women’s pages and housewives
The New York Times has a great essay about housewives in the 1950s, focusing on the witty writer, Phyllis McGinley. Here’s a segment:
“A liberal arts education is not a tool like a hoe . . . or an electric mixer,” McGinley wrote, dismayed at a world she thought was conspiring to make women feel as though any acquired erudition would be wasted in a life of riffling through recipe cards. “It is a true and precious stone which can glow as wholesomely on a kitchen table as when it is put on exhibition in a jeweler’s window or bartered for bread and butter.” She went on to dismiss the already benighted suggestion that Bryn Mawr was a threat to what ought to get done in a kitchen. “Surely the ability to enjoy Heine’s exquisite melancholy in the original German,” she wrote, “will not cripple a girl’s talent for making chocolate brownies.”
She was known for her humorous writing. Erma Bombeck named McGinley as an inspiration. (Erma’s column often appeared in women’s sections.) The women’s page editors valued both liberation and housewives. The grainy photo above shows women’s page editors Marie Anderson and Marj Paxson with Erma Bombeck. Here’s a link to a great online resource for Erma.
