JOHN UPDIKE:
THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN HIS SHORT FICTION
by
Cindy M. Rosen
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
May 2010
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Many people have made completion of this project and journey possible. I want to
thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Robert Adams for his guidance, support, and assistance. I
want to extend my appreciation and gratitude to the other members of my thesis
committee, Dr. Wenying Xu and Dr. Andrew Furman for their feedback and support. I
offer my deep gratitude to my professors who have shared their knowledge, passion, and
scholarship during my years at Florida Atlantic University. As for my family, you
provided strength during my weakest moments and shared my joys and successes. I am
forever grateful to my parents whose love and passion for education and literature
inspired my journey. To my sister Sherry, your love, support, and constant enthusiasm
kept me on track and moving forward. To my sister Jody, I am so grateful for your
editorial assistance, encouragement, and honesty.
iii
ABSTRACT
Author:
Cindy M. Rosen
Title:
John Updike: The Role of Women in His Short Fiction
Institution:
Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Robert Adams
Degree:
Master of Arts
Year:
2010
There remain two recurring criticisms of John Updike’s fiction. The first comes
from feminist critics who condemn his negative portrayal of women, accusing his fiction
of denigrating women. The second comes from late twentieth century critics who accuse
him of avoiding political and historical discussions in his fiction. However, it is my
contention that Updike is willing to address both of these concerns, and I arrive at such
an argument by carefully analyzing his collection of short stories compiled in Too Far To
Go: The Maples Stories. Within these stories, Updike’s female characters illustrate the
shifting gender paradigms over the course of the fifties, sixties, and seventies amidst the
middle-class, suburban American milieu. Updike’s women act as agents of history
providing testament to the shifting gender paradigms and historical, cultural, political,
and social milestones of a maturing country and its growing pains.
iv
DEDICATION
I dedicate this manuscript to the memory of my mother, Harriet Rosen, who
passed away in 2003. Her passion, enthusiasm, and love of literature filled my childhood.
As a guiding force in my life, she inspired me to live without boundries and encouraged
her three daughters to reach beyond traditional gender roles. Her positive energy, support,
and empowering spirit remain eternal.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: Introduction: John Updike and His Women …………….……… 1
CHAPTER 2: Women Demonstrate a Shift in Gender Paradigms ……………. 16
CHAPTER 3: Women as Historians ..……………………………...………….. 33
CHAPTER 4: Summary and Implications …………………...…..............……. 51
WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………….. 57
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction - John Updike and His Women
Many of the world’s most highly respected John Updike scholars have undertaken
critical analyses of his short stories, poetry, and most abundantly, his novels. While many
of his fans and detractors admire and respect his style and craftsmanship, there remain
those critics who consider his stories self-indulgent “fluff,” arguing a self-absorption that
highlights a greater effort toward style than story (Pritchard 1). Updike responds to his
critics in interviews explaining that his stories are snapshots of the usual life of American
suburbia. In the introduction to his 2003 collection of short stories, he contends that the
intention of his work is to “give the mundane its beautiful due” (The Early Stories xvii).
According to scholar, Daniel Quentin Miller, “Updike was first and foremost a
social critic, and his legacy rests on his ability to depict contemporary America, which for
most of his career was Cold War America.” Updike embraced the simplicity of the
moment through arduous attention to detail, surgical precision of sensory descriptions,
and the verbal painting of a moment more beautiful than the moment itself. The
collection of interviews provided by James Plath in Conversations with John Updike
clearly dispels any misconception that Updike’s success was accidental or incidental. A
great many interviews reveal that Updike’s work is deliberate and, intentional, the
product of a fierce commitment to his craft. He creates his characters and stories with
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thoughtful concern for every detail, action, and reaction resulting in characters rich in
texture and depth, each serving a particular purpose in the story.
Often criticized for his treatment of women, Updike argues that his respect for
women far exceeds that of his contemporaries. In a 1975 interview, Elinor Stout asks him
about the negative criticism he receives for his portrayal of women: “Is it true that the
feminists are offended?” Updike responds, “I can’t think of any male American writer
who takes women more seriously or has attempted more earnestly to show them as
heroines” (Plath 78).
My thesis will support Updike’s assertion that he does indeed take women
“seriously” and utilizes them to carry the weight of his most important messages.
However, his portrayal of gender roles is complicit with the mysogynistic status quo.
Subsequently, as his stories progress through the decades and characters develop
Updike’s women vascillate between challenging the deliminating notions of women’s
roles and complying with them. Accordingly, the historical context of each story reveals
the author’s complicity with the cultural and social paradigms, and does so through his
female characters.
Noticeably absent from the broad body of Updike scholarship is any substantial
examination of the role of women in his short fiction. Although many critics touch on his
female characters from the Rabbit novels, the studies stop short of any extended analyses
regarding the role or service Updike’s women provide to his stories. A study provided by
Kathleen Verduin’s, Updike, Women, and Mythologized Sexuality examines the sexual
mythologizing of women in Updike’s work. Verduin juxtaposes Updike’s dependence on
the feminine archetypes of the earth mother, sexual temptress, and witch. Ramchandran
2
Sethuraman’s article, “Writing Woman's Body: Male Fantasy, Desire, and Sexual
Identity in Updike's Rabbit Run,” discusses the physical woman and the sexuality
represented in the Rabbit novels.
Most often, discussions surrounding the women in Updike’s fiction are incidental
and contribute only to the context of the Updike male. However, his women are critical to
the depiction of the shifting gender paradigms and the social, cultural, and historical
contexts of his work. Noted Updike scholar, Robert Luscher affirms that “Updike’s
canon of short fiction captures the changing historical background, the shifting social
mores, and the personal responses to the altered socio-cultural circumstances that have
heightened spiritual uncertainty, social unrest, sexual freedom, and domestic tension”
(Luscher x). Moreover, a closer look at Updike’s women yields a greater understanding
of the total social significance and appreciation of his work.
Accordingly, my work provides an argument that Updike uses women in his
fiction as more than the other half of his men. Specific to my study, his female characters
represent the shifting gender paradigms over the course of three historical decades,
illustrating the changing gender roles amidst the suburban America milieu. In addition, he
uses his female characters to illustrate the historical context of each story providing a
chronicle of contemporary American history.
John Updike’s 1979 publication, Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories, is a
collection of short stories that traces the marriage and eventual divorce of the fictional
couple Richard and Joan Maple. I selected these stories since they offer Updike’s only
collection of short fiction with recurring characters. The serial nature of the Maples’
stories allow for a tracing of American history as well as the historical development of
3
male/female gender roles and their evolution over three crucial decades in the country’s
social and cultural development.
Updike scholar Robert Luscher aptly describes these stories as “vignette-type
narratives” reflecting a changing American landscape. I believe my analyses are better
suited to this collection of short stories than to a more random selection, as the characters
in these stories move through time like snapshots in a photo album that chronicle middleclass America and the contemporary American family. However, if we consider the
widely accepted opinion that Updike is a social commentator, then we must consider
these stories beyond and beneath the surface of the stories themselves.
As a social commentary, they offer a rich insight into the evolving and shifting
gender paradigms of post World War II America. They provide a narrative of American
history and reflect the identity crisis, anxieties, and insecurities of Cold War America. As
Dilvo Ristoff claims in Updike's America: The Presence of Contemporary American
History in John Updike's Rabbit Trilogy, Updike’s fiction is primarily a reflection of
social, economic, and political aspects of American life.
My work explores Updike’s trust in women as agents of history and providers of
representative testament to the shifting gender paradigms reflected in the Maples.
Through their evolving actions and personalities, the women in his fiction tell the story of
America’s historical, cultural, and social milestones; they reflect the watershed moments
of a maturing country experiencing growing pains. “Together, the stories chronicle the
metamorphosis of middle-class domesticity from the security of the post World War II
era through the subsequent skepticism and moral upheaval of the sixties and seventies to
the contemporary apprehension of the need for renewed trust” (Luscher x). Although
4
critics argue that Updike’s women reflect his personal misogynistic views, my work
demonstrates that his female characters are archetypes of the middle-class American
woman in her cultural context and suburban milieu. While Updike’s feminist critics are
not without merit, his portrayal of gender paradigms is complicit with the mysogynistic
status quo.
Updike’s female characters in the Maples stories, Joan Maple particularly,
represent the archetypes of American women from the mid-1950s through the 1970s.
Joan’s evolution through these stories represents the shifting gender paradigms of postwar America. Her involvement and interest in social and political issues gives historical
context to each story. Moreover, her actions, evolving identity, and gender role
demonstrate the insecurities, selfishness, and weaknesses of Updike’s male characters.
Through a close reading of these stories and contributing scholarship, I will validate my
argument that Updike demonstrates his respect for women by giving them primary
responsibility for carrying the deeper meanings of his stories. As a result, my work
provides a complementary view of the traditional feminist criticism of Updike’s women.
A representative of feminist criticism is Mary Allen. Allen argues, “His fiction
insidiously goes about making female mediocrity and inertia seem inevitable, even
lovable” (132). While conceding his talent as a craftsman and stylist, Allen attacks
Updike for perpetuating “the worn dichotomy that a woman is sexual and stupid (human)
or that she is frigid and intelligent (inhuman)” (132). Importantly, Allen attributes
Updike’s characterization of women as a personal reflection of the writer. In his fiction,
as she argues, the single woman threatens the security of the married woman and the
married woman appears dull and bovine (130). While Allen observes, “The new, more
5
strident and independent woman is clearly a threat to the Updike male,” she fails to
acknowledge any distance between the man and the writer (131). She further notes, Joan
Maple’s involvement in the civil rights movement in “Marching through Boston,”
threatened her husband’s power. Furthermore, “signs of intelligence, independence, or
strength in a woman are considered threatening to a man” (131). However, she attributes
this solely to Updike’s personal feelings towards women and to the exclusion of existing
social paradigms prevalent during the social and cultural context of the story. Granted,
Updike’s male characters resent any female fortitude but Updike is not alone in his
gender biases. They reflect the social and cultural context of the story and its time of
composition.
