Inge’s female characters with predatory females, and she uses Betty Friedan’s
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The Feminine Mystique to evaluate Inge’s characters. She claims, “A closer look at
Inge’s plays makes clear that they neither depict nor favor matriarchy and that their
female characters are more tamed than taming” (104). Juhnke believes that Brustein’s
review tainted the interpretation of Inge’s female characters: “after Brustein’s criticisms,
it became the convention among critics to describe Inge’s female characters as symbolic
castrators” (107). In response to this trend, Juhnke takes a different approach and claims
that the women in Inge’s plays more closely resemble examples of Betty Friedan’s
feminine mystique. She has raised a good point, but her analysis of Inge’s most wellknown plays lacks much depth. Even Come Back, Little Sheba, which she spends the
most time discussing, has not been completely explored for its connections to the trends
presented in Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Though Juhnke does look at some
aspects of Lola’s character, she only gives an overview and she completely neglects
looking at Marie’s character. Furthermore, she only mentions the women in Picnic in a
few sentences and talks about Cora from The Dark at the Top of the Stairs only in terms
of disputing Brustein’s assertions. Rather than analyzing any of the characters in much
depth, she appears to give an overview of a number of different characters, including the
women she sees as moving away from The Feminine Mystique in Inge’s later works.
While Juhnke does fervently contest Brustein’s review, a compromise between their
approaches may, in fact, be viable in that Friedan herself claims, “woman’s failure to
grow to complete identity has hampered rather than enriched her sexual fulfillment,
virtually doomed her to be castrative to her husband and sons” (77). Therefore, the
women in Inge’s plays, even if they are categorized as “castrating,” are clear reflections
of the women Friedan describes as victims of the feminine mystique. Bored and
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unfulfilled with their lives as housewives, the older female characters turn to other forms
of entertainment, some inappropriate, while the younger female characters exemplify the
effects of the mystique on young girls growing up in mid-century America.
In terms of feminist theory, Betty Friedan’s ideas align closely with liberal
feminism. This approach to feminism looks closely at the public sphere and how certain
laws, regulations, customs, or prejudices have prohibited women from making
advancements in society. In this way, “the explanation for women’s position in society is
seen in terms of unequal rights or ‘artificial’ barriers to women’s participation in the
public world” (Beasley 51). Because liberal feminists believe that women and men are
basically the same, they believe that women should be allowed to do the same things that
men are allowed to do (52). Thus, they might advocate that women should have equal
rights in the workplace as a reflection of this sameness. Moreover, liberal feminism also
contains a “critical concern with the value of individual ‘autonomy’ and ‘freedom’ from
supposedly unwarranted restrictions by others” (51). Obviously, Friedan’s assertions of
the importance of women’s identity, self actualization, and contributions to society align
with the fundamental aspects of liberal feminism.
According to Betty Friedan, in post-World War II America a problem arose
amongst housewives. Women were encouraged by society to return to the home after
many of them had entered the workforce during the war, rather than pursue careers, and
resume their places as housewives and mothers. However, a number of women found
themselves unfulfilled, fatigued, depressed, angry, and bored—all symptoms of “the
problem that has no name,” or, as Friedan coined it, “the feminine mystique.” In
Friedan’s definition, “[t]he feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only
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commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity” and “[t]he mistake,
says the mystique, the root of women’s troubles in the past is that women envied men,
women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find
fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love” (43).
The feminine mystique denied the progress made in history to give women options for
their future and instead made
certain concrete finite, domestic aspects of feminine existence—as it was
lived by women whose lives were confined, by necessity, to cooking,
cleaning, washing, bearing children—into a religion, a pattern by which
all women must now live or deny their femininity. (43)
There was no opportunity for women to gain autonomy or an identity outside of the
home: “In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation
or of the future. There is no way she can even dream about herself, except as her
children’s mother, her husband’s wife” (62). As a result, Friedan claims that women
became “listless and bored” with their lives in the home and many even became “sexseekers”—women who had become preoccupied with sex because “[s]exual love and
motherhood had to become all of life, had to use up, to dispose of women’s creative
energies” (235, 240).
These descriptions seem to match many of William Inge’s female characters. In
fact, Friedan even claims that “the image of males lusting after women gave way to the
new image of women lusting after males”—an image quite apparent in Lola’s view of
Turk and Rosemary’s view of Hal (263). As if in acknowledgment of the critics’ opinion
of Inge’s characters as castrating females, Friedan says that “American playwrights and
novelists” at the time, departed “from the problems of the world to an obsession with
images of the predatory female” (273). R. Baird Shuman concludes that “Inge had a fine
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ability to write about the female mentality” (28). Obviously, this ability allowed him to
portray a problem in American culture that he may not have even been able to name, but
a problem nonetheless—the feminine mystique.
While images of 1950’s America often include women as housewives very
similar to Friedan’s descriptions, feminists often criticize the limitations of Friedan’s
book. Like Friedan, Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak assert that the women of the
time period were taught that their identity was in their role as housewives and mothers.
In fact, Miller and Nowak claim that the culture of the time maintained that “[p]eople
were only happy if they were functioning properly, if they obeyed their sexual roles”
(151). American society at the time believed that “a woman’s basic need was to be a
wife, mother, and homemaker. Her only means of completion and fulfillment was in
childbearing and in serving other people” (152-153). Miller and Nowak even agree with
Friedan’s point that housework did not take up enough time: “there were few jobs
demanding woman’s energies—certainly not enough to absorb her full time” (156).
However, many recent scholars disagree with Friedan’s point of view. Though Carolyn
Johnston affirms that the media of the time period “reinforced the cultural expectations
that women were destined for fulfillment through marriage and motherhood and that their
influence, or ‘power,’ was appropriately exercised covertly,” she also declares that The
Feminine Mystique disregards women other than white, middle-class Americans (206).
Friedan’s book seemed to overlook the number of women who had entered the workforce
and “did not acknowledge the fact that working-class and African-American women were
totally excluded from the possibility of full-time motherhood” (211). Likewise, Joanne
Meyerowitz declares that “Friedan gave a name and a voice to housewives’ discontent,
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but she also homogenized American women and simplified postwar ideology; she
reinforced the stereotype that portrayed all postwar women as middle-class, domestic,
and suburban, and she caricatured the popular ideology that she said had suppressed
them” (3). In fact, as editor of Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar
America, 1945-1960, Meyerowitz attempts to dispel the stereotype of the 1950’s
housewife. The book takes a revisionist approach which “reminds us that during this era,
most American women lived, in one way or more, outside the boundaries of the middleclass suburban home” (2). Thus, more recent scholarship and feminist studies have
proved the inadequacies in Friedan’s original research.
