The Three Faces of Eve: The Post-war Housewife, Melodrama, and Home 1

Abstract

Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Family and home in these films offer a space of realisation for female identity outside the world of work. In the Hollywood films that we study, the domestic embodies the place at which modern life c o u l d b e " b r o u g h t h o me , " r e p r e s e n t i n g t h e f r a g i l e l o c u s o f a n e w wo r l d t h a t h a d b e e n p r o mi s e d b e f o r e the war. In a comparison between the films Mildred Pierce and The Three Faces of Eve (made in1945 and 1957, respectively), we examine two stages in the constructions of the figure of the housewife and home in Hollywood cinema. Both films rework the position of home set up in the masculine narrative of modernity-as a place to leave behind-and articulate a different relationship to domestic space. We sugg e s t t h a t s i g n i f i c a n t t r a n s f o r ma t i o n s i n t h e f i g u r e o f t h e " h o u s e wi f e " o c c u r r e d d u r i n g t h i s p e r i o d. These films demonstrate an important shift in representations of housework, from a form of gendered labour to housewifery as an inflexibly gendered identity. Homework and housework Representations of women at home in Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s suggest that the identity of the housewife was under pressure during the postwar period from competing discourses that each defined femininity in quite different ways. Characters often debate the cultural and economic value of wo me n ' s w o r k b o t h i n s i d e a n d o u t s i d e t h e h o me , a n d t h e p l o t s o f " w o me n ' s f i l ms " o f t e n d e a l w i t h conflicts between different roles and expectations of women: mother, wife, worker, consumer, and so on. Studied over time, films aimed at female audiences particularly demonstrate contemporary changes in views about the agency of the housewife. In the 1940s, feminine identity was economically defined a s " i n v i s i b l e , " a s wo me n ' s w o r k w a s u n p a i d, voluntary or temporary (although, of course, many working and middle-class women did work outside the home). Yet culturally, femininity was mobilised as a site of the shaping of new consumer identities. Further adding to the complexity of the figure of the modern woman in cultural texts of the postwar period, femininity was an identity constituted and interrupted by discourses of class, race, and nation, yet the housewife was predominantly a white, middle-class construction. 2 In postwar Hollywood film, t h e e me r g e n c e o f t h e " mo d e r n wo ma n " r e p r e s e n t s a t e n s i o n b e t w e e n t h e gendered identities of working woman and housewife. An alternative experience of modernity is e x p l o r e d f o r w o me n , c o n s t r u c t e d t h r o u g h a n i d e o l o g y o f " s e p a r a t e s p h e r e s " t h a t Na n c y Ar ms t rong (1 9 8 7) h a s i d e n t i f i e d i n h e r s t u d y o f wo me n ' s w r i t i n g s o f t h e e i g h t e e n t h a n d n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r i e s. T h i s gendered m...

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American Cultures Reflected in the Three Faces of Eve Movie (1957): Sociology of Literature

“…Priyoto & Aulia, (2019) focused on the psychological aspect of the main character [1], and Kopelman et.al, (2006) emphasised the laboratory experiments to reveal emotion in negotiation [2], James et.al, (1958) focused on the subliminal stimulation [3], and Emma, (2014) emphasized how cinematic depiction reflects society's view of psychiatry [4]. Zucker, (2019) analysed the movie from feminist perspective [5], Lloyd & Johnson, (2003) focused on the popular cultural narratives about women in the 1940s to 1950s [6].…”

‘Into the Unknown’: Using facet methodology to explore the Disney Princess Phenomenon

“…Many feminist media scholars have examined the implications of the representation of women within media (Bachmann et al, 2018: 1–2; Gill, 2007; Harvey, 2020; MacDonald, 1995; McRobbie, 2009, 2020; Mulvey, 1975; Tuchman, 1979; Tuchman et al, 1978; van Zoonen, 2006; Whelan, 2000) through diverse mediums: film (Kennedy, 2018, 2019; Lloyd and Johnson, 2003; Stacey, 1994; Vares, 2002), television (Ang, 1985; Arthurs, 2003, 2004; Brown, 1994; Brunsdon, 2000; Fiske, 1987; Geraghty, 1990; Kennedy, 2014, 2019; Press, 1991), news (Mills, 1990, 1997; Rhodes, 2001; Sebba, 1994; van Zoonen, 1998), magazines (Ballaster et al, 1991; Basu, 2001; Beetham, 1996; Coulter and Moruzi, 2020; Currie, 1999; Hermes, 1995; McCracken, 1993; McRobbie, 1982), pornography (Arthurs, 2004; Coward, 1982; Dworkin, 1980, 1981; Leong, 1991; Vance, 1984), and advertising (Coulter, 2014; Duffy, 2010; MacDonald, 1995). I argue facet methodology answers Carter’s, Steiner’s and McLaughlin’s call for ‘more nuanced and multifaceted understandings’ (2013: 1) of gender and the media, and van Zoonen’s identification of more ‘new and creative methods of data gathering’ (2006: 128).…”