Unlike Allen, Josephine Hendin posits Updike’s women as representative of their
historical role in society. In Hendin’s 1976 article in The Nation, she presages my
argument that Updike uses women in his fiction to play a much larger role than that of
sexist victim. Exploring the relationships of men and women in his fiction, Hendin
proposes that his stories portray “American men whose lives, from cradle to grave, are
structured by women.” Through close textual analysis, Hendin demonstrates that, “no
other male writer has probed so single-mindedly a man’s need of women or the anger
dependency inflames” (Hendin 1). Hendin analyzes Updike’s male characters and their
inability to live without women in their lives. These women take the shapes of mother,
mistress, and wife. However, Hendin stops short of attributing these misogynistic
sentiments to Updike personally or singularly.
Other critics question Updike’s reluctance to address history more directly in his
fiction. In a 1968 interview with Charles Thomas Samuels, Updike was asked the reason
6
that history is “normally absent” from his fiction. Updike responded, “My fiction about
the daily doings of ordinary people has more history in it than history books, just as there
is more breathing history in archeology than in a list of declared wars and changes in
government” (Plath 37). To Updike’s point, he creates the historical context of the
Maples through his female characters, most significantly, Joan Maple. As Joan
participates in historical, social, and political events, she evolves as a character, wife, and
mother. Subsequently, Joan is the representative of the female archetypes over three
decades.
Daniel Quentin Miller’s study, John Updike and the Cold War: Drawing the Iron
Curtain, explores the historical and cultural influence of the Cold War on Updike’s work.
Miller argues that the Cold War shapes the writer’s perspective from the mid-1950s and
captures the optimism and anxiety of that historical period. Miller explores examples of
the ways Updike uses the Cold War tension as a metaphor for domestic life. The cultural
reality of the Cold War contributes to the inherent psychological insecurity of his
characters. Subsequently, this conflict helps to explain and offer social context to the
problematic relationships and aimless behavior of Updike's characters.
Updike's fiction, as examined in tandem with historical and cultural events,
demonstrates the creative influence of history and its influence on the construction of
male and female characters. “American identity during and after the Cold War, according
to Updike’s fiction is based on the clash between early Cold War optimism and late Cold
War disillusionment” (Miller 3). This vacillation between optimism and disillusionment
is evident in the Maples’ marriage.
7
Updike’s characters navigate the turbulent waters of these decades, their lives
shaped by moments in history. Aware of the global effects of the Cold War, “Updike
frequently demonstrates the connection between his characters and the global conflict
more subtly. It was a psychological war, a cultural war, a propaganda war, a war in outer
space and in suburban backyards” (Miller 7). “What makes Updike interesting as a Cold
War writer is the fact that his characters, speakers, and narrators engage so deeply and
complexly with their nation’s identity as it evolves over the course of the post-World War
II era” (Miller 3).
Effective discussions regarding the stories and the relationship of Richard and
Joan Maple rest on an understanding of the influence society and history have on the
couple both individually and as a couple. “Updike uses the Cold War to illustrate the
difficulty of marital peace in a world characterized by deceit, suspicion, and
unwillingness to negotiate” (Miller 54). The Maples Stories narrate post-war America
through the historical context of each story. As the stories progress, “the fifties become
the sixties and seventies, and innocence and pregnancy give way to compromise and
betrayal” (Greiner 192). The voice, actions, and reactions of women illustrate the
changing gender paradigms and evolving female archetypes.
The Maples begin their journey in the 1956 story, “Snowing in Greenwich
Village.” During this time, television shows like “Leave it to Beaver,” “Father Knows
Best,” and “The Donna Reed Show,” reinforced and commercialized the traditional
male/female gender roles within American suburbia (Beuka 152). Father went to work
and came home to join his family at the dinner table. Mother handled the laundry,
shopping, dishes, and putting dinner on the table. Mothers modeled their role for their
8
daughters, and fathers for their sons. Magazines, television advertisements, and home
economics classes in school perpetuated the gender roles for children. Women told their
daughters that they should enhance and maintain their physical beauty and domestic skills
to both acquire and keep a husband (Friedan, 124-127).
Moreover, a close analysis of the Maples stories (beginning with “Snowing in
Greenwich Village”) demonstrates that the initial and traditional gender roles pass down
from previous generations. Ultimately, the gender role of women changes over the course
of these stories, which is representative of the changes experienced by the historical
American woman. Contrasting the traditional feminist readings, these changes are
consistent with and reflective of societal changes and are not necessarily or particularly
reflective of the personal opinions of the writer himself.
In addition, any study of Updike’s work (and his women) is incomplete without a
discussion of the suburban influence as Robert Beuka examines in Suburbianation:
Reading Suburban Landscape in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Film. His
study explores the correlation between contemporary fiction and film and the cultural and
social paradigms reflected in Updike’s body of work, particularly the Rabbit novels.
Beuka considers the works within the suburban setting of well-manicured suburban lawns
that concealed financial fraud, gender insecurity, sexual infidelity, social exile, and the
fear and paranoia of Cold War America. He exposes the gender anxieties, confinement of
women, and male insecurities associated with the suburban milieu.
According to Beuka, the suburban social climate created a crisis for men as their
identities became synonymous with their occupational roles and as women became
defined by their domestic roles. The traditional gender paradigms are significant in the
9
propagation of the “new domesticity” in America. Beuka suggests, “The limiting gender
roles on which it [the new domesticity] was founded – did not emerge fully formed from
some sort of national consensus; rather, it was a product of manifold cultural practices
and discourses” (152). These practices and discourses constructed through television,
magazines, and social organizations altered society's gender paradigms. Not incidental,
the first Maple story, “Snowing in Greenwich Village,” initially appeared in The New
Yorker, a magazine often considered the guide to the quintessential twentieth century
lifestyle.
Equally important in providing context to Updike’s women is Betty Friedan’s
study that examines the gender context of the era of Updike’s writing. Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique confronted the nation with “the problem with no name” (62). Friedan
examined the women of suburbia and offered a foundation for this identity crisis
experienced by so many suburban housewives:
There was, just before the feminine mystique took hold in America, a war,
which followed a depression and ended with the explosion of an atom
bomb. After the loneliness of war and the unspeakableness of the bomb,
against the frightening uncertainty, the cold immensity of the changing
world, women as well as men sought the comforting reality of home and
children (Friedan, 268-269).
Friedan explains that women became lost in suburban middle-class America.
“The feminine mystique permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their
identity” (Friedan 126). Many women experienced emptiness in their lives. The move
away from city life and social interaction in close proximity to friends and family resulted
10
in increased rates of depression, alienation, and anxiety among suburban housewives. A
woman’s “blankness” and existence in the shadow of her man resulted in a suburban
anxiety driving women to question the value and purpose of their lives. Women asked
themselves, “Is this all” (Friedan 57)?
According to Friedan, “The public image, in the magazines and television
commercials, is designed to sell washing machines, cake mixes, deodorants, detergents,
rejuvenating face creams, hair tints” (Friedan 126). The commercial media message sent
implied that, “American housewives can be given the sense of identity, purpose,
creativity, the self-realization, even the sexual joy they lack – by the buying of things”
(Friedan 301). Popular culture and the media celebrated women for their conformity to
this paradigm. “The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young
American woman and the envy it was said, of women all over the world” (Friedan 60).
The studies by Friedan, Beuka, and Miller provide insight into the social, cultural,
and historical environment of Updike’s fiction. Their studies explore the gender roles and
social influences that constructed the mid-century American woman. To substantiate my
argument that Updike’s women are constructed archetypes of their time rather than
reflections of a writer’s misogyny, it is important to acknowledge; “The suburbs and the
baby boom overlapped to create an entrapping space for women” and resulted in a
woman’s sense of “dislocation and purposelessness” (Beuka 151). Updike captured this
sentiment as his female characters provide a window into moments of anxiety and
change. Furthermore, “Updike’s America is driven by the constant negotiation between
what our nation hopes to be and what it actually is. The goal of the early Cold War was to
11
preserve the 1950s American dream of prosperity, security, domestic harmony, and
individual liberty” (Miller 3).
The Maples stories, published individually in The New Yorker, Harper’s
Magazine, Weekend, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly,
and Playboy, provide “a metaphor for America at mid-century” (Greiner 192). Their
original completion and publication dates are useful for understanding the underlying
social and historical context and subtext of each story as Updike constructed his
characters. The shifting gender paradigms and social mores of the stories follow the
course of America’s historical and cultural events. The women are constructed archetypes
of the suburban woman during each movement of contemporary history. Moreover,
Updike’s women revolve around the static and stagnant male. Their metamorphosis
occurs over three decades amidst the suburban American milieu providing “vignette-type
narratives” reflecting a changing American landscape (Luscher xi).
My exploration of Updike’s women begins with his first Maples story, “Snowing
in Greenwich Village.” The gender paradigms associated with this story provide a
baseline for the evolution of the characters in tandem with the shifting gender roles of the
nation. The actions and voice of Rebecca Cune, Joan’s single friend, define the paradigm
of “the single white female.” In contrast, the actions and voice of Joan Maple, married
just two years earlier, define the paradigm of the middle-class American woman. The two
women, defined equally by their actions and the interior and exterior monologues of
Richard Maple, are representative of two types of middle-class American women. This
story serves as a springboard for the changing gender roles over the coming years as
conveyed in the subsequent stories.
12
As the Maples entered the sixties, the country stepped out of its comfort zone
along with them. Americans questioned all they believed to be right and true. Women
wanted their independence, an identity, and a voice. Men mostly wanted their world to
remain unchanged. By the latter part of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietnam War
created a schism in American families (Miller 85). Updike did not escape the Vietnam
discourse either. His intellectual and literary peers condemned him for not speaking out
against the War. In fact, in 1967 Updike declared, “He was not fundamentally opposed to
U.S. intervention” in Vietnam (Miller 72). Once his views became known, “Evidence of
Updike’s own discomfort about his Vietnam stance became commonplace in his fiction
during the 1970s. His protagonists live with the burden of being isolated in their pro-war
stances, which are tremendously unpopular among their social sets” (Miller 85). In the
1968 story, “Eros Rampant,” his main female character Joan Maple attributes her
husband’s views on Vietnam to his secretary’s lack of interest in him. Joan quips, “What
went wrong, darly? Did you offend her with your horrible pro-Vietnam stand” (TF 134)?
