Conformity and Rebellion in the 1950s America - Essay Example

Conformity and Rebellion in 1950s America In the 1950s, America made a move to turn back time. The progress made in the liberation of women’s rights due to women entering the work force during World War II underwent a severe test at the hands of ideological body snatching by the media and the government. Sexual liberation had also been unleashed, and the rise of rock and roll served to inflame the libido of both young men and women. The specter of an overblown communist threat created an easy method whereby to question anything that even remotely appeared subversive and as a result the 50s were a time when young people received conflicting messages about when and whether to conform on a variety of topics. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye and Esther, the protagonist of The Bell Jar are characters deeply rooted in this conflicting and confusing time. It is probably no accident, then, that both these characters seek professional help in dealing with what may be madness or insanity, or what must may be the stress of living in a time that is not easily understood or explained. Women in America went to work after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entry into World War II, and many of them decided that they liked it; American men took it upon themselves in the 1950s to attempt the enforced removal repression of that desire to remain at work. Until America joined the war to fight the dreaded Hun (and the Japanese) in the latter part of 1941, women as a rule really hadn’t had much of a choice in terms of vocation. Unless they were raised on the farm, women basically had the choice of becoming a wife and possibly mother, or, if they desired to enter the work force, taking a job in one of the male-approved female jobs such as secretary or nursing. With the depletion of male work force into the service from 1941 to 1945, women all over the country got a taste of what it was like to work in a variety of jobs ranging from factory worker to professionals. As Tucker writes, women in the 40s were “commonly portrayed as performing her patriotic duty—taking a job so that a man could fight” (18). The symbol of the American woman’s liberation was Rosie the Riveter and Hollywood applauded the working woman throughout the films of the early 40s. The only problem is that once the men came home and got their jobs back, many women were not expressing the jubilation of going back home that was expected. Esther’s alienation in The Bell Jar and Holden’s somewhat paternalistic attitude toward women reflect the confusion and tumult of the 50s. Esther is confused about what society expects of a woman in the post-war years and Holden reflects the confusion of what men should expect from women. In his tender attitude toward Phoebe, about whom he writes as though she is older intellectually but younger physically than she actually is, and his almost quaint attitude toward Jane that has the feel not only of a pre-war consciousness, but a turn of the century prudeness, Holden’s cry against phoniness of his contemporizes can certainly be read as a conservative call to roll back the clock. Woods is discussing Holden Caulfield in particular and America youth in the 50s in general when he writes “Repellled and frustrated [by their parents conformity and materialism], they indulged themselves in shopping sprees at the mall, sex in the backseats of their automobiles, and groupie adulation of entertainment personalities” (132). It would be difficult to make a case that this is an adequate description of Holden himself, but it certain applies to those with whom Holden comes in contact. Holden is certainly not a fan of actors, and he doesn’t appear to have bought into the American idea that while money can’t buy happiness, it can certainly buy things that should make you happier, and as stated, Holden isn’t one to jump into the back seat of a car and have sex. But entertainment, shopping and sex are clearly important to those around both Holden and Esther. In a sense, Holden, though often held up as an avatar of nonconformity, is an excellent example in certain ways of the conformity that Esther struggles desperately to escape. Esther is the more rebellious figure in the end than Holden and part of that may be because she is a woman and women had more to rebel against in 1950s America than white, upper middle class males. MacPherson points out that “Esther remains captive to a suffocating sense of femininity (read inferiority)” (97). A suffocation of femininity is exactly what was happening in the 1950s and exactly what Holden Caulfield can be accused of. Despite all his admirable qualities as anti-hero or a paragon of truth in rebellion against all that is phony, part of Holden’s rebellion is against the march of time. At least in reaction to the role of women, Holden is a man of the 50s and exactly the kind of man that Esther struggles against. Esther is caught in that strange time warp that occurred between the temporary liberation of women during World War II and the explosion of feminism and women’s rights in the 60s and 70s. Much of what was going on during the 50s was a reaction against the loosening of restrictions mandated by the war in the Europe and the Pacific. The first words of the The Bell Jar reference Ethel Rosenberg, an intelligent, educated woman who dared to express unpopular beliefs and suffered the ultimate repression: execution. Execution is exactly what Esther fears will happen to her if she expresses herself and it’s not difficult to imagine that many women in the 50s felt the same fear. The body snatchers who invaded American via the movies could be read as either the communists or the communist witch-hunters depending on which side of the argument you stood on. That linkage to witch hunting must have made many a woman’s blood run cold; after all, a witch is