The AMC period piece Mad Men, created by Matthew Weiner, follows the lives of the men and women of the advertising world in the 60s. While the series is named for the ad men of Sterling Cooper, the show has been as much, if not more, focused on the dynamic lives of the female characters. Mad Men has been cited as one the most historically accurate series ever produced which includes the writer’s portrayal of gender relations, family and domesticity, women’s roles in the workplace, and sexism of the time (Irwin, et al). In this paper, I will explore the options available to middle class white women represented by the show, observing three of the main female characters of the show: Joan Holloway, Peggy Olson and Betty Draper. Through character development of these women, we see the writers address a variety of issues faced by women at that time, including how to control their reproductive lives, choosing between careers and children and navigating a male-dominated workplace. In addition, I will look at the representations of family and home, in relation to the Draper household. I do acknowledge that this portrayal of women is not inclusive, as the show focuses on a relatively privileged group of women, who face oppression based on their gender alone and not on an intersection of oppressions on the basis of race, class, sexuality, and other dimensions.
Peggy and Joan portray the role of the working girl, and they represent two of the most common possibilities for a white working woman in the early 60s. (Marcovitch, 10). They both face a hostile and sexist work environment, but they use different strategies in navigating this. Peggy starts out as a timid secretary, and is later promoted to copywriter before eventually leaving the agency for a more senior position. Peggy’s storyline follows common themes shown in literature of the time, including a series of romantic missteps, one of which leads to an unwanted pregnancy, as well as the dilemma of choosing between work and marriage, and using her considerable intelligence and drive to work her way up in a male-dominated office and world (Marcovitch, 14). The influence of novels like Helen Gurley Brown’s “Sex and the SIngle Girl,” Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and Jacqueline Susann’s “Valley of the Dolls,” is clear in Peggy’s representation on the show (Marcovitch, 14). While Peggy does have romantic relationships throughout the series, her focus is her work and she is desperate to be promoted and recognized for her skill and ability(Marcovitch, 29). Peggy faces many social pressures and gendered struggles associated with being a young single working woman (Irwin, et al). For example, Peggy gets pregnant in the first season, as a result of a sexual encounter with an ad exec who uses his position of power to seduce her. As a result she goes into complete denial, despite her later gaining a considerable amount of weight. This actually helps her position in the office as it desexualizes her in the view of her male coworkers, allowing her to be more included in their world (Marcovitch, 42). Peggy finally realizes she’s pregnant after doubling over in pain and being rushed to the hospital, all the while denying the reality of her pregnancy. Her situation demonstrates the stigma around unmarried pregnancy which led her into dissociation, likely because of the social mores of the situation. It would have been impossible for her to have a baby as a single, working, Catholic woman, as the pregnancy would have resulted in great shame, the possibility of losing her job, or being kicked out by her parents (Goodlad, et al., 97). When Peggy’s character made the decision to give up her baby for adoption, she did what an estimated 25,000 women did each year during the 50s, as abortion was not an accessible option for most (WP Coontz). In doing so, the writers avoid having Peggy’s story being intertwined with motherhood, marriage or domesticity, allowing her to maintain her archetype as the working girl (Marcovitch, 21) . A core part of Peggy’s identity is her career aspirations, and although other elements of her storyline fit with the working girl archetype, her advancement in the firm is exceptional. It would have been a great feat for a woman to work her way up from secretary to copywriter to being a partner in the founding of a new agency. It is important to note that Peggy’s progression happens from the early 1960s onwards, which corresponds to the uptake of the feminist movement (Marcovitch, 42) . As the feminist movement is making important gains, so are women like Peggy in their individual workplaces.