As the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam commenced, the country looked to
leadership that would heal the nation and restore faith and confidence in the ailing
country. Much to the country’s dismay, President Nixon left his mark on the wrong side
of history. In Updike’s 1960 story, “Wife-Wooing,” Joan Maple introduces Nixon to the
Maple household while simultaneously introducing the reader to her intellectual
curiosity. As Joan lay in bed reading a book about Nixon, Richard encourages his wife to
go to sleep. Joan exclaimed, “Wait. He is just about to get Hiss convicted. It is very
strange. It says he acted honorably” (Too Far to Go 34). Although Richard Maple
appears uninterested in Nixon, Joan’s intellectual curiosity and desire to address this
13
uncomfortable topic reinforces Updike’s confidence in his women to engage in the more
serious issues central to the country.
As America entered the 1970s, the marital landscape changed with new no-fault
divorce laws. Husbands and wives had an opportunity to dissolve their marriages without
cause or assignment of blame. The government had tacitly accepted an ideology of
unaccountability (Pritchard 180). Updike himself obtained one of the first “no-fault”
divorces in the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Updike’s 1974 story, “Here
Come the Maples,” describes the reason for the Maples’ divorce as “an irretrievable
breakdown of the marriage” (236).
By the time Updike wrote “Nakedness” in 1974, the Watergate burglary and the
President’s involvement reinforced the country’s skepticism and angst over its leader’s
ultimate betrayal of the country’s trust. Updike’s story relays Richard and Joan’s
experience with the nakedness of the visitors of the nudist beach “invading” their side of
the beach. Given the historical and social context of this story, Kristiaan Versluys asserts,
“Within the dominant social code, nakedness is an invasion of foreign significations, an
eruption of anarchy and lawlessness within the settled order of things” (Versluys 35). By
extension of this interpretation, “nakedness” represents the vulnerability and lawlessness
of the Watergate and Vietnam era providing the political context of the moment. Once
again, Joan brings this “nakedness” to Richard’s attention while his head lay unaware
against the sand.
Economically, the seventies marked an emerging energy crisis in 1973; the price
of gasoline rose substantially and rationing created long lines at gas stations across the
country (U.S. History Online Textbook, “The Sickened Economy”). The automobile that
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provided mobility, access, and excitement in the 1950s was now holding Americans
hostage in their homes. In 1979, the Three Mile Island accident resulted in a partial core
meltdown of the nuclear energy plant in Pennsylvania (USNRC 1). This same year,
Pennsylvania’s native son, John Updike published Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories, an
appropriate metaphor for the meltdown of a fictional 1950s “nuclear family.” The Maples
stories ultimately conclude with the divorce of Richard and Joan Maple. Their marital
cycle comes full circle. Like the country in which they live, their earlier innocence is lost,
traditional identities are redefined, and their futures are yet to be determined. The
subsequent pages trace the journey of the Maples through Updike’s most revealing
characters, his women.
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CHAPTER 2
Women Demonstrate a Shift in Gender Paradigms
Joan Maple is the archetypal white, middle-class, post-war, American woman.
The course of her life and her role in the Maple family demonstrate the shifting gender
paradigms of post-war America. Following the war, women resume their traditional
gender roles in accordance with the post-war campaign to renew the country’s traditional
family values. Supported by the commercialization of the “American dream” and popular
culture, women return to the traditional roles of housewife and mother. The Maples are
the face of the white, middle-class, suburban, American family. Over the course of the
Maples’ marriage, a woman’s role in her family and community experiences historic
change. Since the role of men changed comparatively little in American society during
this period, Updike’s female characters to provide both a social history and cultural
account of the shifting gender paradigms of the fifties, sixties, and seventies.
By the latter part of the 1950s, many suburban housewives were discontent with
an identity shaped by marriage and motherhood. They looked in the mirror and saw their
mothers. Their lives left them feeling empty, under-appreciated, and unfulfilled. Many
single women, excluded from the “suburban dream,” felt incomplete without a husband
and family (Friedan 514). The women’s liberation movement of the early 1960s gave
married and single women permission to voice their frustrations aloud.
In 1963, Joan Maple evolves from the timid newlywed of the first Maple story in
16
the 1956 story to the more assertive woman of the sixties. Joan’s evolution runs in
tandem with the evolution of gender roles from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s.
Society constructed families that perpetuated the gender roles of America’s men and
women in the 1950s, according to Betty Friedan. A man was deemed successful when he
provides financially for his wife and family. A woman was successful when she ensures
the happiness of her husband and children and maintained a nice home. The advertising
and media messages reinforce that the 1950s woman found purpose and happiness as a
wife and mother. Her college education provided a means by which she acquired a
husband and learned appropriate social skills, etiquette, and home economics. Shaped by
the emerging commodity culture and driven by television and magazine advertising
images, the middle-class, suburban, American woman represented the revitalized national
agenda of a “new domesticity” and the American dream (Mankiller 9). Accordingly,
Updike’s portrayal of women reflects this socially and culturally constructed paradigm.
As the middle-class, American family moved to the suburbs, technology advanced
to provide household appliances that enabled the housewife to become more efficient.
Women quickly became avid consumers and the target audience for mass media. Material
wealth and status became symbols of the suburban dream (Mankiller 8). A man’s role
was that of breadwinner and sole financial provider for his family. A woman’s role was
that of household caretaker, housekeeper, child-care provider, and sexual partner. The
image of the 1950s woman emerged from social and cultural mores. Her appearance, role
in society and community and physical attractiveness to her husband were the priorities
set forth in her gender paradigm (Mankiller 241).
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In keeping with the 1950s gender paradigms, John Updike contextualizes
“Snowing in Greenwich Village,” the reader’s introduction to Richard and Joan Maple.
Written in 1954, and published in January 1956, the story first appeared in The New
Yorker magazine. The date of composition is important since it provides insight into the
traditional gender roles as defined by society. In later years, it provided a look through
the rearview mirror into 1950s domesticity. Although Updike’s critics argue that the
author’s depiction of gender roles is a result of the author’s mysogony, we must also
consider his views as representatitve of their time and place in history and not merely
expressive of a misogynistic author. According to Stacey Olster, Updike describes
himself as “a sort of helplessly 50’s guy” not dissimilar from his literary contemporaries
(Olster 3). As such, Updike’s characters reflect a misogynistic society with clearly
defined gender roles and a discomfort when the lines and roles become blurred.
This first story begins the saga of this middle-class American couple from the first
night in their new Greenwich Village apartment. While the story is the beginning of their
journey through life together, it serves to chronicle a typical, middle-class, American
couple, and their family replete with tributes and tragedies. In addition, it provides a
baseline for the origin of suburban America and the changing gender roles women
experience over three decades and the resulting consequences. The two central women in
“Snowing in Greenwich Village” are Joan Maples and Rebecca Cune.
By comparison, these women offer two archetypes of mid-1950s female identities
as determined by the central male figure, Richard Maple, as well as historically
acceptable societal mores. Married for just a year, the Maples represent the traditional
gender roles learned by the modeling of their parents. This particular evening, the Maples
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entertain an acquaintance of Joan’s, Rebecca Cune. Single and apparently independent,
Rebecca lives in her own apartment not far from the Maples. Social etiquette during this
time dictates that their new geographic proximity to one another requires them to invite
Rebecca over for cocktails “because now they were so close” (13).
Updike’s narrator contrasts the married Joan Maple with the single Rebecca Cune
by comparing their personalities, demeanor, posture, and physical attributes. He provides
descriptions through Richard Maple’s thoughts and using the physical features of these
women to demonstrate society’s view and judgment based solely on superficial, external
characteristics. The male description of women provides testament to a male dominated
society that constructs and defines the women.
As Rebecca entertains the Maples with a tale of her past roommates, she sits “on
the floor, one leg tucked under her” in a comfortable, casual and childlike manner. In
contrast, Joan sits “straight-backed on a Hitchcock chair from her parents’ home in
Vermont” as though posing for a photo or portrait. Joan awkwardly plays her new role as
wife and hostess simultaneously, attending to her guest and self-conscious of her own
posture. Rebecca animatedly tells the couple the story of the brief period during which
she shared an apartment with another girl and that girl’s boyfriend. Rebecca is keenly
aware of the potential for public ridicule and quickly explains her brother’s dismay over
this arrangement during his recent visit. She describes that he was aghast claiming that he
“had always thought she was such a nice girl” (15). When Joan inadvertently found
humor in this scenario, she self-consciously scolded herself for such a thoughtless
reaction. Joan’s restraint indicates her own fear of judgment and condemnation from
Richard and Rebecca.
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The comparison of these two women in this situation represents the contrast of the
adventurous and dangerous single woman living independent from public perception and
judgment and the married woman constrained by social paradigms and expectations. In
contrast, Joan is the married woman now very self-conscious and intentional with her
actions and role as a wife. According to the social paradigms, the married woman is
supposed to be responsible and morally above reproach. Conversely, the single woman is
inherently promiscuous asserting a lower moral threshold. Critic Mary Allen interprets
this contrast as a reflection of Updike’s own beliefs, biases, and prejudices. While this
may or may not be true, we cannot discount the influence of the historical context of
1956 middle-class America and the existing traditional gender paradigms reinforced
through media and popular culture. Updike’s female characters are victims of society’s
gender paradigms.
Demonstrating society’s mid-century gender paradigms, “Many upscale bars
refuse to serve women, particularly if they were alone, under the theory that they must be
prostitutes” (Mankiller 24). Therefore, Updike is not only representing “the dull bovine”
wife and the single woman as a prostitute because these are necessarily his prejudices or
bias as Mary Allen suggests. Rather, he imparts society’s gender biases and paradigms on
his female characters and tacitly accepts them.
