A Woman's Place Is In The Kitchen, Unless She Can't Cook - The Saga Of A Restive Housewife

Candi Barker was a happy , tucked nicely into her suburban split-level, adoring husband and two lovely children. Her husband gave her one of those frilly cocktail aprons he thought she would look cute in when she served canapes to their guests, and how proud he would be to show off his pert wife to his friends. 

 

Although she felt on the cusp of something big, she smiled and gave him a hug.  There had to be something beyond all this - the women's auxiliaries, the tea parties, the bridge nights, and the endless meatloaf- but she didn't know what; and worst of all, the more she tried to live up to her husband's ideals, she bungled everything.  She couldn't cook worth a darn or balance a checkbook, never managed a hospital corner in her life, scorched her girls' jumpers, dinged the car, let the aphids and Japanese beetles take over the rose garden, and could never finish anything on time. 

Now, if she was one of those dykey lawyers she read about in Ladies' Home Journal, a career woman, on her own in New York City making her way up the corporate ladder; but she didn't know the first thing about business, and was happy when the dinner party broke up into groups, the men to the den with cognac and cigars and the women to the living room to chat about children, fashion, and gossip. 

An article in the Journal summed up this betwixt period this way:

The career girl is one of a kind - determined, independent, canny, and resourceful - for she must be in a man's world.  She has to use every bit of her feminine charm, her sharp intelligence, and her well-honed practicality and no-nonsense assuredness to make her way.  She is at the avant-garde of her sex, a pioneer, an entrepreneur, a doer; and once the wind fills her sails, there will be no stopping her. 

  

The article went on to praise the housewife, for without her hearth and home would be a vacant, airless, dry and sterile place.  There was room for both, but the new winds that blew were to change womanhood forever. 

'What's for dinner, dear', said Candy's husband, seeing the usual disorder in the kitchen - hamburger blood dripping in the sink, potatoes unpeeled in the strainer, and nothing resembling dinner in sight. 

As much as Candi tried to organize her thoughts - first this, then that - the kitchen seemed to have its own life, a kind of mesmerizing stupor which clouded her thoughts and made planning impossible. Yes, she remembered to defrost the meat, but when exactly she had forgotten.  Perhaps when she woke up, that wouldn't be good with all the salmonella around; and the oven had to be fired up well before dinner to be sure the casserole was done in time, but that too was a mystery. 

'Take one of these at around four o'clock', said her neighbor, Jane, referring to one of the new sedatives freely prescribed to women with nervous disorders.  'Mother's little helpers' they were called in the lexicon of the day, phials of little blue pills in the medicine cabinet there if the day got too stressful. 'With a martini would be best', her friend went on; but after that combo she found herself in the chaise lounge in the garden watching sparrows in the birdbath, the cirrus clouds in the sky, and as happy as can be doing absolutely nothing. 

As pleasant as that was, it was no anodyne to her growing restiveness, a feeling of desperate futility and a growing anger at everything.  She hated the kitchen and all its maniacal powers over her. She hated the disgustingly patronizing cocktail dress, and she hated the fucking cat. 

The Sixties were still a few years off, so other than the desultory article or two about career women, there was no apertura, not even a glimpse of what might be other than Kinder, Kuche, Kirke the endless round of homemaking, childcare, and social obligation. 

'What's wrong, darling', her husband said to her as she moped more than usual over the sink; but men couldn't possibly understand the angst, the anomie that women felt.  They were as dumb as rocks when it came to women.  A peck on the cheek, a 'roll over honey' in bed, and a wave goodbye as they rolled down the driveway to work.  Why had she so willingly let herself be trapped in this inescapable prison? Not only was the routine deadening and brutally dull, it signified something.  Women were around just to tune things up, supernumerary otherwise, empty shells, clothes to be hung on a rack. 

Once again, the days of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll were still years in the future, but their forbears were alive and quite well.  There was the neighbor's Librium and Beefeater's, Rosemary Clooney and the Big Bands, and love affairs. 

 

'I would never try that', said Candi, but what else was there?  She couldn't just moon around the garden, all doped up and loopy, and the music was sappy and ordinary.  Sex on the other hand was well within her reach, forbidden fruit, and at the very least an hour or so of 'elevation'. 

'Within reach' meant the milkman, the mailman, the roofer, the plumber, and the electrician, men she ordinarily wouldn't have given a second thought to, but what could be more convenient and discreet?  An affair with Harlan Powers, Senior Vice President of the New Brighton Bank & Trust might be more socially suitable, but the whole schmear of trysts, meeting places, stolen kisses and all the rest was off-putting and dangerous.  She wasn't in the business of destroying her marriage after all, just reconfiguring it more to her liking and satisfaction. 

It should be said that for all of Candi's devotion to husband and family, as random and ill-timed as it could be, she was no prude.  In fact she rated herself 'Extremely High' on the Freudian scale of female sexual desire explained in another article in the Journal. She might have little experience with sexual pleasure, but that did not mean diffidence or lack of interest.  On the contrary she delighted at the thought of any one of these tradesmen inside her, pleasuring her. 

And so it was that she invited Elmer Swensen, the Fresh Farms milkman into her bed, then Cabot Ilkins the gutter man, and Shohei Yukimura, the Japanese gardener.  Yukimura showed her Edo prints of the sexual escapades of shoguns and told her he would show her how it was done, and for an hour every other Thursday afternoon, they coupled in the most exotic way. 

No matter how recondite and careful lovers in a small town might be, word leaks out, morphs into gossip and before long she was The Harlot of Lincoln Street. 

The economic principle of sunken costs has its social application, and Davies Barker, Candi's husband after so many years of marriage, two children, and a hefty mortgage was not about to lose his investment. He would not divorce her if she shaped up in the kitchen, flew right as a mother, and welcomed him more than casually. 

In so doing, he ignored the first principle of marriage - if your wife is fucking someone else, dump her - but to his credit he was an openminded, surprisingly tolerant and forgiving man. The gossip eventually stopped and he was no longer the butt of jokes down at the gas station; but Candi knew she had him trussed, bagged, and secure, and after a cooling-off period, made her elision into the Sixties where it was she who whooped and hollered from the window of a hippy van pulling out of the driveway headed for parts unknown.