The Stepford Wives: The Women's Liberation Movement
The Stepford Wives
The late 1950’s and early 1960’s in America saw a shift in the American lifestyle sparked by increased civil rights activism, and following the end of WWII, peacetime put pressure on the social policies. The Women’s Liberation Movement was a key factor in thissuch change. The standard lifestyle of married women in 1950’s America mirrored that of Leave it to Beaver’s June Cleaver. A dutiful wife rooted in the home complete with a routine of chores, cooking, and cleaning. The restrictions with this lifestyle would come to rally women of the nation. Within a short period of time women across America were given more opportunity and freedom in the household and society overall. Rowe vs. Wade was a landmark case in United States history that gave the right to …show more content…
Women had claimed right over their own lives and bodies with such court decisions and legislation, a large win compared to the previous decades. However, a growing opposing movement led by religious conservatives and political leaders, called for a return to former repressions, favoring the old lifestyle. The Stepford Wives would be what would bring this conflict to film. The movie was staged in a small suburban town, Stepford, Connecticut with the American-ideal nuclear families with trophy wives, dutiful and homebound, happy to cook, clean, and serve their husbands. However Bryan Forbes’ 1975 is a science-fiction thriller referring to the male paranoia of the time.
During the 1960’s women gained the political freedom which they had once believed unattainable. Such a freedom worried men as women’s political awareness and organization deemed a threat to social and political structure. This paranoia of women’s rising political concern is addressed in The Stepford Wives, shown in a scene where the clone wives show a lack
The late 1950’s and early 1960’s in America saw a shift in the American lifestyle sparked by increased civil rights activism, and following the end of WWII, peacetime put pressure on the social policies. The Women’s Liberation Movement was a key factor in thissuch change. The standard lifestyle of married women in 1950’s America mirrored that of Leave it to Beaver’s June Cleaver. A dutiful wife rooted in the home complete with a routine of chores, cooking, and cleaning. The restrictions with this lifestyle would come to rally women of the nation. Within a short period of time women across America were given more opportunity and freedom in the household and society overall. Rowe vs. Wade was a landmark case in United States history that gave the right to …show more content…
Women had claimed right over their own lives and bodies with such court decisions and legislation, a large win compared to the previous decades. However, a growing opposing movement led by religious conservatives and political leaders, called for a return to former repressions, favoring the old lifestyle. The Stepford Wives would be what would bring this conflict to film. The movie was staged in a small suburban town, Stepford, Connecticut with the American-ideal nuclear families with trophy wives, dutiful and homebound, happy to cook, clean, and serve their husbands. However Bryan Forbes’ 1975 is a science-fiction thriller referring to the male paranoia of the time.
During the 1960’s women gained the political freedom which they had once believed unattainable. Such a freedom worried men as women’s political awareness and organization deemed a threat to social and political structure. This paranoia of women’s rising political concern is addressed in The Stepford Wives, shown in a scene where the clone wives show a lack