Richard compares the two women from a physical perspective while
subconsciously drawing similar conclusions about each woman’s identity relative to her
marital status. With initial concern over a cold that Joan had been suffering all week,
Richard describes Joan’s physical features and complexion as having a “Modiglianiesque
quality” and Rebecca’s features as similar to a “da Vinci” drawing (15). These
20
comparisons are quite revealing. Modigliani’s paintings appear “mask-like” with their
elongated faces and accentuated features. However, Leonard da Vinci’s best-known
work, the Mona Lisa, is remarkable for her elusive smile and mysterious quality. As a
married man, Richard finds mystery in the single and independent woman. Her
elusiveness to the married man offers temptation. His wife is no longer a mystery. She
wears the “mask” of a married woman. Accordingly, the married woman, because of her
marital status, is “dull” while the single woman represents promiscuity and excitement.
In furthering of their roles, Richard “posingly poured out three glasses” of sherry
and Joan made “the standard toast in her parents’ home, ‘Cheers, dears!’ “ (16). Rebecca
continues sharing stories of her single life and the Maples exchange stories of their early
months together when they were first married. When Joan notices the snow beginning to
fall outside, her excitement is overwhelming. She has experienced so little snow over the
last few years that she seems to forget her grown up role as wife and becomes childlike in
her enthusiasm. The snow brings the evening to a close and Joan insists that Richard walk
Rebecca home to ensure her safety. By ardently insisting that Richard escort Rebecca
home, Joan is reinforcing the social and gender paradigm that a woman needs a man for
protection. This protection is not only physical. Joan is offering Rebecca protection from
society’s judgment of her as a single woman walking the streets alone at night.
Though each of these three characters represents three different paradigms,
Richard, Joan, and Rebecca share a similar perspective. Each one is concerned with
external appearances. They are living their lives for public approval and consumption.
The roles they play are for the acceptance of others while while they remain selfabsorbed in their own search for identity. Ironically, the identity they seek is one of
21
conformity. They long for acceptance into the predetermined and pre-assigned roles
created by their parents’ generation representing the illusion that by playing these roles
they will find happiness and fulfillment. They follow the path from their parents’ homes
to their college dormitories. Richard and Joan have now taken the next logical and
socially expected step of marriage and home. Without much imagination, their futures are
determined as their marriage seals their fate. On this evening, they are not Joan and
Richard. They are “the Maples.” Their individuality, equality, and singularity are lost.
People now refer to them as “the Maples.” They regain individuality and equality in the
final story as they divorce.
The women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s drew inspiration from the civil
rights movement. Comprised predominately of middle-class women, the movement
absorbed the spirit of rebellion that affected a significant number of middle-class youth in
the 1960s. The emergence of the movement was also linked to the sexual revolution of
the 1960s, which was sparked by the development and marketing of the birth-control pill
(Brodie 61). Friedan encouraged women to seek new roles and responsibilities, to
determine their own personal and professional identities rather than have them defined by
the outside, male-dominated society. She along with her supporters sought to make
women aware of their limited opportunities and strengthened their resolve to increase
those opportunities. She gave them “permission” to speak up.
The 1963 story, “Giving Blood,” is the first to demonstrate the discomfort
associated with the shifting gender roles in society. The Maples settle firmly into their
lives as an old married couple. However, after nine years of marriage, the novelty of
“playing house” in the opening story, “Snowing in Greenwich Village” has worn off.
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They move from their first city apartment in Greenwich Village to the suburbs of Boston.
In this story, Joan commits the couple to blood donation on behalf of a sick friend of her
family. Richard is unhappy about the drive into the city, Joan’s control of his weekend
and the inconvenience it causes him. He argues selfishly, “I drive this road five days a
week and now I’m driving it again” (37). Richard, annoyed by the impending commute,
appears more irritated by Joan’s leadership role in the decision to donate blood than the
actual drive itself. Beneath the surface of Richard’s words, he appears to be thinking, how
dare she make a decision on my behalf? Richard’s role as the head of the household
appears threatened.
Equally important to Joan’s daring independent decision is her ability to spar
verbally with her husband. She is no longer the docile, reserved wife from the 1956 story.
In 1963, Joan no longer timidly accepts Richard’s whining. She argues, “Well it wasn’t
me…who had to stay till two o’clock doing the Twist with Marlene Brossman” (38). Joan
willingly and competently holds her ground in a verbal fencing match with Richard
debating which one of them acted more flirtatiously and inappropriately during a friend’s
party the night before. Updike uses this conversation to demonstrate a shifting paradigm.
The traditionally timid wife gains enough confidence to confront her husband and is met
with his resentment.
When Richard becomes critical of a new couple invited to the party, Joan shines a
light on the shifting paradigm of their marriage claiming the new couple is “a perfectly
pleasant, decent young couple. The thing you [Richard] resent about their coming is that
their being there shows us what we’ve become” (39). Joan’s insight into Richard’s
discontent, as well as her own, represents the angst-ridden, middle-class American couple
23
trapped in the blank conformity of suburbia. The “young couple” recalls the Richard and
Joan from “Snowing in Greenwich Village.” Joan keenly interprets Richard’s resentment
as a sign of his growing discontent with whom and what they have become as a couple.
Finding her own voice, Joan represents the changing gender paradigm of women
shifting from dependent and soft-spoken wife in the 1956 story to a stronger woman that
provides strength and support for her husband. In “Snowing in Greenwich Village,”
Richard offers to care for Joan who is experiencing a mild winter cold. Although offered
potentially as a “pose” of the concerned husband, Richard was made to appear the more
dominant figure in the relationship. “Giving Blood” illustrates a shift in this paradigm as
Joan is portrayed as the stronger character. Her experience in donating blood and her
sense of responsibility to aid an ailing relative demonstrate her selflessness and inversely
Richard’s inexperience and selfishness. Moreover, Richard leans on Joan in this story for
support and comfort as he gives blood for the first time. Updike uses Joan to demonstrate
the change occurring in the married couple of the sixties and the moral and ethical
questions they confront.
Richard attempts to recover his male dominance when the hospital intern
administering the blood donation informs Joan that she and Richard finished filling their
blood bags at the same time. The intern finds it ironic that he “started him [Richard] two
minutes later than her [Joan] and he’s finished at the same time.” The intern explains that,
“Nine times out of ten, the man is faster. Their [men] hearts are so much stronger” than
women’s (50). The intern’s statistical reference implies that the male is the stronger never
allowing the woman to win even when given a head start. This scientific reinforcement
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evokes prid in Richard comforting him and reaffirming his male dominance according to
the social mores that value men as the stronger sex.
After the couple gives blood, they decide to have lunch at a local diner. There is
unusualness to this encounter and, “A bashfulness possessed them both; it had become a
date between two people who have little as yet in common but who are nevertheless
sufficiently intimate to accept the fact without chatter” (56). However, the discomfort in
their shifting gender roles returns when Richard compliments Joan and finds a sexual
appeal in her bravery at the hospital. Joan returns the admiration for his bravery.
However, instead of accepting equality, Richard claims, “But I’m supposed to be. I’m
paid to be [brave]. It’s the price of having a penis” (57). Richard reminds Joan that the
accepted gender paradigm still denotes the woman as the weaker and more dependent
sex.
In 1964, “an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act had added “sex” to
the categories of people protected from discrimination in employment” (Mankiller 599).
By 1965, Joan Maple finds an identity outside her home too. For the first time in their
marriage, she finds a purpose other than wife and mother. In “Marching Through
Boston,” Joan temporarily steps outside of suburbia and into the urban milieu.
The civil rights movement had a salubrious effect on Joan Maple. A
suburban mother of four, she would return late at night from a nonviolence
class in Roxbury with rosy cheeks and shining eyes, eager to describe,
while sipping Benedictine, her indoctrination (73)
The physical reaction to her work resembles the afterglow of a sexual encounter. Her
satisfaction is overwhelming and not easily contained. The joy she experiences from her
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sense of accomplishment and gratification overflow from the inside exhibiting a physical
reaction. Representative of her newfound strength and confidence, Joan shifts from
drinking the more genteel sherry in the first story, to drinking the more aggressive
Benedictine in this story nine years later.
The 1966 story, “Your Lover Just Called,” foreshadows the couple’s destiny as
they, and America, teeter on the threshold of a further shift in American gender roles and
marital infidelity. The sexual revolution of the sixties, and seventies fueled the
implementation of the “no fault” divorce legislation. Spouses find it easier in the late
1960s and “Swinging Seventies” to find extramarital partners. Subsequently, spouses
come “to have higher, and often unrealistic, expectations of their marital relationships.”
Feminist consciousness-raising results in wives feeling freer in the late '60s and '70s to
leave marriages they find unsatisfying. (Wilcox 1).
By 1966, Richard and Joan are experimenting with an open marriage. On this
particular day, Richard stays home from work due to a cold. Joan is making the bed when
her husband answers the ringing phone. Richard jests that “your lover just called,”
implying the hang up is his wife’s lover’s surprised reaction to find her husband home
from work. The setting implies the typical, traditional gender roles of the middle-class,
suburban, American couple. Joan is in the midst of housework as Richard sits in repose.
Richard attributes Joan’s recent happiness as proof of an affair claiming, “You’ve
been acting awfully happy lately, there’s a little smile that comes into your face when
you’re doing the housework” (102). Richard’s accusation implies that if Joan is happy, it
must be the result of an extramarital affair. He assumes that only another man can make
his wife happy. Joan’s happiness cannot be a result of any self-fulfillment or self26
actualization. Richard’s sentiment is reflective of the 1950s gender biases that invoke the
impossibility that a woman can derive happiness without a male conduit.
Joan contends, “I have no lover. I have nowhere to put him. My days are
consumed by my devotion to the needs of my husband and his many children” (103).
Joan’s flippant response voices the frustration synonymous with other suburban
housewives trapped in their existing traditional gender roles. Similar to those in
opposition to the women’s movement, Richard mocks Joan’s ability to be more than his
wife and mother of his children.
Oh, so I’m the one who made you have all the children? While you were
hankering after a career in fashion or in the exciting world of business.