At the same time, the most recent scholarship on Inge, Jeff Johnson’s William
Inge and the Subversion of Gender, claims that Inge was aware of these stereotypes and
used them to reveal the stereotypes for what they really were. Johnson coins the term
“gendermandering” which is “the intentional undermining of expected gender roles for
the dramatic purpose of politically and socially destabilizing social norms” (20). The
term and concept of gendermandering is taken from the idea of gerrymandering, “[a]nd
like gerrymandering, gendermandering can also be culturally subversive, acknowledging
and employing stereotypes for dramatic effect while seeming simultaneously to condemn
them” (20). In using gendermandering, “a stereotype is designated to a character but is
then manipulated by the writer to expose the stereotype for what it is” (20). For Johnson,
Inge not only understood that he was using stereotypes but also used them subversively to
show their limitations.
While Johnson’s points are well-supported, it is difficult to say whether or not
Inge did see his portrayal of housewives as stereotypical and consciously used these
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stereotypes to subversively criticize social norms. Instead, one can more safely say that
stereotypes are apparent in Inge’s work as a reflection of society at the time. Whether
Inge reinforced the stereotype, accurately portrayed the women of the time, or used the
stereotypes for subversive purposes, his plays stand as a testament to his time. He saw
what societal expectations did to women, and his portrayal of these women closely
resembles Betty Friedan’s assertions about housewives in that era. For whatever reason,
Inge chose to write about white, Midwestern women who seemingly conformed to
society’s expectations, so even though The Feminine Mystique’s scope may be limited, it
does provide a useful paradigm for discussing Inge’s work.
Inge’s first Broadway success, Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), provides perhaps
the most striking example of a woman stuck in the feminine mystique: Lola. Janet
Juhnke proclaims that Lola “could be Case Study 1 in Friedan’s description of the effects
of the feminine mystique: infantilization, boredom, passivity, dependence, emptiness”
(105). From the beginning of the play, Inge portrays Lola as a woman bored with her life
as a housewife but trapped in the expectations of society. She feels particularly useless
because she cannot have children and her husband refuses to let her pursue a career:
“When I lost my baby and found out I couldn’t have any more, I didn’t know what to do
with myself. I wanted to get a job, but Doc wouldn’t hear of it” (13; act 1 scene 1).
While it may seem that Lola has not fully embraced her duties as a housewife—and thus
accepted the feminine mystique—she has really just grown bored with housework over
the years. She does not keep the house clean and tidy because the work leaves her
unfulfilled. In fact, “[t]he sight of the dishes on the drainboard depresses her. Clearly
she is bored to death” (16; act 1 scene 1). Inge emphasizes the monotony of the
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housework again later when Lola “goes to the kitchen to start dishes, showing her
boredom in the half-hearted way she washes them” (18; act 1 scene 1). The only breaks
in Lola’s tedious routine are visits from the postman—who never has any letters for
her—and the milkman. Thus, when the milkman must leave, Lola is left with “a look of
some wonder on her face, an emptiness, as though she were unable to understand
anything that ever happened to her” (22; act 1 scene 1). Further, Lola’s boredom is
exemplified by her intense interest in the radio program which beckons, “Won’t you
leave behind your routine, the dull cares that make up your day-to-day existence, the little
worries, the uncertainties, the confusions of the work-a-day world…” (22; act 1 scene 1).
Airing during the middle of the day with content similar to modern day soap operas, the
radio program intends to entertain housewives bored with their daily routines. Its effect
on Lola is obvious: “Lola has been transfixed from the beginning of the program” (22;
act 1 scene 1). These descriptions of Lola’s character and her daily routine prove her
boredom—the consequence of living according to the feminine mystique.
Indeed, Lola is bored, and she needs something to distract her from the futility of
her life as a housewife. For Lola, the escape comes through sex in the forms of her
fixation on her past, her vicarious interest in Marie’s love-life, and her attraction to the
young, virile male character, Turk. Like other women caught in the feminine mystique,
she has “given up attempts to make housework or community work expand to fill the
time available; [these women] turned instead to sex” (Friedan 260). This preoccupation
with sex that Friedan found amongst housewives might even have “something to do with
boredom—there just was not anything else to do” (270). Jeff Johnson points out that
Lola is “sexually frustrated and spiritually disappointed with the predictability of [her and
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Doc’s] mundane existence” (William Inge 52). Therefore, it is not surprising that a
bored, sexually frustrated housewife would turn to voyeurism as a way to avoid the
monotony of her own life. In fact, Friedan claims that it is likely that women in the
feminine mystique, so lacking in their own sense of identity, will try to find that identity
in sex: “she hides the fear of losing her human potency by testing her sexual potency, she
lives a vicarious life through mass daydreams or through her husband and children”
(308). Though Lola’s reveries about her past are not always daydreams but real dreams
as well, her focus on her youthful sexuality indicates her preoccupation with sex. Lola’s
inability to let go of the past is apparent in her recurring dream about Little Sheba, a
symbol of her youth, and her routine of calling for the dog every morning. The content
of her dreams prove that Lola mourns the loss of her youthful beauty. In one dream, she
boasts that when she takes the dog for a walk, “[a]ll the people on the street turned
around to admire her, and I felt so proud” (7; act one scene one). However, just as Lola’s
youth and beauty could not sustain her aging process, Little Sheba could not keep up with
Lola: “we started to walk, and the blocks started going by so fast that Little Sheba
couldn’t keep up with me” (7; act one scene one). At the end of the play, Lola dreams
that she finds the dog dead, “her curly white fur all smeared with mud, and no one would
stop to take care of her” (69; act two scene four). When Doc asks why she did not stop,
Lola says, “I wanted to, but you wouldn’t let me. You kept saying, ‘We can’t stay here,
honey; we gotta go on. We gotta go on’” (69; act two scene four). While Doc wants
desperately to move on from the past, Lola wishes to hold onto it as her escape from her
present, dull life. With the loss of Little Sheba, she has also lost the excitement in her
life, and she is left with nothing more than her boring routine.
