Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the Housewife by Johnson and Lloyd - Article Example

Summarize Separately the Two Articles Provided Name: Institution: 5th May, 2013 Summary of Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the Housewife Despite the overall agreement that desperate housewives are common in Australia, the overall figure of the housewife has almost become non-existent in the public life of Australians. Presently the overall talk about women who can have everything including employment, wealth and family at the same time annoys but much of this discussion has been understood as another step that leads towards the independence of women and having the capacity to make personal choices or decisions about their lifestyles but not as a celebration of the housewife re-emerging again. In this article by Johnson and Lloyd, Sentenced to Everyday Life, they take a closer look at the subject of a housewife and the minor or insignificant status that surround the feminism project. Being that they are historians, they want to look at this subject past the modern-day satire associated with the 1950s housewife and outline the much complicated and contradictory forms in which the 1950 housewife was looked at. In their literature, they outline the upcoming of competing discussions based on modernity and femininity in the period after war, and they draw attention to how these differing views or tensions were investigated in the policies that surround publicity and popular media houses. The objective of Johnson and Lloyd, however, is more determined than to simply give a description of the complicated and controversial nature of this post-war experience. In other words, they also seek to restate the background information of the materialization of second wave feminism and in addition re-examine the association today between feminist researchers and the desires or needs that surround everyday’s life on the 18th Page of the article. In their argument, they suppose that the second wave feminism had a counter against the monotony and irritation that encompassed the domestic life by looking down upon the domestic lifestyle and urging women to leave the labour and struggles that were associated with domestic life. Even though some women in Australia decided to follow this call made by an American feminist namely Betty Freidman and took the chance to enjoy financial independence and employment, some women of the 1960s were still not fully decided and were struggling to juggle between their private lives and public spheres of influence. They therefore took upon themselves the chance to enjoy work and financial freedom while they still held tight their private family lifestyles, childbearing and domestic responsibilities. Johnson and Lloyd in their article warn that the absolute rejection of the housewife within feminist literatures is a predicament that has come up in the recent past and today, with women trying to look for solutions elsewhere beyond the sisterhood in trying to resolve the tension that surround their public and private lives or families. The article Sentenced to Everyday Life is a rich research of most popular media houses of between the years 1940 to 1950. The survey was done beyond the media and includes research in magazines that were popular then, political campaign materials, advertisements, Hollywood films and radio programmes that were watched and read by Australians. Johnson and Lloyd in their article suppose that more recent feminist protrusions of the housewife are as a result of the victimisation with earlier indications of the housewife as experts on daily lifestyles and authors of household space. They suppose that in the period after war women were viewed in a different way, not only as those individuals that use a home, but also as those that make a home. The ability of women to apply a new ‘kind of agency’ could be seen on how they were organised politically as well as how they participated in public development of policies, conversations with the media, for instance radio calls and letters to editors, and house design competitions. Johnson and Lloyd in their article insist that they want to counteract the negative views attached to the title of a housewife. They basically seek to indicate that women should be looked at as domestic goddesses and perfect consumers which are challenged by several critics. In their research, they tend to show how the media was so much discontented with their argument. In addition to the images of fantasy that are associated with domestic responsibilities, Johnson and Lloyd plan dynamics and changes that are viewed in the housewife and the materialization of new spaces in which the dilemma associated with the subject of a housewife can be discussed. Lloyd and Johnson focus much on a specific point in the history of Australia and by doing so are able to move swiftly from the cultural materials that they discover and the broader arguments they bring forth to the public about the insignificance of the housewife within the movements that support feminism. They use the empirical evidences that they get and challenge modern theories that explain the subject of a housewife and present a more complicated and different way in which a housewife should be viewed. They finally manage to build some relationship between the history and cultural work that they do and the modern debates that explain this subject. Johnson and Lloyd therefore explain in their article the importance of this discovery of the past to present issues about how women juggle between or manage the balance between work and life and the materialization of third-wave feminism. Summary of Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality This is an article by Iris Marion Young. Young discusses four things; bodily comportment, physical engagement with things, ways of using the body in performing tasks and bodily self-image of feminine existence. She argues that the way women use and regard their bodies is totally different from