Aeronautics, perhaps. You could have been the first woman to design a
titanium nose cone. Or to crack the wheat-futures cycle. Joan Maple, girl
agronomist. Joan Maple, lady geopolitician. But for that fornicating brute
she mistakenly married, this clear-eyed female citizen of our ever-needful
republic—(103).
Richard speaks to Joan as though she is a child using the term “girl agronomist” instead
of “female agronomist” or simply agronomist. His condescension demeans and
diminishes Joan’s value as a “citizen of our ever-needful republic.” He insinuates an
absurdity in the notion that Joan is capable of being anyone other than a wife and mother.
Richard represents the societal mores existing in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Joan
represents the woman struggling for an identity outside of the home. She represents the
1960s woman who, for lack of a paycheck, is not seriously considered. After all,
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“America was a society that had trouble taking anyone without an economic role
seriously” (Mankiller 5).
Although Mary Allen and others attribute the gender biases of Richard Maple to
Updike’s personal views, Richard and Joan’s gender roles and insecurities reflect those of
1960s men and women. While Updike may in fact share this view, the suburban
community also reinforces a woman’s role in the home. In Updike’s own New England
area, “The public golf course in Westport, Connecticut, would not allow women to play
during prime weekend hours, claiming that men deserved the best spots because they had
to work during the week” (Mankiller 23). American popular culture reaffirmed existing
gender inequities. However, “Beginning in the 1960s, two linked developments
influenced U.S. women’s literary history. The first was a renewed interest in gender and
the rebirth of feminism. The 1950s had tended to marginalize women but their voices
began to be heard again in the 1960s” (Mankiller 349).
In the story, “The Red-Herring Theory,” the Maples discuss the potential marital
infidelities amongst their friends. They sit in the living room together prospecting the
private lives and relationships of each couple. As Joan criticizes each couple, “Richard
saw that she was in a judgmental mood; her pronouncements, when she was in this mood,
fascinated him” (56). Joan explains to Richard the “red-herring theory” that a man does
not flirt openly at a party with his mistress. She observantly argues that he flirts with a
woman that he is not having an affair with in order to provide cover for his true affair.
This woman, she explains, is his “red-herring.” Joan mocks Richard’s earlier definition of
himself as “a suburban man,” since she is unable to identify his “red herring:”
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The properly equipped suburban man, as you call him, has a wife, a
mistress, and a red herring. The red herring may have been his mistress
once, or she may become one in the future, but he’s not sleeping with her
now. You can tell, because in public they act as though they do (157).
Joan openly confronts marital infidelities without bitterness or judgment. She describes
these infidelities as though they are a game of chess. The men and women are pawns and
each player manipulates to suit his/her own interest. Updike’s women are becoming wiser
and more insightful. While the men (notably Richard) stand still, the women grow and
evolve around them.
The 1974 story, “Gesturing” represents a turning point in the Maple’s relationship
and a shift in a woman’s independence. “Richard had been sleeping in a borrowed
seaside shack two miles from their home” the summer following their trial separation
(215). However, because of the close proximity to the shared family home and his
frequent visits with his kids, Richard spends a number evenings sharing dinner with the
family. Joan, making the advancing gesture, suggests that it is now time for Richard to
move permanently and further away. She informs Richard, “I’ve decided to kick you out.
I’m going to ask you to leave town” (213). Joan’s statement and display of confidence in
making such a “gesture” surprises Richard.
However, Richard questions Joan’s ability to function without him nearby. He
asks, “How can you possibly live without me in town” (214). When Joan replies that it
will be “easy,” Richard interprets her confidence as “a bluff, a brave gesture” and not
truly an indication of her self-confidence and self-reliance (214). Representative of the
changing gender paradigms, Joan asserts self-confidence and a willingness to take control
29
of her own happiness and independence. The women’s movement during this time results
in a number of marital separations. However, critics disagree as to the cause. Are women
like Joan Maple finally feeling strong enough to stand on their own? Alternatively, do
men find a woman’s search for independence and an identity outside of the home too
threatening and uncomfortable to embrace the shift (Mankiller 274-275)?
Ruth, Richard’s lover, had been a second-grade teacher prior to marrying her
husband Jerry. A teaching profession is one of the few jobs considered acceptable for a
woman. However, the expectation is that she will give up her job once she is married and
has children. “A woman who works after marriage and children “might want to downplay
the fact rather than make her husband look inadequate” (Mankiller 17).
In the emotional story leading up to the Maples divorce, “Divorcing: A
Fragment,” Updike provides a view into the insecurities and inadequacies experienced by
the American woman in the 1970s as reflected by Joan Maple. Even though Richard and
Joan have been separated and living apart for more than a year and a half, Joan is still
wounded by Richard’s rejection, infidelity and apparent inability to understand her
sadness at the collapse of their marriage. The couple that is always able to communicate
finds it difficult to connect.
In her angst, Joan “sat crouched on what had been their bed, telling him, between
sobs, of her state of mind, which was suicidal, depressive, beaten” (232). Her strength in
previous stories fades as she tries to come to terms with the finality of her marriage
dissolution. Although a “no fault” divorce is now legal, Joan interprets her failed
marriage as her own personal failure. After all, though twenty years have passed, society
still determines it is a woman’s responsibility to keep her husband happy and family
30
intact. The gender paradigm instilled in her by her mother and grandmother remains
(Friedan 61). Therefore, if her husband is unhappy, the woman must be at “fault.” This
line of reasoning proves ironic in a “no fault” divorce.
The final story in, Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories, is “Here Come the
Maples.” Although this story brings finality to their divorce, it also brings gender equality
to the couple for the first time. The story begins with Richard’s trip to the courthouse to
pick up a copy of their marriage certificate. The act of returning to the same courthouse
of their wedding leaves Richard nostalgic. As he recalls the entries on his marriage
certificate, he notes Joan’s maiden name and her profession as a “teacher.” Recalling his
own profession at the time “inferiorly, as ’Student’” (251). Now, more than twenty years
after their wedding, Richard’s thoughts return to feelings of inadequacy and the inequity
their professional titles represent.
However, as their divorce becomes final, Richard and Joan are finally equal. They
both are in satisfying relationships. As the couple discusses the divorce process, Richard
realizes that Joan “had been drawing near to marriage at the same rate as he, and with the
same regressive impulses” (251). In the previous stories, Joan always appears either in
front of, across from, or behind Richard. When donating their blood in 1963, Richard
finishes first and takes pride in this accomplishment. However, on the day of their
divorce “She had climbed the courthouse steps beside Richard” (252). Only upon the
dismantling of their union can they walk in the same stride. Oddly, only upon the final
dissolution of their marriage do Joan and Richard find equality outside of their gender
paradigms. As the judge proclaims the official, legal end of their marital bond, “Joan and
Richard stepped back from the bench in unison and stood side by side” (256).
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In this final story of the Maples, Updike illustrates society’s constructed gender
paradigm that reinforces a couple’s inequality once they marry. The husband provides
leadership for the family and the wife becomes subjugated to her husband’s life. After
their divorce, Joan achieves equality. A feminist reading of the Maples stories provides
an exploration of the construction of gender and identity, and the role of women in
culture and society (Mankiller 226). Accordingly, these short stories provide a continuum
of the shifting gender roles of women over three decades.
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CHAPTER 3
Women as Historians
As discussed previously, a number of critics accuse Updike of failing to write
about more substantive topics, ultimately placing style above substance. They argue that
his omission of history and politics in his work diminishes its literary value. However, I
argue that Updike uses the political, historical, and cultural landscape of Cold War
America to tell the story of the Maples. More specifically, he uses his female characters
to establish the socio-historical and political context providing a chronicle of
contemporary American history and the American family.
Notwithstanding critics, like Mary Allen, who accuse Updike of misogyny, he
entrusts his female characters to confront and address the most historical, controversial
and socially relevant issues of our time. The women illustrate the inherent tensions of
Cold War America, and the Maples represent the middle-class suburban American family
often conflicted between past, present, and future:
Updike’s characters during this period locate meaning in the past, treat the
present as a game, and think about the future as little as possible. Faith in
the future and in God diminishes simultaneously, and characters tend to
run around aimlessly, living their lives as though gratification in the
present was all that mattered. (Miller 9)
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The Maples stories are rich with the discourse of a Cold War nation transfixed by
a new suburban domesticity and fostering the backyard patio culture. The United States’
involvement in Vietnam, a space race, the civil rights movement, the women’s
movement, and an emerging divorce culture provided a contentious atmosphere in the
country. It was a time when the country was resistant to change but eager for freedom
and prosperity. It was an era of conflicted values, exposed emotions, and a confused
human perspective on global events. It was an era of truth hidden below the surface and
communication occurred through gestures, gossip, and infidelity. Updike uses the Maples
as a mirror reflecting the face of the middle-class, suburban American family. His female
characters convey the historical events, social mores, cultural conflicts, and political
controversies of post-war America. His female characters pulled back the curtains on the
suburban household revealing its vulnerabilities, insecurities, and infidelities.
While Updike’s men remain self-absorbed and self-indulgent, his female
characters initiate internal narratives on the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the
sexual revolution, and shifting marital paradigms in the burgeoning suburbs. Although
Updike may have been complicit in society’s misogynistic paradigm as feminist critics
have claimed, he clearly displays trust in his female characters by affording them the
responsibility to carry the weight of the substantive content in each story. In contrast, his
male characters either hide from these issues and events or are reluctant participants or
observers. His women remain central to each story, reaffirming Josephine Hendin’s
assertion that the lives of his male characters “from cradle to grave, are structured by
women” (Hendin 1).
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An example of Hendin’s assertion is the 1960 story “Wife-wooing.” Although the
story is predominately an interior monologue with Richard as the narrator, Joan is truly
the central figure. Richard’s “lyrical meditation” puts his wife at the center of the family
(Greiner 109). At times, his wife’s centrality is admirable, attractive, and seductive.
