Women in Society
Gender Roles in the 1950s
The 1950s were a time in history when life was “perfect.” Men worked their jobs to earn money for their families and women kept house and had dinner waiting on the table as soon as they were home. With these clear-cut roles, women found themselves stuck in a very narrow hole with no real way out. After World War II, many women had to leave the war jobs they had obtained to create space for men again in the workforce. The way Patricia Highsmith portrays Marge in The Talented Mr. Ripley is reminiscent of women trying to break the stereotype created for them in the leading up to and during the 1950s.
In her article, “The Ideal Woman,” Jennifer Holt explores how society’s woman came about in the 1950s. Even women who were far-removed from society seemed to comply with the standards of the perfect housewife. Holt claims that the biggest reason for this was the propaganda presented in magazines (Holt, 2). Due to articles about the proper way to cook, clean, and care for a family, women felt pressured to pursue all these things and push their own dreams to the side. Marge seems to defy these standards by traveling independently and living on her own far away from home, but there are still ways in which she feels pressured into the housewife stereotype.
Shortly after meeting Marge, Tom eats dinner with her and Dickie at Dickie’s house. As they are preparing for dinner, Tom and Dickie lounge and have before-dinner drinks. But Marge is concerned with preparing dinner even though Dickie has a maid to do that for him. When speaking with Tom about the dinner being prepared, she says, “‘Dickie’s very old-fashioned about some things, Tom, the things he doesn’t have to fool with’” (Highsmith, 57). She is not at her own house, yet she is concerned with how the dinner is coming along at Dickie’s. And from what she tells Tom, Dickie enforces that behavior. He does not have to fool with the dinner, but expects Marge to concern herself with it. He also does not care that there is a hole in the stove as Marge does. Since he receives his dinner nightly, he assumes the hole does not bother anyone. In reality, it makes preparing dinner much more difficult.
Another example comes from the way Marge involves herself in the making of dinner. Highsmith shows her helping prepare and present dinner when Tom describes “Marge and the maid [as they] came out of the kitchen carrying a steaming platter of spaghetti” (Highsmith, 49). Even though Marge is an independent woman, traveling abroad, she still feels she has to fit into society’s version of a woman. She continues to prepare dinner when Dickie has hired a maid to do that very same thing. Marge could easily sit, chat, and drink with Tom and Dickie yet feels obligated to cook with the only other woman in the house.
Overall, Highsmith mirrors women of the 1950s in Marge. She feels that she must take on the standard roles of a woman but also yearns for much, much more. Even though Marge wants to be a writer, she must juggle that and caring for Dickie because it is her “womanly duty.”
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Works Cited
Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1955.
Holt, Jennifer. “The Ideal Woman.” California State University Stanislaus. Turlock, CA, 2006.
Gender Roles 101