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In addition to her reveries, Lola, like the women Betty Friedan describes in The
Feminine Mystique, appears to live vicariously through Marie. When Marie tells Lola
about Bruce’s upcoming visit, Lola’s interest in the matter is obvious: “Marie’s boy
friends are one of her liveliest interests” (12; act 1 scene 1). Because her life lacks
excitement, she must live vicariously through the love lives of others. Lola “longs to
recover innocence, to recapture the moment of sexual awakening,” so she becomes
interested in Marie’s life as a reminder of her own youth (Wedge 15). Lola is “desperate
for sensual stimulation to counter her stoic optimism, her sterility, her forced moral
fortitude” so she “flirts with the postman, the milkman, and Turk” (Johnson
“Gendermandering” 46). However, the easiest way to find stimulation is through
watching Turk and Marie make love. Of course, Lola does not see any harm in her
behavior and even attempts to engage her husband in the act as well, which he strongly
refuses: “It’s not decent to snoop around spying on people like that. It’s cheap and
mischievous and mean” (37; act 1 scene 2). In response, Lola claims, “I think it’s one of
the nicest things I know” (38; act 1 scene 2). Instead of regarding the act as an invasion
of privacy, she sees it as a form of entertainment like watching a movie: “You watch
young people make love in the movies, don’t you, Doc?” (38; act 1 scene 2). Likewise,
when Doc rebukes Lola for opening Marie’s telegram from her boyfriend Bruce, she
says, “I don’t see any harm in it, Doc. I steamed it open and sealed it back. She’ll never
know the difference” (36; act 1 scene 2). Lola refuses to see anything wrong with her
behavior, because it is the only way she can find joy in her routine life. Amongst all of
the drab, uninteresting aspects of life that leave Lola bored and wanting, she finds solace
in voyeuristically watching others live lives that she can only fantasize about.
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Moreover, Lola’s encouragement of Marie and Turk’s relationship illustrates
Lola’s desire to escape from her mundane life. Even though Marie is not Lola’s
biological daughter, Marie acts as a surrogate daughter for Lola’s preoccupation with
youthful sexuality. As Friedan explains, women trapped in the feminine mystique might
“unconsciously push their daughters into too early sexuality, because the sexual
adventure was the only real adventure—or means of achieving status or identity—in their
own lives” (301). In fact, Friedan even gives an example of a woman who “had sought to
recapture her sense of life by unconsciously pushing her thirteen-year-old daughter into
promiscuity. She lived in her daughter’s pseudo-sex life” (300). Though Marie does not
seem forced into a sexual relationship with Turk, Lola certainly encourages their
relationship for her own personal voyeuristic pleasure. Not only does Lola provide a
place for Marie and Turk to engage in their various love-making activities but she also
discourages Doc from taking action against Turk. Doc repeatedly claims that Lola
encourages the situation: “You always stick up for [Turk]. You encourage him”; “I don’t
know why you encourage that sort of thing” (27; act 1 scene 1, 38; act 1 scene 2). In his
drunken rage, Doc’s true suspicions, though harsh, are revealed when he claims, “You
knew about it all the time and thought you were hidin’ something” and declares that Lola
was “running a regular house” (57; act 2 scene 3). The audience realizes that Lola does
know, at least to some extent, the nature of Turk and Marie’s relationship and that she
revels in it as a form of excitement in her boring life.
Lola’s boredom, coupled with her preoccupation with sex, has also led her to
objectify Turk—the young virile male in the play. In this way, Lola no longer sees Turk
as a person, but as an object of physical sexuality and sensuality which she can use to
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satisfy her desire for a distraction from her routine life. From the beginning, the effect of
Turk’s sexuality on Lola is quite obvious. Even before Turk arrives, Lola changes into a
“more becoming frock” claiming that “[i]t’ll be better to work around the house in” (1112; act 1 scene 1). Then when Turk arrives and changes into his track suit, “Lola is a
little dazed by the spectacle of flesh” (23; act 1 scene 1). In fact, “Lola peers at him so
closely, he becomes a little self-conscious” (24; act 1 scene 1). Until this point, Turk has
appeared completely comfortable not only with posing for Marie’s drawing but also with
his body in general. However, Turk reacts to Lola’s gaze as a kind of violation: “Hey,
can’t you keep her out of here? She makes me feel naked” (24; act 1 scene 1). With this
statement, Inge first indicates the nature of the relationship between the virile male and
the women—particularly the older, sexually frustrated woman—of the play. While Turk
is portrayed as the predator many times throughout the play, Lola’s overly attentive
attitude toward Turk, coupled with her voyeuristic behavior, places the virile male in an
underdog position. Rather than remaining in control, Turk is cast as an object for Lola to
admire as an escape from her dull life.
The end of the play also indicates symptoms of the feminine mystique and
provides an interesting picture of how a wife trapped in the feminine mystique deals with
a crisis situation. Lola’s initial reaction—calling her mother—to Doc’s lapse from
sobriety illustrates her lack of independence and strength. Her conversation with her
mother sounds very much like that of a teenager rather than a grown woman: “Do you
think Dad would let me come home for a while? I’m awfully unhappy, Mom. Do you
think…just till I made up my mind?” (64; act 2 scene 3). As Friedan explains, the
women of the feminine mystique were often immature and unable to function as adults
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because they lacked autonomy. Through her research, Friedan found that some of these
women were “‘extremely immature individuals’” who “were very dependent on their
own mothers” and “fled this dependency into early marriage” (298-299). Certainly, Lola,
who went directly from living as a child in her parents’ home to being a wife-child in her
husband’s home, fits this description. Thus, when Doc is unable to act as the head of the
household, Lola immediately attempts to return to her father’s household where she can
gain security again without having to rely on herself.
However, Lola’s mother refuses to let her come home, which provides her with
the opportunity to search herself for the strength she needs for her own independence.
Therefore, the ending of the play appears to give hope for Doc and Lola’s future. Lola
appears to have gained some strength and moved on from the past while Doc seems to be
recovering once again. Yet the apparent role reversal of the two characters should raise
some doubts as to the likelihood of happiness for the couple. While Lola may have
graduated from her childlike character as in the beginning of the play, Doc has taken on
the role instead. In the final scene, Doc “all but lunges at her, gripping her arms, drilling
his head into her bosom” as he cries and begs, “Honey, don’t ever leave me. Please
don’t ever leave me” (67; act 2 scene 4). Doc seems to have become the child, which
seems to appeal to Lola: “There is surprise on her face and new contentment. She
becomes almost angelic in demeanor” (67; act 2 scene 4). Perhaps Lola finds
contentment in the idea of taking care of Doc and fulfilling some of her motherly desires,
for otherwise, “she is unable to fulfill the deepest yearnings of the ’50’s ideal: mothering”
(Juhnke 106). Doc’s reliance on her and need for her help gives Lola a sense of purpose
and breaks the monotonous routine of her life as a lowly housewife.
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Initially, this situation may work for the two characters, but most likely, the
seemingly hopeful future will still be laden with the troubles of the feminine mystique.
Janet Juhnke assumes that even though “Lola by the end of the play has matured enough
to accept the death of little Sheba,” “without her own work or hobby, it is more likely that
she will continue to function for Doc alternately as comforting mother and as dependent
child” (106). Lola has only moved from the role of housewife to the role of pseudomother rather than truly finding her own identity—she has attempted to adjust to her role
in the feminine mystique. However, Friedan claims that adjusting to the feminine
mystique only complicates, rather than solves, a woman’s family problems. As she
adjusts, she is “preyed upon by outside pressures,” and she herself “prey[s] upon her
husband and children” (308). One can assume that Lola may become a “predatory”
female trying to gain an identity through her husband. Perhaps initially Doc and Lola’s
new roles will work, but eventually, problems will arise from any situation in which a
woman must find her identity in a husband or child.
