Gender studies have changed the constructs regarding women and the differences between sexes to a great extent. Women since the Victorian era have been silenced through discursive methods. There has been a distinct subjugation of women in the hand of the male and society and women’s role in the household has been strictly demarcated. As has been stated by Simone de Beauvoir that women are not born as women, it is the external environment and the society which turn them into one. So it is clear that theories of gender belief, especially post-modern theories, in which women are made from societal constructs. This idea was furthered by Michel Foucault who argues that it is through sexual repression and subjugation that the gendered otherness has been created and the model of women as a homemaker was established.
So discussion of sexuality and desire was discursively restricted by societal forces and women were idolized as the model of purity, chastity, and virtue. Anything beyond this definition was considered immoral. So there was a repression of sexual discussion in institutions and that is how it subjugates women into their cocoon of virtue and morality. These theories have been criticized in the television comedy, Desperate Housewives. This paper discusses how Desperate Housewives has demonstrated the constructs and has criticized the feminist gender theories in developing an argument of its own. The paper will try to link or show the disconnect between the television comedy-drama and the gender theories by using one of the episodes of Desperate Housewives called There’s Always a Woman from Season 5, Episode 6 (Desperate Housewives).
The episode describes the lives of few women who, live in suburban America. Most of them are housewives. The episode describes “some type of women” as “dangerous” (Desperate Housewives). It is believed that these women can be identified through the smell of their perfume or the color of their lipstick or the way they behave. Then the serial went on to describe three types of “dangerous” women who are capable of damaging other people’s lives. The first category is the woman who, for her own carnal desires manipulates and destroys the lives of others. The second category is the manipulators who manipulate others with greed and the third kind is the stealth of others who cannot be trusted for anything. Apart from this women are portrayed as jealous and irrational. Thus this episode portrays women as complete wrecks either in the way they act or in the way they behave to make their lives and/or others’ lives miserable. Given this background now the paper will discuss the ideas of gender theories that have been adopted or criticized in the serial.
Judith Curlee has argued that comedies, though apparently seemed rebellious and cynical, actually endorsed prevailing social norms and practices (Curlee). This norm is followed in Desperate Housewives. Even though the title suggests radical and rebellious housewives who openly flout their sexual desires, the serial actually spread a completely opposite message. The main characters in the serial are housewives who stay with their husbands and are happy in homemaking. They are happy living their life in a small suburban town, play poker occasionally. This episode particularly shows the jealous wife who thinks that the husband is having an affair at the sight of him having a conversation with another woman. Lynette the jealous wife accuses Tom, the husband of being unfaithful when he finds him sitting alone in the garage: “What the hell is this? You moving out on me? Is this the final stage of your mid-life crisis? An affair?” (Desperate Housewives). This act is similar to the gender constructions and roles that were demonstrated in seventeenth-century comedies (Curlee).
Additionally, this act confirms the belief of Judith Butler that the heterosexual desire in the male body which has been culturally constructed (Butler) through repetition of the supposed affair of Tom is demonstrated in the serial. The serial then talks of Gabriel, Carlos the masseur’s wife who is shown as the greedy idiot who even though enraged by the supposed deceit of a wealthy woman falls into her trap by accepting her offer to travel to Europe. This again confirms the seventeenth-century comedy trend of projecting wives as idiots and criticizing the postmodern gender theories for these acts are innate in Gabriele and not out of any form of construction. But it also addresses the “silence” over the sexuality of women which has been hushed up in institutions. The idea that women should not express their carnal desires has been refuted again and again in the serial where first the wealth lady, then Anne and then Katherine refute the conventional belief of women’s sexuality. So in a way they criticise the theories of sexuality in gender studies which argues that women’s sexual desires were suppressed through societal construction and pressure (Foucault). The serial projects men and women as equals when it came to expression of their sexual desires were concerned. Thus, sex as a taboo to women has been deconstructed in the serial as a critic of the traditional view of sexual repression though discursion.
The serial again showed some allegiance to the gender theories where women were shown where the “good” women were shown as housewives who did not succumb to sexual desires and were morally upright. They did not think that sexual expression could be considered acceptable and were shown in their specified gender roles as has been suggested by the gender theories as housewives. The idea of women being the perfect wife, understanding and accepting has been subtly demonstrated in the serial. Further a distinction is made between the “good” and the “bad” women where Lynette is the picture of “good” and Ann the picture of “bad” women. This demarcation between the two has been argued by gender theorists as the demarcation that was created through society’s discourse. Further the power distance and the societal gender roles have been distinctly demonstrated with the husbands working as bread earners and the wives as homemakers. Further with the case of Susan and her break up with Jackson and consequently a painter suggesting that she should go back to him shows that women are more culturally constructed and there is a constant pressure to be the “woman”.
The serial shows that distinct role of women and men and how women should behave. The serial remains quite regarding the acts of men, rather talks of the women who are involved in an affair or treason or manipulation or jealousy. They are the centre of attraction and male intervention in this construction of the “good” and “bad” woman is not present in the serial as the male voice is traditionally silent in this creation of gender and sex (Butler). The serial helps in the traditional Victorian discourse of women as the model of moral and virtue and anything away from this is considered as non-womanly. Thus, the serial is an amalgamation of criticism of the old school of gender and embraces the post-modern theories to a great extent in order to demonstrate the role of women as a construction of society and the otherness that is prevalent in society.
Reference
Beauvoir, Simone de. The second sex. London: Vintage Books, 1989.
Butler, Judith. Gender trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Curlee, Judith. “”One side a Jealous Wife was Like”: The Constructions of wives and husbands in Seventeenth Century English Jests.” Hengen, Shannon. Performing Gender and Comedy. Amsterdam: Routledge, 1998. 35-46.
Desperate Housewives. There’s Always a Woman. 2008. Web.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality (Translated by Robert Hurley) 2 vols.. New York: Viintage, 1990.