Research Proposal on "Summary of Elaine May's Homeward Bound"

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[EXCERPT] . . . .

Elaine May's Homeward Bound

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York:

Basic Books, 1999

How did Americans emotionally shift from wartime mobilization to the uneasy peace of the Cold War? According to Elaine May's Homeward Bound American: Families in the Cold War Era, Americans reacted to the threat of the Cold War by 'cocooning' into suburban domesticity. "Secure jobs, secure homes, and secure marriages in a secure country" became the priority of most Americans, at least the white, middle-class American suburbanites that are the focus of May's book (May 13). May suggest that the nearly hysterical emphasis on normalcy during the era of "Leave it to Beaver" was a reaction to the fears of the atomic age as well as an expression of relief at the end of the Great Depression and World War II. And although all Americans were affected, the role of women in particular was put under scrutiny by the media. During the Great Depression, economic circumstances and an escalating divorce rate had forced many women to work. Women had served in factories in the war mobilization effort, and pursued careers that challenged gender stereotypes. However, during the 1950s, women began to lose the gains they had made in the workplace. Just as damaging to the incursion of women into the workplace, the media climate shifted and changed from "Rosie the Riveter" to a celebration of motherhood and apple pie.

Most of May's evidence comes from the Kelly Longitudinal Survey -- a series of surveys of middle-class white families conducted by E. Lowell Kelly, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. Kelly's work actuall

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y began during the 1930s and May compares the findings from the 1930s to the qualitative and quantitative reports of the mid-1950s to support her thesis. May's analysis of the results of this data is that women were driven by fear and a desire for security and by and large accepted America's newly stringent gender norms, until Betty Friedan's classic the Feminine Mystique began to question the suburban ideal of the stay-at-home mother. In the 1950s American women were willing to sacrifice autonomy for comfort, bolstered by images of the media's celebration of domesticity, and the suggestion that women had to 'choose' between love and a career, as famously depicted in films like "His Girl Friday."

May believes that women's bodies were the canvas on which the new ideology of Cold War America was 'painted.' Sexuality, domesticity, and anticommunism were curiously intertwined in the cultural imagination. When Vice President Nixon debated Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the Moscow-American Exhibition in 1959, their disagreement about the relative value of communism over capitalism was called the 'Kitchen Debate.' The controversial two-piece swimsuit the bikini came from a bomb test site: "The designer of the revealing suit chose the name 'bikini' four days after the bomb was dropped to suggest the swimwear's explosive potential" and sexy women were known as 'bombshells' (May 110). Life Magazine even featured on its cover some newlyweds spending their honeymoon in a bomb shelter (May 10).

As the title of May's text indicates, the comforts of home after the war were 'binding' -- binding women to confining gender… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Summary of Elaine May's Homeward Bound" Assignment:

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HOW TO WRITE A BOOK REVIEW

I have to hand in a 3 page double-spaced typewritten summary of Elaine May*****s Homeward Bound. Summaries should include a brief synopsis of the key themes or issues being raised, the author's main arguments, and your own critical reflections (i.e. which themes or arguments did you find most important? Why? Were you convinced by the author's arguments? Why? Why not?).

Summary Format: The greatest service a review can do is offer an intelligent summary of the book's main themes and arguments. This means trying to be fair to the author. You can praise, condemn, or equivocate in your conclusion. But the bulk of the review should provide the reader with an insightful summary of what this book is about. This is much more difficult than one would think. It means distilling several hundred pages into a few paragraphs.

The opening paragraph should lay out the general themes and arguments of the week's reading and a sense of its importance. What is the author's THESIS or MAIN ARGUMENT? What are the key points he/she makes along the way? The opening paragraph should focus on the BIG PICTURE. You do not need to give much supporting information/evidence here. In short, anyone who reads your opening paragraph should come away knowing what this book is about and the author's main argument.

Subsequent paragraphs should be devoted to elaborating on the most important of these ideas. How does the author prove his/her case? What kind of evidence does he/she provide? What kinds of sources and methodologies does he or she use?

In the final paragraphs, give us YOUR CRITICAL OPINION of the book. I want to know what you think about the reading and why you think that way. A critical opinion means that you say something more than "I loved the reading" or *****I hated the reading." You need to tell us WHY you liked or disliked it? What did you learn? You might want to take one point that interested you and elaborate on it.

Many of you will find this the most difficult part of writing a review. Remember, there is NO SINGLE ANSWER or OPINION; no magic words that suddenly make sense of it all. Analysis is a difficult skill to master and the only way to master it is to do it. So, if you find yourself sweating at this point in your writing, calm down and take a deep breath. What you think is less important in these reviews than explaining why you think that way.

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