Joan takes a different approach to gain power in the workplace. Joan sees her sexuality as a tool, where as Peggy does not. Joan commodifies her body in order to maneuver the sexual and power politics of the office (Marcovitch, 28). Joan does not get away with this without paying a price; she is subjected to constant sexual harassment by her male co workers, one having commented “What do you do around here besides walk around like you’re trying to get raped?” (WP Coontz). The men of the office view Joan as a sex object, and this status allows her to dominate the office in a way as she commands the attention of all the male execs. Joan knows that “an ambitious working girl – that is, a woman who wants power and recognition, as limited as it may be in the world of mad men – must, like any good advertisement, stand out among the crowd.” (Marcovitch, 30) While Joan is successful at her attempts to monopolize the male gaze, the writers later point out that this has been to her detriment as it makes it impossible for her to transcend her role as secretary. This is exhibited when she is passed over for the job of script reader, despite her talent for the work (Marcovitch, 10). Joan, like many women of that time, faces the conflict of wanting to get married but fearing the feeling of not having a purpose as a housewife. Joan later in the series has a baby, but continues to work, now as a single working mother. She has to cope with long working hours and the second shift at home with her child, which refers to the emotional, mental and physical labour that women inevitably perform within the home in addition to their work in the public workforce (Hoschild ,24). While most households were industrialized by the 1960s, and household technologies continued to advance promising faster and better results, the tools created did not account for the possibility that women would want to or even have to join the workforce, and that the person who would engage with housework would be a still have to have the responsibility of being full time housewife (Schwartz Cowan). Schwartz-Cohen asserts that regardless of how the technologies and systems supporting them advance, not even the most efficient working wife can prepare, serve, and clean up a meal in 4 mins and even the most organized working mother cannot feed a toddler in 30 seconds; home cannot be moved closer to a job or public transportation, someone still has to drive the father to work or the child to soccer or daycare and someone still has to leave a career behind for a while when babies are born (Schwartz Cowan). . The industrialization of the home was not designed to support the working wife or mother. So working women end up having two full time jobs. The second shift results in women being overworked, sleep-deprived, and emotionally drained. And Joan, in spite of having the help of her mother with caring for her home and child, often comes home and collapses of exhaustion.
Some scholars have criticized the show for portraying the female characters as generally passive in situations of injustice, however, for them to fight inequalities headon would be to distort reality (WP, Coontz). For example, when Joan suffers sexual assault by her fiance she still continues on with her plans to marry him, “domestic sexual assault was a contradiction in terms and possessed neither a legal nor a social language to combat it.”(Marcovitch, 8). It would have been unconventional for Joan or Peggy to bring to light the male harassment they faced in the office. It was not until the fourth season that Peggy was introduced to second wave feminism and realized that that the personal is political (Marcovitch, 42) . In regards to the next character I will discuss, Betty, it would be quite unrealistic to expect her to challenge the norms of her role as a housewife as many states still had “head and master” laws in the 1960s, which required by law for women to defer to their husbands.
Betty Draper, Don Draper’s picture perfect wife, is a perfect representation of the “problem that has no name” that faced the housewife-mother “who never had a chance to be anything else… women whose lives were confined, by necessity, to cooking cleaning, washing, and bearing children” as described in Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (Friedan, 43). Post-war mothers and wives were told by the media, the medical community, advertisers, and American society as whole, that they should be the most happy people in the world. Friedan pointed out that the very things that were supposed to bring housewives happiness, ultimately caused their despair (Marcovitch, 138). Friedan’s books appealed to women like Betty by demonstrating that the fault lay, not with them but with the way society wasted their talents and energies. Friedan asserted that in order to be a good mother and wife, women needed to be regarded as individuals with their own needs. Betty exhibited many signs of discontent with her forced role of homemaker. She was dismissive to her children, and taking little interest in them, letting the TV be the babysitter. She eventually developed anxiety and depression and seeing a psychiatrist that is far from supportive. In talking to the doctor she revealed how her mother’s opinions still prevail in her mind, Betty said of her mother: “she wanted me to be beautiful so I could find a man. There’s nothing wrong with that. But then what? Just sit and smoke and let it go ‘til you're in a box?” The psychiatrist had little to no response to any of the pain that Betty expressed during her sessions. Furthermore, when Betty voiced her unhappiness to Don, he told her that she had everything she could ever need, thereby dismissing her feelings.
Although Betty does have a lot of privilege, she also has a of limitations placed on her life, including the emotional and physical labor she does in the home. Housework is not like other jobs. Federici argues that while all workers are exploited under capitalism, housework has been imposed on women and been attributed as a natural part of being a woman (Federici, 2). She argues that it cannot be natural as it takes years of socialization to teach women that being a mother, wife and homemaker is their natural role. This is evident with Betty, whose mother raised her to believe she needed to be beautiful so she could find a man. Housework is often not treated as real work, and this is arguably because it receives no pay, making a woman’s role that of an unpaid worker but with the expectation that she should be happy and serve others. Federici argues that to demand wages for housework would be a powerful framework. She explains that “to say that we want wages for housework is to expose the fact that housework is already money for capital, that capital has made and makes money out of our cooking, smiling, fucking. At the same time, it shows that we have cooked, smiled, fucked throughout the years not because it was easier for us than for anybody else, but because we did not have any other choice” (Federici, 5). Federici explains that a combination of physical, emotional and sexual services are involved in the work of a housewife; women are essentially enslaved. Schwartz echoes this by saying that the housewife is the last “jane of all trades” in that she is expected to perform a variety of work (Schwartz, ). This is clear in Betty’s role as wife, mother and sexual being. For example, every night,she waits for Don to come home from work, and prepares a meal for him and the kids, has the house clean, so that he can come home to perfection. Once he is home, which is usually late and inebriated, Betty hears about his anger, and acts as an emotional punching bag for whatever issues he faced at work, only to have him go to bed without any concern for her or her wellbeing. In addition, having being sexually satiated by his mistress of the moment, he goes straight to bed without giving her any love or tenderness. Federici says that the more blows a man gets at his work the more his wife is trained to absorb them; “a man's home is his castle…and his wife has to learn to wait in silence when he is moody, to put him back together when he is broken down” (Federici).