Assessing the continuity of their marital ties, Richard marvels that “seven years would
bring us no distance” (31). He benchmarks the valuation of his life by his marital and
familial roles. Just seven years into his marriage, he has achieved the successful transition
from newlywed in his first urban apartment to a single-family home in the suburbs,
complete with wife and children. Consistent with the social mores and historical context
of this story, Richard considers his life successful. His wife, children, and home establish
his American dream.
In the morning, Richard continues his self-assessment. However, his earlier
admiration and satisfaction with suburban domesticity turns to resentment and feelings of
entrapment. The prior evening, Richard boasted of his love and admiration for his wife.
However, by morning, his sentiment turns sour. The same woman he found seductive in
the evening’s glow of the fireplace is now “ugly” (35). The Monday morning chaos in the
kitchen provides a different perspective on his life and wife. As Joan prepares breakfast
and cares for their children, Richard reevaluates his wife noting; “Seven years have worn
this woman” (35). The night before, Joan was the center of his domestic bliss. With the
light of day, she becomes the reason for his static existence. Consistent with Cold War
America, Richard looks for someone to blame for his unhappiness. America looked at the
Soviet Union as the enemy. Richard looks at Joan.
35
As the cultural history of American suburbia transitions so too does the
relationship between husband and wife. In the morning, Richard rushes, “Out of the
domestic muddle, softness, pallor, flaccidity; into the city” (35). In contrast to her
husband, Joan is unable to escape her domesticity and suburban entrapment. Noticeably
absent in this story’s narrative is Joan’s “voice.” Richard’s lamentations make his wife’s
emotions conspicuously absent.
In the evening, Richard returns home from a job that he considers too complex for
his wife to understand. In a stream of consciousness, he internally evaluates his wife’s
value; “You serve me supper as a waitress—as less than a waitress, for I have known
you” (36). Richard’s interior monologue provides insight into a man’s resentment toward
his wife and the inequality that exists. Updike uses Richard to demonstrate the superiority
of the man since his work yields a monetary return, and the devaluation of the woman.
While Richard remains eager to escape or avoid political conversations, Joan
introduces political history into the story and into their marriage. As both a commentary
on their sexual lives and political views, Richard is resentful of his wife reading a book
on Nixon while they lay in bed. Richard’s only interest in bed is sexual. His thoughts are
superficial and physical. His wife’s interests on this evening are intellectual, political, and
emotional:
In bed you read. About Richard Nixon. He fascinates you; you hate him.
You know how he defeated Jerry Voorhis, martyred Mrs. Douglas, how he
played poker in the Navy despite being a Quaker, every fiendish trick,
every low adaptation. Oh my Lord. Let’s let the poor man go to bed.
We’re none of us perfect. (34)
36
As the couple briefly debates the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss and Nixon’s role in the
espionage trial, Richard resents his wife’s interest in her book recalling the time when
“my ornate words wooed you” (34). Feeling ignored and uninteresting, Richard becomes
jealous of his wife’s intellectual curiosity. Additionally, Joan’s interest in this infamous
trial introduces the anti-communist movement into the story’s backdrop. Accordingly,
Joan remains engaged in the political discourse while Richard prefers to avoid the
conversation. In this vignette, Updike acknowledges the shallow and selfish male and the
intelligent and curious female.
The 1966 story, “Marching Through Boston,” written during the height of the
Civil Rights movement, centers around Joan Maple and her participation in a civil rights
march in Boston. Her involvement in the movement represents her first venture outside of
the home and the security of her middle-class, suburban backyard. Updike uses Joan’s
character to represent the 1960s’ emerging grass roots efforts of middle-class, white,
American women actively participating in political and social reform.
The suburban housewife tends to housework, childrearing, and grocery shopping.
However, the social and political movements of the Sixties encourage women to step
outside of their suburban confinement emboldening their spirit and energizing the
movement. Women like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan provided an impetus for
women to create change and share their collective voice. Joan Maple exemplifies this
emerging movement.
Ironically, Joan’s desire for an identity outside of her family results in the loss of
her individual identity once she joins the civil rights movement. Such contradiction
within Joan’s life reflects the dichotomy of the social and political movements of the
37
sixties and seventies that encouraged people to invoke their individuality and become a
part of a movement greater than themselves. The Civil Rights movement represents the
collective conformity of group affiliation. Joan explains that, “You mustn’t do anything
within the movement as an individual” (74). Participation and affiliation remove an
individual’s identity. Joan tells Richard that, “Once you’re in a march, you have no
identity” (74). Once again, Updike offers a nod to the sixties and its obsession with self
and individuality as his characters confront the prevailing, contradictory social
paradigms.
Richard resents his wife’s involvement in the movement since it detracts attention
from him. She now enjoys a purpose other than wife and mother. She no longer belongs
to just him. Curiously, Richard notices that the movement “had a salubrious effect” on
Joan (73). While she represents the shifting paradigm of women during the mid-1960s,
Richard represents the trepidation and insecurity of men eager to remain unchanged.
Even though he offers to participate in the march with Joan, Richard remains cynical and
judgmental, mocking the Black speakers and complaining incessantly about everything
from the crowds to the weather. He blames Joan for making him suffer in “the icy rain for
hours listening to boring stupid speeches” that Joan already heard (88). Joan argues for
the historic significance of the march and contends that “it was important that they were
given and that people listened” (88). She explains that the greater significance is that they
“were there as a witness” to this historic moment in American history (88). It is as though
just being a “witness” to history provides a meaning to their lives as well as validating
significance of the movement.
38
The cultural, social, and political complexion of the country begins to change in
the early sixties. As Joan returns from the march, “The Montgomery airport had been a
madhouse – nuns, social workers, divinity students fighting for space on the northbound
planes” (75). Joan embraces this new world order, finding it energizing. In contrast,
Richard experiences profound insecurity and discomfort in his changing world. The
stronger and more confident Joan becomes the more apparently uncomfortable Richard
appears. Although critics accuse Updike of portraying women as weak and inferior, in
this story Joan Maple demonstrates a strong female character socially evolved and
receptive to the changing world. Equally important, their conflicting views highlight the
couple’s representation of an emerging chasm in American households.
In addition to Joan, other female characters introduce socio-historical events into
this story. When Richard and Joan first arrive at the march, they run into Joan’s former
psychiatrist and his sister. His sister introduces the Maples to her teenage daughter Trudy
and her daughter’s friend, Carol. The girls are accompanying them to the march as an
educational experience. As they discuss Trudy’s education, the psychiatrist’s sister tells
Richard and Joan that, “Their English teacher assigned them Tropic of Cancer” (82)! She
finds the idea that such a controversial book is part of their curriculum exasperating. The
introduction of this novel into the story further contributes to its historical and cultural
context. The 1961 U.S. publication of this novel led to an obscenity trial that tested the
U.S. laws on pornography in the Sixties. Conservatives accused the book of obscenity for
its graphic depiction of sex and sexual content (Lacayo 70-71). While the men avoid
discussion on the topic, Joan and the “girls” find it a quite acceptable topic.
39
In conjunction with the civil rights and women’s rights movements, the U.S.
involvement in Vietnam creates a wedge between Richard and Joan. Like Richard Maple,
Updike was unable to remain unscathed by the Vietnam and Cold War controversies and
his conflicting views permeate the Maples’ story. The literary and academic communities
fostered an anti-war position. Updike hesitated to become involved; however, an innocent
response to a survey put Updike in hot water with his liberal literary peers. As much as
Updike (and Richard Maple) hoped to remain unchanged and indifferent to political and
social discourse, he found the topic unavoidable. Updike explained in a 1989
commentary entitled, “On Not Being a Dove,” that he “felt obliged to defend Johnson
and Rusk and Rostow, and then Nixon and Kissinger, as they maneuvered, with many a
solemn bluff and thunderous air raid, our quagmirish involvement and long extrication.”
Accordingly, he explained that he, like the rest of the world, was unable to remain outside
of the controversies. Updike believed that as a writer, he was no more qualified than the
average citizen was to offer advice on war or politics. In this same essay, he explained his
anxiety and over-exposure to the country’s problems:
Hawk, dove, soldier, draft evader, and even middle-class householder
were caught in a web of contradictions as an empire tried to carry out an
ugly border action under the full glare of television. The soap opera of the
nightly news and the clamor of a college generation that had not been
raised to be cannon fodder. (22)
Richard Maple’s “web of contradictions” pervades his world as the women in his
life take every opportunity to bring those contradictions to the forefront. An example of
this is in the political and social environment of the late sixties within the cultural context
40
of “Eros Rampant” (1968). The story describes an episode in the Maples’ marriage when
Richard flippantly confesses to a failed seduction of his secretary and Joan confesses to
her own infidelities. Joan asks Richard if his pro-Vietnam views played a role in his
failure to seduce Penelope: “What went wrong, darley? Did you offend her with your
horrible pro-Vietnam stand?” (134). Suggesting that Richard’s view on Vietnam is the
hindrance to his liaison with his secretary. Joan highlights the social excommunication
resulting from support of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the late sixties.
As the couple dresses for a party, they trade accusations about their marital
infidelities while intermittently providing comfort and arbitration to their children who
burst in and out of the scene, unaware of their parents’ betrayals. The scenario provides
an appropriate metaphor of the dichotomy existing in the late sixties. Suburbia offers a
false and contrived sense of utopia removed from the chaos of the urban outside world.
However, bursts of reality interrupt the false pretense of these characters’ lives, revealing
infidelity, deception, and social obfuscation. As the title of the story aptly describes, it is
a time in the United States of “free love,” as sex and sexuality run rampant without
regard for moral long-term consequence.
Joan Maple represents the left wing, liberal viewpoint, and Richard the right as
the Vietnam War escalates and the country becomes increasingly impatient with its
leaders. Throughout these stories, Joan Maple is the moral compass for the family.
However, the revelation of her sexual infidelity illustrates the vulnerability and
imperfection of both sexes and the “web of contradictions” that exists equally within and
beyond suburbia. Like their country, the Maples begin to question all that is “normal” and
“sane.” Theirs is a world running “rampant.”