the way men use theirs and she tries to give possible explanations and responses based on the observations that were made by Straus after a research and observation of young girls and boys (Young 1989). In the observations, it is indicated that the masculine body moves fluidly and confidently while the feminine body uses movements that are limited. Further, there are particular mentions by Straus about how girls or rather women throw objects. This research by Straus seeks to know the difference between how males throw objects and how females throw objects. In the observations it is supposed that women fail to make proper use of the lateral and spatial potentialities of the body and a possible explanation is given that men are stronger and as such move easily. However in Young’s response to this is that this is not always true and further reiterates that women do not move efficiently for their own bodies on their own choice. They simply act awkwardly, and refuse to even try to take advantage of their strength or abilities. Young says that in explaining this form of ineffectiveness, it is not right to use dancing and sex as explanations because they have esoteric purposes. She suggests that it is better to focus on and use acts that are purposive in nature like carrying books in order to get them somewhere. Similarly amongst the set of observations that are made during this research of girls and boys throwing objects, it is noted that the feminine species suffer what is known as double hesitation which is explained as the lack of confidence by women to be able to do what men can do and similarly an exaggerated and unreasonable fear of being injured in the process of throwing things. Young also notices that women fail to give tasks their full potential because they fear being awkward and similarly fear appearing or being seen as too strong comparable to men. In regard to these arguments, she makes three conclusions that could be used to explain feminine movement and they include ambiguous transcendence, inhibited intentionality and discontinuous unity with their own surroundings. In explaining what ambiguous transcendence is, she mentions that instead of women feeling free to move through the body, they have a fake feeling of discomfort in it. They do not really forget that they have a body because they are perpetually aware of its existence, and yet are uncomfortable in it. She explains transcendence as the states of letting the body do all the experience as in men. Women, while throwing objects, have partial transcendence and only move part of their bodies and specifically the arm and looks at the unmoving part as still an object for them. They do not trust the capacity of their bodies to undertake a physical relation to things they do. As such, they leave their bodies as a burden, which must be pulled or drugged along, and at the same time protected thus slowing the process. When Young makes an explanation of what inhibited intentionality is, she explains that it means going after something with a lot of hesitation. While men smoothly and swiftly move after things with confidence and unhindered, women become conflicted in the process and move towards things and at the same time have signs of withdrawal. Further in regard to discontinuous unity with ones surrounding. In her observations and explanations, she notes that women do not use the whole of their body as an object to complete or accomplish a task but use a subsection. Similarly, she reiterates that women do not view themselves as the originators of actions but rather as the objects of the action. This thread of thought she draws from the fact that whenever an object is thrown, women view an object thrown to them as thrown at them. They view themselves as objects in situations rather than as part of the complete situation. On another aspect, as Young responded to an experiment by Erik Erikson on the feminine versus masculine use and experience of Space which claimed that females tend to emphasize on the inner space while males emphasize on the outer space, she makes quite meaningful observations and conclusions. On this aspect, it is supposed by Erik Erikson that women use less space than is available to them, meaning that the space women perceive as available to them is less than the space that is physically available to them. They choose to sit quietly and wait for things to happen. It is inferred that bodies have a here and yonder, but instead of women seeing yonder as a place they can go, they see it as a place where others can go. As males look at themselves like people who can move things around and lift them, women look at themselves at a perspective of being fixed and rigid thus unable to move things. As such, they wait for others to move the objects. By women living this life of feminine existence, they lose their physical well-being. Young in response to these observations state that the way girls and women perceive their bodies is more of a cultural effect than a physical effect. The aspect of culture has both positive and negative influence on the way women behave or carry out themselves. As such the body timidity that they portray is instilled in them by their process of growing up fundamentally based on how the society expects them to live. Finally, according to young, women view themselves more as objects more than the men do. Therefore, they live their space as confined and enclosed her at least partially so that they can exist as free subjects of the society. Furthermore, she notes, that women’s lack of confidence about their cognitive and leadership abilities are traceable partly to an original doubt in the capacity of their bodies. References Young, I 1989, Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility and Spatiality. In Young & Allen (Eds), The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy Bloomington: Indiana UP. Johnson, L & Justine, L 2004, Just a Housewife’. In Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the Housewife, Oxford; New York: Berg. Read More