The final representation of the 1960s in Mad Men that I will examine is the depiction of the family, the household and domesticity, with special attention to the fact that the writers do not romanticize the concept the nuclear family. The lack of nostalgic portrayal is important as it maintains Mad Men’s reputation for historically accurate. Coontz asserts that we should “tune in [to Mad Men] for a much needed lesson on the devastating costs of a way of life that still evokes misplaced nostalgia” (Coontz). To look at this portrayal of the family and the home, I will draw on the Drapers, as some of the most emotionally charged scenes take place in the Draper family home (Marcovitch,150). THe kitchen is a particularly important location to look at housework and domesticity. Betty has everything she could possibly need to run her home pristinley. Her kitchen is graced with up-to-date appliances that are a model of suburban family living (Marcovitch, 149). This style of kitchen is a result of the industrialization of the home that has occured over the last century (Schwartz Cowan). Schwartz explains that the tools that were created for the home in this process of industrialization were designed with the expectation that a housewife would operate them. The institutions responsible for these household tools did not expect women to leave the home and relied on the social norm that a “family’s sustenance and status still depended on the presence of a full-time homemaker” (Schwartz Cowan). The presence of a housewife is one of the idealizations that exists about the nuclear family of the 1960s. Coontz observes that our account of what the family was like gets “buried under the weight of an idealized image” (Coontz). She asserts that families have always been in crisis, and have never lived up to our nostalgic notions about the way things were(Coontz). This is shown in the portrayal of the Draper family. From the outside they look like the perfect model of the post war American family: Don is the handsome, successful breadwinner while Betty is the beautiful homemaker who takes care of the kids and has dinner waiting on the table when her husband gets home from work. They live in a large house in the suburbs with all the benefits of their success. In reality, the Drapers reflect a family that in its everyday practices falls short of the desired norm (Marcovitch, 12). This norm is not based on historical accuracy but on myth (Coontz). In regards to gender roles, they embody the depiction of the traditional nuclear family in which there is a sharp division of labour: men are the breadwinners and the women raise the kids. It’s a myth that children can only be raised properly in a traditional nuclear family (Coontz, ). Betty and Don pay little attention to their kids, who spend more time with the nanny than their parents. Mad Men reminds us that the most common idealization of the American family, the white, heterosexual, suburban, middle class, single breadwinner family, was not exactly what it appeared, and in some ways it was the product of advertising. For example, Betty is cast in the Coca Cola campaign, one of Don’s accounts, in which she plays the all-American mom; a perfect vision of herself and her family, which is artificial and constructed to sell products (Marcovitch, 81).
In conclusion, the critically acclaimed series Mad Men created by Matthew Weiner, appears to follow a group of New York ad men at the fictional advertising agency Sterling Cooper, but if you look deeper, Mad Men is a historical social commentary on gender relations, family dynamics, and women’s roles of the 1960s. The show begins in 1960 and follows the historical trajectory of a changing America. We see the transition from the early 1960s, still characterized as a “simpler time,” where there is supposed stability, strict gender roles, and family values, into the mid to late 60s where we see the Civil Rights Movement and the second wave feminist movement gain momentum. I choose to focus on the earlier half of the show and how it portrayed gender relations, family dynamics, and women’s roles in the first half of the 1960s. To do this I focused on three characters in particular and one family unit: Peggy and Joan, the working girls, each with a very different approach to the workplace; Betty the housewife, embodying what Friedan described as “the problem with no name;” and her family and household, the home of the Drapers. The writers of Mad Men are committed to historical accuracy, and it does not shy away from the the true madness of the period, so that contemporary viewers can learn from it.