41
The women’s role as social historians continues in “The Red-Herring Theory”
(1971), as Joan Maple introduces the “red herring theory” to Richard. Once again,
Updike’s female character proves to be more intuitive and perceptive than the men. She
is able to both identify the deceit of this human chess game, as well as explain it to her
less intuitive mate. Joan Maple’s character and behavior would seem to disprove Mary
Allen’s assertion that Updike’s women are “stupid” or “prostitutes.” While not all of
Joan’s actions are admirable, she is clearly aware of her role in this particular game. In
contrast, Richard remains naive and unaware of anyone outside of himself. He remains in
the dark until Joan enlightens him, and then he resents the illumination she provides.
A “red-herring” is generally defined as an irrelevant topic or idea used as a
deterrent and/or distraction from the actual or real topic/idea. During the Cold War,
historians and politicians often debated the idea of Apollo XI as a “red-herring” used to
distract Americans from the Vietnam War and Civil Rights issues. The narrator sets the
scene of the after-party wreckage left in the wake of a suburban house party. The Maples
play host to their fellow suburbanites, offering a gathering rich with food, music, alcohol,
and gossip:
The party was over. Their friends had come, shuffled themselves, been
reshuffled, worn thin with the evening and then, papery post-midnight
presences, had conjured themselves out the door. The Maples were left
with each other and a profusion of cigarette butts and emptyish glasses.
The dishes were stacked dirty in the kitchen, the children slept in
innocence upstairs. Still, the couple, with the hysterical after-energy of
42
duty done, refused to go to bed but instead sat in a living room grown
suddenly hollow and huge. (155)
The “party” of the previous decade ends. Divorce, politics, and betrayal had
“shuffled” and “reshuffled” their friends and acquaintances. The decadent sixties leaves
the Maples and their friends with “emptyish glasses,” symbolic of empty lives. Like the
mess left in Vietnam, Americans experienced a multitude of troubles “stacked dirty”
while the next generation “slept in innocence” unaware of their tainted inheritance. Joan
and Richard Maple provide the metaphor of middle-class America, awaiting something
that will fill their “living room grown suddenly hollow and huge” and void of purpose.
Their lives are “worn thin” by political upheaval, social unrest, and clandestine national
leadership acting in “papery post-midnight presences.” Joan, as hostess of the party,
provides the context for the rules of the game and the role of each player. Again, it is
Updike’s female character bringing order to chaos.
Updike’s “red herring theory” permeated American politics and popular culture
during this same historic period. History reveals that Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s
foreign adviser, traveled secretly to China in 1971. Then, Nixon surprised everyone by
traveling to China and meeting with Mao Zedong. Historians assert that Nixon used his
trip to China as a “red herring” to exploit the rivalry that existed between the Soviet
Union and China. Nixon intended to leverage the animosity between the two countries in
order to reach an arms’ treaty. This strategy coined the term “triangular diplomacy” (U.S.
History Online Textbook, “Triangular Diplomacy”). This “triangular diplomacy” is a
recurring motif throughout the Maples marriage. Joan and Richard remain two sides of a
43
triangle connected by an ever-changing third side. Alternately, the third side is a lover, a
political position, a sexual dissatisfaction, or a social movement.
As the Maples’ marital betrayals unfold and their suspicions escalate, Americans
grew suspicious of betrayal by their government. In 1971, the New York Times published
excerpts from the Pentagon Papers revealing a high-level deception of the American
public by the Johnson Administration. The papers exposed a top-secret overview of the
history of U.S. government involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg, a participant in the
study, leaked information to the press (U.S. History Online Textbook, “Years of
Withdrawal”). Distrust and doubt influence communication within the Maples’ home. As
with their own government, political undercurrents, gossip, whispers, and covert gestures
obstruct the Maples’ communication.
As the Maples’ marriage inevitably dissolves, the early 1970s ushers in an
emerging divorce culture. University of Virginia sociology professor W. Bradley
Wilcox’s essay, “The Evolution of Divorce” offers a political, cultural, historical, and
sociological history of divorce in America. According to Wilcox, “the nearly universal
introduction of no-fault divorce helped to open the floodgates, especially because these
laws facilitated unilateral divorce and lent moral legitimacy to the dissolution of
marriages” (Wilcox 82).
His study examines the shifting paradigm of marriage, claiming that, “prior to the
late 1960s, Americans were more likely to look at marriage and family through the
prisms of duty, obligation, and sacrifice” (Wilcox 82-83). Subsequently, the marital
paradigm shifted, and “the 1970s marked the period when, for many Americans, a more
44
institutional model of marriage gave way to the ‘soul-mate model’ of marriage” (Wilcox
83).
While Americans experienced an emerging divorce culture, so too do the Maples.
In the highly acclaimed story, “Separating” (1971), the couple’s progression towards
divorce accelerates. Although the separation is Richard’s idea, Joan controls and defines
the “strategy of their dissolution” (193). Richard proposes that they break the news to
their children with an “announcement at the table” (194). However, Joan considers
Richard’s approach “a cop-out” (194). Each one’s approach is a reflection of his/her
individual personality and a reflection of his/her treatment of marriage and divorce. Joan
is strong and direct. Her sensibility, pragmatism, and selflessness represent her desire to
resolve their marital issues. Her concern is with the emotions and individual reactions of
each of her children. In contrast, Richard desires a quick and easy approach. He suggests
a single announcement, reflecting his selfishness and concern for his own pain and dread.
Richard’s selfishness and his avoidance of difficult tasks provide the context for his
adulterous behavior and subsequent appeal for the separation and eventual divorce.
Joan recognizes Richard’s desire for an easy resolution to life challenges. She
argues that, “They’re each individuals, you know, not just some corporate obstacle to
your freedom” (194). Joan’s accusation is consistent with Wilcox’s theory regarding a
shifting marital paradigm. Joan’s strength in confronting her husband results in Richard’s
concession to follow her lead. Recalling memories of his eldest daughter Judith, Richard
is in tears, overwhelmed by the gravity and enormity of the separation. “They had raised
her; he and Joan endured together to raise her, alone of the four” (198). Judith is a
45
product of the utility of their marriage. The undercurrent of emotion reveals Richard’s
remorse for his own loss while Joan’s pain is over the collective loss of her family.
In the distance, Richard hears Joan explaining the situation to their eldest
daughter, Judith. Joan offers their scripted explanation that, “She and Daddy both agreed
it would be good for them; they needed space and time to think; they liked each other but
did not make each other happy enough, somehow” (200). Joan reaffirms their love for
their children and attempts to absolve the children from any sense of guilt or shame. The
explanation Richard and Joan agreed to is consistent with the 1970s “soul-mate model”
(Wilcox 83). Unlike the “earlier institutional model of marriage” and consistent with the
divorce discourse of the seventies, couples in “unfulfilling marriages also felt obligated to
divorce in order to honor the newly widespread ethic of expressive individualism”
(Wilcox 83). Joan’s explanation to her children reflects the ethos of this cultural period in
American history. Although it is Richard who seeks happiness outside of his wife and
children, Joan quells the children’s pain by offering the consolation that the divorce will
free them to be happy. Like their country, “they needed space and time to think” (200).
However, their son John does not find comfort in their words. Exacerbated by his
excessive champagne intake at the dinner table, John’s anger is significant and palpable.
In pain, he accuses his parents of not caring about them and treating them as “just little
things you had” (201). Richard tries to console his wounded son reassuring him that,
“You’re not little things we had…You’re the whole point” (201). Richard’s response to
his son demonstrates the earlier decade’s marital paradigm that considers “marriage and
family through the prisms of duty, obligation, and sacrifice” (Wilcox 83). Richard tries to
reassure his son that everything will be all right. Trying to comfort him, Richard agrees to
46
address John’s unhappiness in school providing a quote that soon became the mantra of
the decade, “Life’s too short to be miserable” (203). It is a statement ironically opaque,
leading the reader to question whether Richard is referring to his son’s life and happiness
or his own. In either case, Richard’s explanation and sentiments reflect the utilitarian
nature of marriage in the 1950s.
After telling three of their four children, Richard’s and Joan’s roles appear to
switch. Richard returns to the dinner table noticing that “where Joan sat had become the
head” (204). It is as though her strength and pragmatism in this historic family event
earns her the role as the head of the household. She is the dominant force subjugating
Richard to the weaker position. In a momentary wave of guilt prior to telling his eldest
son the news, Richard offers Joan a consoling sentiment that, “if I could undo it all, I
would.” Joan asks him, “Where would you begin” (206). With this simple question, he
realizes the impotence of his comment. Once again, Joan is “giving him courage, she was
always giving him courage” (206).
Recognizing the magnitude of his decision to separate, Richard admits his
weakness, shame, and vulnerability. He tells Dickie, “My father would have died before
doing it to me” (209). However, Richard’s revelation is self-serving. He is unable to
assuage his son’s pain. Instead, his confession only makes Richard feel better. It is a
confession serving to unburden his soul. Richard quickly “felt immensely lighter”
releasing his guilt (209). Relieved, Richard neglects to inquire too aggressively as to his
son’s feelings, satisfied that the act of confession is over.
The 1974 Maples story, “Nakedness,” reveals a cultural and social vulnerability
as nudists “invade” the beach where the Maples and their friends are vacationing. Joan’s
47
declaration opens the story. As she observes the first sighting of the nude sunbathers, she
exclaims, “We’re being invaded”! Richard is curiously aroused by Joan’s excitement as
he “lifted his head from the sand” (180). The story describes a group of young nude
sunbathers venturing to the “family side” of the beach. As police enter the scene, they
chase the nudists from the area and force the naked to dress. The delineation between
conservative family values and liberal “post-pill paradise” politics represents a country
divided by cultural and social values. Joan’s reaction appears enlightened and excited,
embracing the freedom of the moment. However, the act of Richard lifting “his head
from the sand” suggests a denial of reality. Again, Joan opens Richard’s eyes to the
“nakedness” of society and forces him to confront an uncomfortable situation that he
would sooner avoid.
The “nakedness” reflects changing cultural and sexual mores as well as individual
vulnerability. Joan brings this to the forefront, as she is the first to notice (or at least
declare) the “invasion.” Others then choose sides. They are either supportive of the
nudists’ rights, appalled by their embolden display, or completely indifferent. This lighthearted story offers a deeper more significant message on the state of American society.