Marie also appears caught in the feminine mystique. Like the women Friedan
describes, Marie is an intelligent college girl with the promise to make an independent
life for herself, but she chooses instead to venture on a quest to find a husband. If Lola’s
opinions can be trusted, Marie’s talents as an artist are promising, but her creative venture
is soon squelched for the duties of femininity. Lola claims that Marie’s sketch is “real
pretty” and “real artistic” (24; act 1 scene 1). Marie is diligent in her work, taking time to
work on her drawings outside of class; she even seems to have some sort of ambition—
“If I make a good drawing, they’ll use it for the posters for the Spring Relays” (24; act 1
scene 1). However, Marie’s plans for the future clearly do not include pursuing her
15
artistic abilities. At the beginning of the play, she tells Lola of her plans to marry Bruce
“after [she] graduate[s] from college and he feels he can support a wife and children.
[She’s] going to have lots and lots of children” (13; act 1 scene 1). Her goals reflect the
ideals of the feminine mystique. For young women in college during this time period,
“one lesson a girl could hardly avoid learning…was not to get interested, seriously
interested, in anything besides getting married and having children, if she wanted to be
normal, happy, adjusted, feminine, have a successful husband, successful children, and a
normal, feminine, adjusted, successful sex life” (Friedan 156). She has found a suitable
prospect—“he comes from one of the best families in Cincinnati…He makes three
hundred dollars a month”—who can offer her a comfortable life as a wife and mother, so
she need not waste her time in college any longer. At the end of the play, her priorities
are obvious: “I’m quitting school and flying back to Cincinnati with Bruce this
afternoon” (62; act 2 scene 3). As soon as Bruce proposes marriage, the final goal of a
young woman under the influence of the feminine mystique, Marie immediately drops
out of school and forgets any ambitions she has as far as her artistic or intellectual talents
are concerned.
Therefore, both Lola and Marie in Come Back, Little Sheba provide excellent
examples of women trapped in the feminine mystique. Perhaps more clearly than any of
Inge’s other female characters, Lola illustrates the boredom experienced by a housewife
who is unfulfilled by her daily routine. Even if Inge did not understand the reasons for
such boredom, he could clearly see the effects—a child-like wife preoccupied with sex
who lives vicariously through her surrogate daughter. Furthermore, the character of
Marie presents a picture of a young girl about to enter a life of boredom herself. The
16
ideals and goals of Marie’s life correlate almost perfectly with those taught by the
feminine mystique.
While Lola may be an example of a housewife caught in the feminine mystique,
perhaps the clearest examples of women preoccupied with sex in Inge’s plays appear in
Picnic (1953). As R. Baird Shuman says, Hal “stands as a great phallic presence in the
midst of a bevy of confused, bored, sexually frustrated women” (32). The women in the
play have nothing better to do than sit on their front porches and hope that something will
happen to bring excitement into their lives. In fact, Mrs. Potts even claims, “I think we
plan picnics just to give ourselves an excuse—to let something thrilling happen in our
lives” (107; act 2). Shuman claims that “the motivating force behind the action” of the
play “is a sexually disturbing male” (25). Because the women in the play possess
characteristics consistent with the feminine mystique—primarily boredom and a
preoccupation with sex—the young, virile male of the play serves as the catalyst of the
action of the play. As the play progresses, the female characters’ objectification of Hal
prove their entrapment in the feminine mystique.
Mrs. Potts, the female character who “discovers” Hal, uses him as a means of
escape from her mundane life with her mother. Mrs. Potts explains that “[w]ith just
Mama and me in the house, I’d got so used to things as they were, everything so prim,
occasionally a hairpin on the floor, the geranium in the window, the smell of Mama’s
medicines…” (145; act 3). In fact, more than just a boring, routine life, Mrs. Potts also
has to deal with a cranky, aging mother. Throughout the play, Mrs. Potts’s mother yells
for assistance, and Mrs. Potts must tend to her needs as if the old woman were a child.
The other women pity her because she “sometimes has to get up three times a night to
17
take her mother to the bathroom” and “none of [the old ladies’ homes] will take [her
mother]. She’s too mean” (87; act 1). However, the entrance of Hal gives Mrs. Potts a
diversion from her current, lonely state. Not only does she have a chance to cook for
someone but she also has someone’s physique to admire. After all, she is the one who
encourages Hal to work in the yard without his shirt on: “I told him to take his shirt off”
(87; act 1). Furthermore, she asks the other women if they have “seen the handsome
young man” who can “lift that big old washtub like it was so much tissue paper” (87; act
1, 88; act 1). Most importantly, Mrs. Potts explains that Hal “walked through the door
and suddenly everything was different. He clomped through the tiny rooms like he was
still in the great outdoors, he talked in a booming voice that shook the ceiling.
Everything he did reminded me there was a man in the house, and it seemed good” (145;
act 3). According to Mrs. Potts, “that reminded me…I’m a woman, and that seemed
good, too” (145; act 3). For Mrs. Potts, and probably the other female characters as well,
the entrance of the virile male stimulates her sexuality. With him around, the female
characters can find excitement in their lives again because they have someone who will
make them feel alive and young again rather than trapped in endless monotony.
Perhaps the most obvious example of a woman in the play struggling with the
feminine mystique is Rosemary. Although Rosemary attempts to prove herself as an
independent woman, her insistence upon not wanting to get married—“I lived this long
without a man. I don’t see what’s to keep me from getting on without one”—is only a
façade (85; act 1). The other characters may see her as “mighty independent,” but in
reality she desperately wants to marry and conform to societal expectations. By the end
of the play, Rosemary’s desperation is apparent as she begs Howard to marry her.
18
Certainly, her boredom with her routine life contributes to her desire to marry: “[e]ach
year, I keep tellin’ myself, is the last. Something’ll happen. Then nothing ever does—
except I get a little crazier all the time” (130; act 3 scene 1). She claims that her life must
change because “[i]t’s no good livin’ like this, in rented rooms, meetin’ a bunch of old
maids for supper every night, then comin’ back home alone” (130; act 3 scene 1). The
conversation between her and Howard even ends with Rosemary—described as “[b]eaten
and humble” and “[d]esperate”—begging, “Please marry me, Howard. Please” as she
“sinks to her knees” (131; act 3 scene 1). According to Jeff Johnson, “[t]he truth is, of
course, that [Rosemary] is not a self-actualized spinster ‘proud of her independence’ but a
desperate woman frantic about losing the one thing she still has going for her: sex, and
the ebbing but not quite finished passion to provoke a leeching sap like Howard to
provide her a veneer of respectability” (William Inge 60). Because of the social pressures
to marry and have a family, Rosemary cannot happily live as an independent school
teacher. As Friedan claims,
[i]f women’s needs for identity, for self-esteem, for achievement, and
finally for expression of her unique human individuality are not
recognized by herself or others in our culture, she is forced to seek identity
and self-esteem in the only channels open to her: the pursuit of sexual
fulfillment, motherhood, and the possession of material things. (315-316)
Instead, she wrongly assumes that marriage will cure her boredom with her routine life as
a school teacher, but it will only offer her another form of boredom because she does not
realize that only she can bring herself happiness by forming her own identity outside of a
husband. In fact, Johnson believes that “[s]he marries Howard to avoid realizing herself
on her own terms, and sinks into the luxury of cliché” (William Inge 62). Thus, even
19
though she believes that she is escaping a life of unhappiness, she has not escaped the
feminine mystique.