by definition a woman and even though McCarthy was mainly going after men, that didn’t stop Ethel from being executed alongside Julius. The forced conformity that marked the 50s cannot but be linked to the Red Scare as the search for any sign of liberal thought was a valuable weapon in the fight to suppress women’s newfound liberation following the war. Carabillo makes the connection when he writes “the compulsive conformity of life styles (engendered at least in part by the virulent anti-communism of McCarthyism” (A Passion for the Possible). The crushing need to conform can be felt every time Esther refers to the Rosenbergs. Another method of suppressing unhealthy liberal thought—a cottage industry in the 50s—is to demonize sexuality, of course, and the conflicting messages being received by young people in the 50s are expressed in the characters of Holden and Esther. Few would argue that the 50s were an extraordinarily repressive era, but that doesn’t mean there was no such thing as sexual imagery. While television was incredibly tame, the films of the 50s in some way were the most sexually charged since the pre-code 30s. Of course, even in the movies, the message that only bad girls had sex was recurrent. Holden, obviously, would never have anything to do with a bad girl. To think of Holden going out with a Marilyn Monroe is anathema; he would be a strictly Doris Day type. Holden may be held up as a rebel for many readers, but his view of sexuality is representative of a general feeling of wanting to maintain a status quo in the face of the onslaught of time that is emblematic of conservative thought. Esther too is interested in the image of sexuality. After all, she works for a fashion magazine. Her sexuality mirrors the 50s even more than Holden in a way. Esther is interested in sex, far more so than Holden, but she must face it differently. At one point Marco tries to rape her because he sees her—indeed all women—as sluts. Movies in the 50s usually presented women in diametrically opposed ways, either as sluts or virgins and Esther reflects this dualistic thought. Esther encapsulates this inescapable fact of life when she muses upon how her world isn’t divided up in the way that other people view it; for Esther the world is divided up between those who’ve had sex and those who haven’t (122). In a way, that was how the world divided women in the 50s. Girls were either sluts like Marilyn Monroe or eternal virgins like Doris Day and that stultifying choice is something that girls like Esther wanted to rebel against, but had a hard time finding an acceptable outlet in which they could rebel. While Esther, like most women of the time, longs for a change in the perception of women, Holden desperately clings to the way things were. Holden’s desire to stem the passage of time is most beautifully wrought in the sequence when he goes to the Museum of Natural History. As he walks to the museum, his memories are filled with childhood trips and this reinforces the image of Holden as stuck in a time warp. Indeed, much of the criticism of the book is directed at Holden’s inability to grow up and mature. Holde enjoys the tableau offered at the museum and if he had the ability he would turn those around him into a never-changing tableau. He wants to keep Phoebe young and innocent and even views himself as her protector against encroaching experience. Experience plays a key role in both books and in the lives of both characters. Holden views experience with distrust and Esther lives in a world in which an experienced single woman is viewed with distrust. Both characters are in a way rebelling against the phony qualities that make up the society in which they live, but while Esther wants to move forward in her quest away from phoniness, Holden seems to want to move backward, as if he can return to a time when people weren’t phony. The fact that both characters orbit a world inhabited by upper class, educated people could be a key to both these viewpoints. The eastern elite among which Holden and Esther gravitate is even today viewed both with distrust and with admiration by various facets of society. Those who view the eastern elite with distrust tend to be conservatives who wish to return to simpler, happier days. Those who view the eastern elite with admiration tend to be liberals who are eager for progressive policies and who question the ability of the status quo to meet the needs of all people. The 1950s are ably represented in both The Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye. Within the covers of both, despite taking place among upper middle class types, runs a stream of realism that touches upon all the major concerns of America at the time: sexuality, encroaching feminism, entertainers, repression, and communism. About the major topic of concern to people in the 50s that neither book really considers is racism and the rise of civil rights. But perhaps that is fitting, since only a very small minority of non-blacks during this time were even aware that a burgeoning civil rights movement was gaining ground. Works Cited Carabillo, Tony. “A Passion for the Possible.” Feminist Majority Foundation. 1995 http://www.feminist.org/research/chronicles/part1a.html. 7 December 2005 Kashner, Sam and MacNair, Jennifer. The Bad & The Beautiful: Hollywood in the 50’s. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002. MacPherson, Heidi Slettedah. Women’s Movement: Escape as Transgression in North American Feminist Fiction. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2000. Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: HarperCollins, 1971 Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye. New York: Bantam, 1966. Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift. Durham: Duke Univ. Pres, 2000. Woods, Randall. Quest for Identity: American Since 1945. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005. Read More