It reflects a country divided by cultural and social values. Its citizens stand in judgment of
one another and the lines of decency are blurred.
The Watergate scandal demonstrated the “nakedness” and vulnerability of the
country’s leadership. The presidential election of Richard Nixon and his subsequent
downfall during the Watergate scandal left a cultural chasm in the country:
In the heated climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s, President Nixon
believed strongly that a war was being fought between "us" and "them."
48
To Nixon, "us" meant the conservative, middle- and working-class,
church-going Americans, who believed the United States was in danger of
crumbling. "Them" meant the young, defiant, free love, antiwar, liberal
counterculture figures who sought to transform American values. (U.S.
History Online Textbook, “Undoing a President”)
The Maples themselves represent the two conflicting sides, “us” and “them.” The partisan
politics of the Nixon administration and the moral vulnerability of the country drove a
wedge between generations, genders, social classes, and economic classes. Joan Maple’s
willingness to embrace the liberal, social freedom casts her as the less conventional of the
two Maples. Joan’s identification with “them” reinforces Richard’s position as “us.”
The final story, “Here Come the Maples,” takes place in the context of the
Massachusetts Commonwealth passing a no-fault amendment to their divorce laws.
Joan’s response to receipt of her copy of the couple’s divorce affidavit denotes the
ludicrous nature of the proceedings. While Richard finds the document “shocking,” Joan
“thought it was funny, the way it was worded. Here we come, there we go” (250-251).
She evidently finds the idea of a “no-fault divorce” ironic since blame and fault are
central to most of their arguments and their marriage. Joan’s sardonic tone and
exaggerated, light-hearted acceptance of the finality of her marriage denote the ease
associated with the new “no-fault” divorce.
The decline of the Maples’ marriage marks a decline in America’s domestic
agenda. Their marriage originates in the 1950s amidst the propaganda of the “American
dream” as full of hope, they move from the city to the suburbs, together with so many
other middle-class couples and families. The Maples’ lives proceed in tandem with
49
America. Together, they follow the shift in gender paradigms and the social
consciousness of their country. They experience the civil rights movement, women’s
movement, Vietnam War, sexual and political infidelities, and the eventual demise of
their marital bond. The story of the Maples is an American story. Furthermore, as my
thesis argues, Updike’s female characters provide the chronicle of America’s history
through their role in each story and the context surrounding their lives.
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CHAPTER 4
Summary and Implications
Throughout my writing of this thesis, a question remained foremost in my mind:
Why do so many critics and literary commentators remain committed to the idea of
Updike as a misogynist? As a twentieth-century writer, Updike created fictional
characters and subject matter that are not unlike that of many of his contemporaries nor
was he particularly atypical in his own upbringing. As I questioned the scholars and their
criticism, my thesis project took shape. I believe the answers are found in his stories, the
individuality of the author, and the individuality of the years of the each story’s
composition. In addition, the colloquial nature of Updike’s fiction offers relateability.
This relateability contributes to the realism and biographical assumption in his work.
Updike relied upon his ardent attention to detail in constructing genuine, flawed,
and relatable characters living the struggles of ordinary, middle-class, suburban
Americans. His male characters, like Richard Maple, are imperfect, selfish, unapologetic,
and, they remain unchanged from the first of his fiction to the last. However, his female
characters vascillate between actively participating in the world and merely existing in it.
Like Joan Maple, they provide the major social, historical, cultural, and political context
of his stories. Their lives reflect the shifting gender paradigms of three decades. By the
end of the Maples stories, we still know little about the individual characters, but we
know a great deal about the world in which they lived.
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Updike’s talent for realism concerning suburban, middle-class life disallows any
suspension of disbelief. In fact, the simplicity of his short fiction and the Maples stories
in particular, provides a voyeuristic look into the homes of his readers resulting in a
personal and familiar relationship with his audience. Thus, the lines between fact and
fiction are blurred as readers and critics struggle to distinguish where biography ends and
fiction begins.
My journey through this study was an appropriately nostalgic one. Memories
emerge of my own childhood in middle-class suburbia experiencing, as I experienced, the
shifting gender paradigms, social mores, and watershed moments in American history.
Updike’s female characters are not unlike the women in my own past. The men of my
past, like his, were similarly dependent on the women in their lives. The women juggled
home, work, children, and husbands. Their domestic role was under-valued and often
under-appreciated. The men commuted from the suburbs to the city for career, women,
and money. The roles were clearly defined and until the mid-1970s were unchallenged.
Updike captures this America. Like the fiction he created, Updike is a product of his time
and place in America. Likely complicit with society’s gender biases, Updike and his
characters remain vulnerable and flawed.
My work places the Maples stories in their historical context and offers a close
reading within that context. A feminist reading, taking the characters simply at face
value, may indeed support Mary Allen’s accusation that Updike’s women are either
pretty and stupid or dull and bovine. However, further research and a closer reading of
the social, historical, and cultural context of both the writer and the work result in a
complentary interpretation. Considered by as many as keen observer of people, places,
52
and details, Updike provides a social commentary. This commentary may in fact
implicate his complicity with the mysogynistic status quo and validate existing gender
paradigms. However, he does empower his female characters to provide the historical and
cultural context of each story, enabling them to demonstrate shifting gender paradigms.
Considering himself the quintessential, “helplessly 50’s guy,” Updike used his
perspective and observations as a template for his fiction (Olster 3). In the forward of The
Early Stories 1953-1975 (2003), Updike described his generation as “simple and hopeful
enough to launch into idealistic careers and early marriages, and pragmatic enough to
adjust, with an American shrug, to the ebb of old certainties” (xvi). Inevitably, the men
and women of his fiction prove archetypes of this same era. They emerge from the fabric
of post-war, Cold War America. His male characters stumble through their lives,
insecure, selfish, and unaware. His female characters evolve and grow, and shine a light
on male weaknesses, insecurity, and selfishness. His male characters cannot exist without
the female characters. His wife Joan, his mistresses, and the women of his fantasies
define Richard Maple.
A close reading of the Maples stories also reveals insight into the shifting gender
roles of women in America over the course of three decades, 1950-1970. While a number
of critics view the female characters as reflective of Updike’s misogynistic views and
condescending attitude toward women, my study offers a complementary and
occasionally conflicting view. I offer textual support along with relevant sociological
studies that reveal his female characters to be archetypes of women during the
burgeoning decades they represent and within the historical context in which they live.
After studying interviews given by the Updike as well as critiques written by his
53
contemporaries, Updike’s characters prove to be the product of painstaking attention to
each “mundane” detail.
In addition, the Maples chronicle the social, cultural, political, and historical
events of contemporary America. Although most of the Maples stories first appeared as
short stories in magazines, the gravity of the topics the author addressed is no less
weighty than the novels by his contemporaries. Hidden within and beneath the
undercurrent of light, domestic tales, the Maples live through some of America’s most
influential and significant decades of change. Often criticized for a greater attention to
style than substance, Updike offers “America’s story,” fraught with war, prosperity,
children, marriage, divorce, social reform, and political scandal. Specifically to my thesis,
while his male characters remain self-absorbed in their own plight, his female characters
place the Maples in their historical context.
Cold War America looked to television, music, and magazines for their
information, entertainment, and escape. To a large degree, popular culture not only
defined this changing nation, but also constructed and validated its emotions, reluctance,
and insecurities. John Updike’s creation of the Maples allowed America to hold up a
mirror to their own lives with a touch of humor, sadness, and nostalgia, and without
reproach.
The innocence of his Maples stories makes difficult topics palatable, and social
and cultural insights more accessible. The female characters bring timely issues,
controversial discussions, and historical moments into each story chronicling the
changing role of women and discomfort and reluctance of men to conform to these
changes. The female characters talk about politics, infidelity, and racial discord. Updike’s
54
treatment of his female characters reflects the respect he has as a writer to entrust his
greater story to them. In his own life, Updike attributed his success to his first wife
conceding that, “I could have made a go of the literary business without my first wife’s
faith, forbearance, sensitivity, and good sense, but I cannot imagine how” (The Early
Stories xii).
While I was constrained by the limits of my thesis project, there remains
substantial material for further study of the Maples stories. Updike’s short fiction remains
under-studied. Most of the Updike scholarship tends to focus on the “Rabbit” novels. For
example, Sally Robinson provides an extensive discussion on “John Updike and the
Construction of Middle American Masculinity.” While her focus is the development of
middle-class, white, American masculinity and its representation in contemporary fiction,
it certainly is applicable to the story of the Maples and their respective gender roles
within suburbia and society in general. Extending her argument through Updike’s greater
body of short fiction offers an interesting analysis for future study.
In addition to Robinson, Robert Beuka’s SuburbiaNation provides a fascinating
study of twentieth-century American fiction and film as representative of the suburban
landscape. Like Robinson, Beuka’s reference to Updike is in the context of his “Rabbit”
novels. However, the correlation he draws between fiction and film and their relationship
to the suburbanization of America offers a useful analysis for the close reading of the
Maples stories. Since Updike’s broader body of short fiction reflects a definitive
regionalism, Beuka’s study raises further consideration of the influence of suburbia and
popular culture on Updike’s work.
55
Finally, my research reveals a potential for more expanded analyses of the women
of mid-twentieth century fiction. Male protagonists enjoy substantial material set within
post-World War II fiction. Fiction like Too Far To Go, Babbit, and The Man in the Grey
Flannel Suit provide the basis of further study of suburban literature. Scholars have
discussed Updike’s Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, Sinclair Lewis’s George Babbitt, and
Sloan Wilson’s Tom Rath. However, the female characters of this fiction remain
critically understudied. Yet, wives and mistresses of these men are integral to their
success, and are key to their insecurities, happiness, unhappiness, and ambitions. A study
of Joan Maple, Myra Babbit, and Betsy Rath offers possibilities in the interest of
feminist, social, and cultural studies.
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Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York, NY: WW Norton, 2001. Print.
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