Furthermore, Rosemary’s interactions with Hal reflect the predatory female that
Betty Friedan sees in literature of the time period. According to Friedan, the image of the
predatory female arose after “the sexual frontier [was] forced to expand perhaps beyond
the limits of possibility, to fill the time available, to fill the vacuum created by denial of
larger goals and purposes for American women” (261). Although Friedan’s chapter “The
Sex-Seekers” is about married women, her assertion that “[i]t is not an exaggeration to
say that several generations of able American women have been successfully reduced to
sex creatures, sex-seekers” seems to apply to Rosemary as well (261). In fact, Jeff
Johnson claims that Rosemary “explodes her teacher’s college, prim-and-proper front and
reverts to a savage stalking her prey” (William Inge 59). She eventually does capture
Howard, but her treatment of Hal, the virile young male character, also exemplifies her
role as a “sex-seeker.” While the characters are dancing, Rosemary looks upon Hal
“enviously” followed by an overt attempt at flirting in which she “goes over to Hal,
yanking him from Madge possessively,” commanding, “Young man, let’s see your legs”
(119; act 2, 121; act 2). Despite his strength and overwhelming masculinity, Hal seems
like a trapped animal in Rosemary’s embrace. In fact, Johnson describes the dance
incident as an “attack by Rosemary, the castrating Medusa” (“Gendermandering” 43).
Without any regard for Hal—who soon seems “embarrassed and repelled”—Rosemary
“grabs Hal closely to her, plastering a cheek next to his and holding her hips fast against
him” (121; act 2). Hal repeatedly tries to escape without escalating the embarrassing
situation, but Rosemary clings to him so tightly that when he finally does “[pull] loose
20
from her grasp,” she “tears off a strip of his shirt as he gets away” (122; act 2).
Rosemary’s predatory treatment of Hal indicates her preoccupation with sex.
Though not as obvious or malicious as Rosemary, Madge also uses Hal as an
escape from her boredom. Even though the beautiful Madge could easily date any of the
young men in town, for her, none of them compare to Hal. Although Madge’s life may
be the most exciting of all the female characters’, her boredom in her job, with Alan, and
with her hometown all become apparent. She dreams of the day when “some wonderful
person” will come on the train and “come into the dime store for something and see [her]
behind the counter, and he’ll study [her] very strangely and then decide [she’s] just the
person they’re looking for in Washington for an important job in the Espionage
Department” (79-80; act 1). In fact, even her boring job is an escape from the monotony
of staying at home all day: “Madge has been working downtown this summer—just to
keep busy” (96; act 1). When she is forced to do domestic activities, she complains that
she cannot go swimming like Millie (95; act 1). Also, her boredom with Alan is apparent
when Flo observes that Madge does not “seem very enthusiastic” about kissing him (80;
act 1). In fact, all descriptions of Alan indicate his safe, somewhat emasculated, nature:
“Alan’s not like most boys. He doesn’t wanta do anything he’d be sorry for” and “He’s
the kind of man who doesn’t mind if a woman’s bossy” (80; act 1, 79; act 1). Without
something exciting to occupy her life, Madge seeks other ways to relieve her boredom.
Thus, when Hal Carter appears, Madge cannot help but be fascinated by his
surging sexuality and vagabond lifestyle. In Hal, Madge can find the excitement that
Alan cannot provide, and she carefully pursues Hal until she finds the perfect opportunity
to pounce on her prey. As Jeff Johnson points out, Madge “appears as the Dionysian
21
image of the mysterious female, there to be conquered and controlled, but actually Madge
knows exactly what’s at stake in the game” (“Gendermandering” 44). In fact, Johnson
believes that “Madge is controlling, weighing the pros and cons of each of her decisions.
Even her sexual tryst with Hal is less a momentary lapse of judgment than a perfectly
choreographed plot to capture her prey” (“Gendermandering” 44). Madge does clearly
know that she is attractive and that, as her mother says, “[a] pretty girl doesn’t have
long—just a few years.…If she loses her chance then, she might as well throw all her
prettiness away” (81; act 1). Therefore, she carefully primps herself and dresses in her
most extravagant clothing despite her mother’s insistence that she wear something else.
Seductively, she also leaves her curtains open as she dresses, which not only draws
Howard’s and Hal’s attention but also Rosemary’s who exclaims, “Hey, Madge, why
don’t you charge admission?” (117; act 2).
Madge’s attempt to “capture her prey” works successfully when she capitalizes on
Hal’s feelings of inadequacy after Rosemary’s hateful accusations. Despite his attempts
to scare her away with the shocking stories of his previous life, Madge continues to listen
and empathize. She even tells him that he’s “entertaining,” “strong,” and “good-looking”
(126; act 2). In fact, she perpetuates the action when she “takes his face in her hands and
kisses him” (127; act 2); Madge, not Hal, makes the first move toward a physical
relationship. By then yielding to his advances, she allows him to regain his feelings of
masculinity. The following morning, she may protest that she “didn’t even know what
was happening,” but her rejection of Hal is just another tool she uses to make herself
seem more desirable. By pushing him away, she gains control in the situation again,
which forces him to plead for her acceptance and love before he leaves town. Her
22
supposed indifference causes him to admit that he loves her and that “[l]ast night
was…inspired” (143; act 3). As if to urge him on, Madge reminds him of the previous
night’s events—“I couldn’t stand to hear Miss Sydney treat you that way. After all,
you’re a man”—which encourages Hal to proclaim his love again and invite her to go
with him (143; act 3). Clearly, Madge successfully gains control of the situation and
manipulates Hal to get what she wants from him. Even her mask of feminine weakness
and indecision is actually a tool for catching her man. While her methods may be less
overt than those of the other female characters, Madge appears as a predatory female
character using Hal to escape boredom.
Though Hal’s virility and masculinity would supposedly make him the stronger,
controlling character, the female characters’ objectification of him proves otherwise.
