Pros And Cons Of Contradiction During The Cold War

Emilia Grillo
Cold War Literature
Research Paper
November 23, 2014

Confessions of the Cold War Contradiction

Throughout the Cold War, the people of the United States prided themselves on their difference to the Soviet Union. They reveled in the contrast between a freedom-providing democracy and an enslaving communism. However, at this time there were many American citizens who felt that their democratic rights were being infringed upon, all in the effort to eradicate any sign of communism from their society. The majority of these citizens were women, and the rights which were being affected were concerned with the issue of privacy. The poetry of Anne Sexton provides insight into this social and political contradiction affecting feminine
Furthermore, many Americans believed that an essential function of a Democracy was to provide citizens with the right to privacy. Unlike a Communist dictatorship, Democracy in America promised citizens the freedom of self-determination. The ever-elusive “American Dream” was thought to be the ultimate culmination of an autonomous life, and this was most often represented in the ideals of the nuclear family and the home. However, this idea that one could – and must – work toward this goal also required a right to privacy, or a right to determine one’s life without influence or scrutiny from the outside. In her article, “Beyond Privacy: Confessions between a Woman and Her Doctor”, Deborah Nelson
Nelson notes that:
While elevating domesticity to a sacred and quintessentially American virtue, the idealization of the home silenced the experience of women, the citizens who were to occupy this realm as their exclusive domain. In this context, their anti-metaphorical representations of the home placed women confessional poets at the crossroads of the politicization of the home, its silencing, and its surveillance. (89)

Cold War society often considered women as mere extensions of the homes they made, not as functional and participatory citizens of society. This popular view of women effectively “silenced” them. It was unacceptable at this time for a woman to demand a life of her own outside of the home. Her duty as a woman was to her husband, her children, and her home. This form of imprisonment contradicted the very ideals of freedom for which the woman in the home was supposed to represent. Anne Sexton, among several other notorious confessional women poets, reveals this Cold War hypocrisy and paradox through her