Even the off-stage action of the play serves as a reminder that Hal is objectified and used
for his sexuality, most likely by women who are bored and sexually frustrated. Hal even
claims, “Women are gettin’ desperate” (93; act 1). As Betty Friedan claims, the feminine
mystique contributes to a woman’s feeling of desperation. Because women do not have
any future goals that could lead to self-actualization, they find the monotony of their
daily life unbearable. One woman interviewed by Friedan even admitted, “‘it’s the
endless boring days that make me desperate’” (313). Therefore, when the bored women
in the play are confronted with a distraction from their monotonous lives, they latch onto
it as a way to make themselves feel alive. When Hal enters the scene, he is “barechested, his T-shirt still around his neck, and the sight of him is something of a shock to
the ladies” (96). Likewise, Millie recounts that the neighborhood girls, upon seeing Hal
in the soda shop, “started giggling and tee-heeing and saying all sorts of crazy things”
23
(103; act 2). Even Hal’s stories of his past indicate the tendency of women to objectify
him; when Hal talks about his short-lived attempt at a movie career, he says, “[t]hey took
a lot of pictures of me with my shirt off” (91; act 1). In fact, Hal’s story of his “ménage a
trois”—the account of two women who pick him up when he was hitchhiking, have sex
with him, and then take his money—becomes a “confession of a man who has been raped
and robbed” more than a story of his sexual escapades (Johnson “Gendermandering” 43).
Furthermore, Rosemary’s malicious and vengeful accusation of Hal following the
dancing incident shows a disregard for his feelings. Once her attempt to dance with him
fails, she turns viciously against him. When Flo discovers that Millie has been drinking
whisky, Rosemary quickly claims that Hal would “have fed her whiskey and taken his
pleasure with the child and then skedaddled!” (123; act 2). Her accusations quickly
intensify to a degradation of his character—“you think just ‘cause you’re strong you can
show your muscles and nobody’ll know what a pitiful specimen you are…the gutter’s
where you came from and the gutter’s where you belong”—ending with her “spitting her
final words” at Hal (123-24; act 2). Though one would expect a strong, virile character
like Hal to nonchalantly dismiss Rosemary’s verbal attacks, Hal is instead left so stunned
that he cannot even respond to Alan’s questioning. Howard seems to understand best that
Rosemary has objectified Hal because of his physical sexuality rather than viewing him
as a human: “You gotta remember, men have got feelings, too—same as women” (125;
act 2). This treatment of the virile male character is abusive and degrading. Thus, Inge’s
Picnic offers a look at how the desperation of women bored with their lives can
negatively affect men.
24
While Come Back, Little Sheba offers an example of a bored housewife and
Picnic presents women preoccupied with sex, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957)
offers a look at how the feminine mystique affected the relationship between a mother
and her children. R. Baird Shuman and other critics blame the Oedipus and Electra
complexes as the primary causes of the problems with the parent-child relationships in
the play (55-56). In this way, Reenie is seen as a child in love with her father, and
Sonny’s inability to interact with his peers as an effect of his Oedipal relationship with
his mother. In fact, they view Sonny’s progression toward independence at the end of the
play as a result of his rejection of his mother when he claims he hates her. However,
looking at Betty Friedan’s description of the relationship between the mother-housewife
and her children reveals a similarity to Cora’s relationship with her children, especially
Sonny. According to Friedan,
[w]ithout serious interests outside the home, and with housework
routinized by appliances, women could devote themselves almost
exclusively to the cult of the child from cradle to kindergarten. Even
when the children went off to school their mothers could share their lives,
vicariously and sometimes literally. To many, their relationship with their
children became a love affair, or a kind of symbiosis. (288)
Though Cora’s attitude toward her children may not be quite this extreme, the dialogue of
the play and her children’s attitudes suggest an unhealthy relationship.
From the beginning of the play, Cora’s children are portrayed as socially inept:
“Reenie’s so shy of people her own age…She’s got no confidence at all” and the “[o]ther
boys tease [Sonny] and call him names…He doesn’t know how to get along with them”
(227; act 1). Even Cora claims, “I worry about them” (226; act 1). Cora’s overprotective
behavior is apparent to all of the characters; Rubin uses it as an excuse for his lack of
involvement in his children’s lives: “when those kids was born, you hugged ‘em so close
25
to ya, ya made me think they was your own personal property, and I din have nothin’ to
do with ‘em at all” (228; act 1). Furthermore, he claims, “Ya pampered ‘em so much and
coddled ‘em, they thought I was just bein’ mean if I tried to drill some sense into their
heads” (228; act 1). Lottie, Cora’s childless sister, even sees the problem and tells her
husband that Cora and her children cannot come to live with them because “[t]he way she
pampers those kids, Morris. If she had her way, she’d spoil ‘em rotten” (252; act 2).
According to Jeff Johnson, “from her own insecurity, [Cora] has created children ill
equipped to confront the world” (79). Obviously, Cora’s lack of identity or autonomy,
the result of a woman trapped in the feminine mystique, has negatively affected her
interactions with her children. Without a strong sense of who she is, she tries to gain
identity through her children by becoming too involved in their lives and prohibiting
them from forming their own identities separate from her own.
Cora’s relationship with Sonny illuminates problems caused by the feminine
mystique. According to Friedan, the feminine mystique resulted in “a kind of infantilism
that makes the children of the housewife-mothers incapable of the effort, the endurance
of pain and frustration, the discipline needed to compete” in normal childhood activities
(282). In fact, a “new and frightening passivity, softness, boredom in American children”
was noted by a number of researchers (282). Of course, the “infantile phantasy and
passivity” were apparent in children of women whose shared similarity was that “they
were alike in the intensity of their preoccupation with their children, who seemed to be
their main and only interest” (287). These descriptions sound a lot like Sonny—a young
man who is teased by other boys and spends most of his time playing with photographs of
movie stars. In fact, one of Friedan’s examples features a mother who claims that her son
26
“‘didn’t want to go to school because he was afraid of the other boys”’ (287). Likewise,
Sonny is chased home by his peers jeering, “Sonny Flood! His name is mud!/Sonny runs
home to Mama!/Sonny plays with paper dolls!” (231; act 1). As a doting mother, Cora
quickly chases the boys away yelling, “[y]ou go home now or I’ll call your mothers,
every last one of you,” and tells Rubin that “[i]f they touch one hair of that boy’s head I’ll
destroy them” (231; act 1). Rubin seems to understand the problem—“[e]verybody’s
gotta figure out his own way of handlin’ things, Cora. Whether he fights or whether he
runs” (232; act 1). He even asks Sonny, “Want me to teach you how to put up a good
fight?”, but Sonny refuses (232; act 1). This passivity toward changing his social
standing is coupled with a retreat into a fantasy world. Rather than making friends with
other children his own age, Sonny would rather look at his pictures of movie stars. Cora
claims that the movie pictures are the only friends he has and they are “[n]ot real friends
at all. Just pictures of all the lovely friends [he’d] like to have. There’s a mighty big
difference between pictures of people and the way people really are” (233; act 1). When
Cora suggests that Sonny try to make friends with the other boys, he replies, “They play
stupid games” and asks if he can go to a movie (233; act 1). Obviously, Sonny, like the
children of housewife-mothers that Friedan describes, cannot adequately function in his
social group because Cora has coddled him all of his life. Instead, he has found his
solace and friendship in a fantasy world of movies and movie stars.
Besides his inability to make friends with the boys in his neighborhood, Sonny
also displays infantile characteristics in other ways. Perhaps the most obvious example
of his juvenile behavior occurs as he throws a tantrum when he is not allowed to go to the
party with Reenie and her friends. Even though he is ten years-old, his behavior reflects
27
that of a child much younger. He yells, “I WANT TO GO TO THE PARTY!” as he
“throws himself on the floor, pounding the floor with his fists and kicking it with his toes,
his face red with rage” (272; act 2). Cora’s exclamation, “I never can do a thing with
him when he throws one of these tantrums” indicates that he often engages in such
behavior (273; act 2). In fact, later in the play, Sonny throws a short fit when Cora
refuses to let him go to the movies. Described as “wild,” Sonny yells, “I’ve just got to
see the movie. If I can’t see the movie, I’ll kill myself,” and then “finds the favors that
Sammy promised him….He throws a handful of confetti recklessly into the air, then dons
a paper hat, and blows violently on a paper horn” (289; act 3). Moreover, Sonny’s
infantile behavior is displayed in his retreat to his mother’s bed when he’s scared.
Though many critics, such as R. Baird Shuman, have viewed this as evidence of an
Oedipus complex (55-56), the situation could also be explored as one of a child who has
not yet conquered his fears and separated from his mother’s protection. Acknowledging
the inappropriateness of Sonny’s behavior for a child his age, Cora claims, “It’s not the
same when a boy your age comes crawling into bed with his mother. You can’t expect
me to mean as much to you as when you were a baby” (289-290; act 3). The
confrontation even ends with Cora’s lament, “I’ve kept you too close to me, Sonny. Too
close. I’ll take the blame” (290; act 3). Thus, Cora realizes that she has contributed to
Sonny’s inability to effectively grow up and formulate his own identity separate from his
mother. His infantilism and passivity are effects of the feminine mystique’s hold upon
his mother. As a young housewife—the description given to her in the stage notes—Cora
has spent most of her time and energy on her children, and without any other activities to
28
make her feel alive and useful, her over-involvement in their lives has hindered, rather
than helped, their development.
Although Sonny’s behavior more clearly exhibits characteristics of a child’s
inability to cope in the world, Reenie’s behavior also shows signs of the awkwardness
that Cora’s coddling has caused. While Reenie’s initial shyness does not appear as a
major issue, her social anxiety reveals its magnitude as the play progresses. Reenie first
expresses her nervousness about going to the party when she models her party dress for
her mother. Cora pressures her into going to the party by telling her, “You’re not going
to make friends just staying home playing the piano, or going to the library studying your
lessons” (241; act 1). Of course, Reenie recoils from the confrontation with her mother
by leaving the room to play the piano alone. When Rubin bursts into the house and
scolds Cora for buying Reenie a dress to go to a party she does not want to go to, Cora
explains, “of course Reenie doesn’t want to go to the party. She never wants to go any
place. All she wants to do is lock herself in the parlor and practice at the piano, or go to
the library and hide her nose in a book” (243; act 1). Further evidence of Reenie’s failure
to cope in social situations appears later in the play as Reenie prepares for the party;
Lottie observes that Reenie’s “little hands are like ice” and Reenie claims that her
stomach does not feel well (255; act 2). Cora’s comment, “[s]he gets to feeling like this
every time she goes to a party” affirms the consistency of Reenie’s anxiety (255; act 1).
Lottie and Cora both see the inappropriateness in Reenie’s behavior. Lottie tells her
husband, “It’s awful funny when a young girl doesn’t want to go to a party” (256; act 2).
And Cora confesses, “I worry about them…You saw Reenie just now. Here she is, sick
because she’s going to a party, when most girls her age would be tickled to death” (257;
29
act 2). Even Lottie’s assumption that the children will outgrow their behavior does
nothing to quiet Cora’s fears: “Kids don’t just ‘get over’ these things, in some magic
way. These troubles stay with kids sometimes, and affect their lives when they grow up”
(257; act 2). Throughout the play, Cora’s awareness of the extent of her role in her
children’s problems increases. She admits to Reenie, “I’ve always accused your father of
neglecting you kids, but maybe I’ve hurt you more with pampering” (285; act 3).
Fortunately, Cora recognizes Reenie’s social problems and sees her own role in her
daughter’s maladjustment, and the play offers hope that this recognition might lead to
healing. In this way, Cora seems less entrenched in the feminine mystique than many of
the other female characters in Inge’s plays.
Besides Cora’s relationship with her children, Lottie’s character in The Dark at
the Top of the Stairs resembles a woman caught in the feminine mystique. Lottie, Cora’s
childless sister, shows signs of boredom, unhappiness, and a preoccupation with sex.
According to Susan Koprince, “[d]uring the 1950s American women were taught to find
fulfillment almost exclusively through marriage and motherhood” and “women were
expected to become diligent housewives and devoted mothers” (252). Living in the
feminine mystique which restricted women’s roles to housewives and mothers, childless
women like Lottie found themselves in an impossible situation. Women with children
during this time period were unfulfilled and bored, so certainly women without children
would be even more so. In addition, society at the time told women that “[i]f a woman
lacked kids, she was sick, damaged, perverted” and that “only in child rearing and
homemaking was [women’s] femininity confirmed” (Miller and Nowak 155).
Koprince
believes that “Inge was keenly sensitive to the plight of childless women during a period
30
when motherhood was virtually mandated for them” and that “social pressures to have
children have exacerbated the problem, leading childless women to view themselves as
abnormal and inferior” (251). Thus, the childless women in Inge’s plays “generally fit
the negative stereotype of childless women that prevailed during the post-war era”—
women who were “lonely, disillusioned, narcissistic, unfulfilled, sexually frustrated (or
inadequate), unhappily married, immature, and psychologically maladjusted” (252, 254).
At the same time that Inge “confirm[s] this negative stereotype of the childless,” he “also
evokes our sympathy for such women by implying that cultural expectations about
motherhood have actually contributed to the problem” (254).
These negative, stereotypical characteristics certainly apply to Lottie. Her
loneliness is apparent when she tells Cora, “Oh, it’s just fine for you to talk. You’ve got
two nice kids to keep you company. What have I got but a house full of cats?” (275; act
2). Cora even says, “you always claimed you never wanted children” and Lottie replies,
“what else can I say to people?” (275-276; act 2). Koprince asserts that with this
dialogue, “Inge goes so far as to suggest that Lottie Lacey lacks a real maternal instinct,
and that her desire to have children stems from social pressures—i.e. her fear of what
people will think of her if she is childless” (259). Furthermore, her dissatisfaction with
her marriage emerges in the envious comments she makes about Rubin. When Cora
claims that she does not think she could sleep with Rubin if she thought he was cheating
on her, Lottie exclaims, “My God, a big handsome buck like Rubin! Who cares if he’s
honorable?” (276; act 2). After admitting that “[i]t’s been over three years since [her
husband] even touched” her, Lottie claims, “I wish to God someone loved me enough to
hit me….Anything’d be better than this nothing” (278, 279; act 2). Partially because of
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her dissatisfaction with her marriage, Lottie also displays characteristics of the feminine
mystique’s “sex-seekers.” Because housework cannot fill all of her time and she does not
even have children to help keep her company, she turns instead to a preoccupation with
sex. She even resorts to telling dirty jokes, and when she shocks Cora by telling her that
she has never been satisfied with her sex life, Lottie admits that her dirty talk is just talk:
“I talk all the time just to convince myself that I’m alive” (280; act 2). Her confession
sounds similar to Betty Friedan’s observation that a woman in the feminine mystique
often “bases her whole identity on her sexual role…sex is necessary to make her ‘feel
alive’” (265). In fact, Friedan says that such a mindset “puts impossible demands on her
own body, her ‘femaleness,’ as well as on her husband and his ‘maleness’” (265).
Likewise, Lottie seems to be dissatisfied with her husband because he has not lived up to
her ideal. She feels “full of all kinds of crazy curiosity about[…]all the things in life
[she] seem[s] to have missed out on” because from her first experience with sex,
“[n]othing happened to [her] at all” (280; act 2). Thus, Lottie’s loneliness, dissatisfaction
with her marriage, and preoccupation with sex reflect the stereotypes of childless women
in the 1950s and the characteristics of a woman caught in the feminine mystique.
Therefore, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs provides two female characters, Cora
and Lottie, who exhibit characteristics of women in the feminine mystique. As Jeff
Johnson points out, “set in the ’20s, the play nevertheless conforms to the typical gender
behavior codified by the social milieu prevalent in the ’50s” (William Inge 79). Thus,
Cora and Lottie more closely resemble the stereotypes of the time period in which Betty
Friedan was writing. Cora’s role as a housewife-mother who coddles her children and
Lottie’s role as an unsatisfied, childless wife correspond with the women Friedan
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describes in The Feminine Mystique. Once again, Inge’s play shows how the
dissatisfaction that these bored, sexually frustrated women have with their lives affects
not only the female characters but also the male.
In examining three of William Inge’s major plays—Come Back, Little Sheba,
Picnic, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs—one can see correlations between his
female characters and the women Betty Friedan describes in The Feminine Mystique.
Both Lola and Lottie stand as examples of childless housewives who cannot fulfill
society’s expectations of having children, so they find themselves lonely and bored
without anything but housework to fill up their time. Rosemary, Marie, and Madge, all
unmarried women, want desperately to conform to society’s expectation that they relieve
their boredom by marrying and having children. Finally, even though Cora has
successfully married and had children, her life is still plagued by symptoms of the
feminine mystique. Without anything else but housework to occupy her time, she has
turned all of her attention to her children which has left them unable to successfully cope
socially. Moreover, most of these female characters also exhibit a preoccupation with
sex, which Friedan explains as a common result of the feminine mystique. In fact, this
preoccupation could even manifest itself into the objectification of men, emasculation of
husbands or sons, or predatory-like behavior. These characteristics, as described by
Friedan, resemble the assertions of Robert Brustein; however, with an understanding of
The Feminine Mystique, one might be more sympathetic to the female characters. Janet
Juhnke may have been correct in arguing that Brustein’s review was limited and tainted
many critics’ opinions of the plays’ female characters, yet she failed to see the possible
compromise between Friedan’s assertions about women in The Feminine Mystique and
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Brustein’s observations. This compromise portrays a more accurate look at both the
women of the time period and the women in Inge’s plays. Indeed, it explains the
complex relationships between the male and female characters in the plays and gives
insight into the real causes behind the women’s behavior.
Each of the female characters in Come Back, Little Sheba, Picnic, and The Dark
at the Top of the Stairs share one common characteristic—boredom. Throughout The
Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan reiterates that housewifery simply did not provide
enough stimulation for women; housework was not extensive enough to fill a woman’s
days. Friedan sees boredom as a cause of fatigue, a preoccupation with sex, and
desperation. In fact, the women Friedan describes seem to have even lost their vigor for
life.
Even those women who see themselves as happy cannot escape the fact that
“happiness is not the same thing as the aliveness of being fully used” (Friedan 255).
These women need sex to make themselves feel alive. They try to live through their
children to compensate for their own lack of identity. And when they cannot find the
verve they so desperately need, they become castrative to the men around them. William
Inge’s female characters certainly do resemble the women Friedan describes. Caged by
society’s expectations and their own walls, they have lost their vigor, their identity, their
autonomy. They are bored to death.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beasley, Chris. What is Feminism? London: Sage, 1999.
Brustein, Robert. “The Men-Taming Women of William Inge: The Dark at the Top of
the Stairs.” Harper’s Magazine 1958 (Nov.): 52-57.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 1983. first published in
1963.
Inge, William. Come Back, Little Sheba. Four Plays. New York: Grove, 1958. 5-69.
---. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Four Plays. New York: Grove, 1958. 221-304.
---. Picnic. Four Plays. New York: Grove, 1958. 71-149.
Johnson, Jeff. “Gendermandering: Stereotyping and Gender Role Reversal in the Major
Plays of William Inge.” American Drama 7.2 (1998): 33-50.
---.William Inge and the Subversion of Gender. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.
Johnston, Carolyn. Sexual Power: Feminism and Family in America. Tuscaloosa: U of
Alabama P, 1992.
Juhnke, Janet. “Inge’s Women: Robert Brustein and the Feminine Mystique.” Kansas
Quarterly 18.4 (1986): 103-112.
Koprince, Susan. “Childless Women in the Plays of William Inge.” Midwest Quarterly:
A Journal of Contemporary Thought 41.3 (2000): 251-63.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960.” Not June
Clever: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960. Ed. Joanne
Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1994. 1-16.
Miller, Douglas T. and Marion Nowak. The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.
Shuman, R. Baird. William Inge. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Wedge, George F. “Mixing Memory with Desire: The Family of the Alcoholic in Three
Mid-Century Plays.” Dionysos 1(1989): 10-18.
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