Detour on Revolutionary Road
February 12th, 2009 © by Susan Swartz
Had April and Frank Wheeler been sorting out their unhappy suburban lives today instead of in the 1950s things might have turned out better. Right off, they could have gone to couple’s counseling. Maybe even had separate therapeutic life coaches, depending on Frank’s employee assistance plan.
Frank’s men group would have understood his need to go find himself. April would at least have been able to talk to her Facebook friends – “April is sitting in her knotty pine kitchen today wishing she had a different life.”
Instead of dropping everything to move to Paris, they could have gone online and swapped houses. Maybe found someone eager to trade a cramped Left Bank walk-up for a sprawling four bedroom with woodsy backyard.
I know it sounds like I’m making fun but that’s only because I walked out of the movie “Revolutionary Road” giving thanks for being too young in the 1950s to worry about adult things and having Betty Friedan waiting in the 1960s before I turned into an un-liberated April.
The 1950s were a pretty good time to be a kid, however, especially a middle class kid having the run of a safe neighborhood where most of the dads drove off in the morning and most of the mothers stayed home and the streets remained silent until school let out.
The 1950s were a good time to be a kid.
I had no idea if the parents in my own woodsy Connecticut suburb were feeling stifled and stuck. Last year when my book club discussed the Richard Yates novel, on which the film is based, we talked about what we as kids were doing in the 1950s. Who lived in the suburbs? Whose parents played Canasta and drank whiskey sours?
My mother, like every mother I knew except for one who sold real estate, didn’t work. I never questioned that she might have wanted to be something besides a housewife until I was in college, and she told me she always wanted to teach high school. My father was a company man, working his way up the management ladder at the same manufacturing plant as a lot of friends’ fathers. I never thought to ask if he had other dreams.
One movie reviewer of “Revolutionary Road” referred to the 1950s as “the alleged graveyard of American hope,” which is pretty ironic considering that the generation before had lived on little more than hope as they struggled through the Great Depression, World War II and the Korean War to make a better life for their kids. Many of those kids went on to become middle class home-owners with secure jobs and cars and Danish modern coffee tables, and, maybe for the first time, the luxury to ask “Is that all there is?”
Frank and April Wheeler rejected the common comfort of suburban life. Naturally, their peers both envied and resented them for daring to be discontent and thinking they were special. Today the Wheelers would be in good company, another couple of anxious Boomers trying to find themselves, with dreams they can’t afford. Of course in the current financial crisis, most everyone’s self fulfillment is on hold, at least until the 401ks bounce back. In the meantime you’re grateful to hang onto what you have, especially your house, even a faux colonial on Revolutionary Road.
Photo Courtesy of Interview Magazine
Tags: Baby_Boomers, Juicy_Tomatoes, Kate_Winslet, Leonardo_DiCaprio, Revolutionary_Road, Susan_Swartz
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February 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Like Mad Men, it’s on my list of things to avoid. Living through it once was crazy-making enough
February 13th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Great piece, Susan, right on the money. Like Mad Men, the new series mega-hit, Revolutionary Road, too, has a following among many women today who were alive but missed a bullet called the 1950s marital life.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
It’s been a great life. And, with the technology available today and the medical advancements made throughout the last 50+ years, I’m confident we can continue to contribute in very important ways. I am thankful that our feminist leaders paved the way for us and made so many of the opportunities women now take for granted, possible.
Best get over and check out the local cinema…sounds like a good show.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I saw this film recently, too. Although at the time I was engrossed by the performances and impressed by how true to the time period it felt, I felt cheated a few days later. All histrionics, and no one very likeable.
I suspect in your scenario that neither would have been willing to go to counseling, because neither knew how to be honest or valued it. I think both would have had online affairs, though — maybe, in true Hollywood tradition, with each other without knowing it.
I grew up in the 1950s. My mother worked fulltime in my father’s medical office. She had always dreamed of being a doctor, but the quotas at the time prevented her from getting into medical school, although her grades were better than my father’s. (He did get in.) So she helped him run his practice, did his lab tests, then came home and slapped together some fish sticks and canned green beans for the family dinner.
I feel very lucky to have had the opportunities that she, along with most women of her generation, never had.
Joan Price
Author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty (http://www.joanprice.com/BetterThanExpected.htm)
Join us — we’re talking about ageless sexuality at http://www.betterthanieverexpected.blogspot.com
February 14th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Not to mention safe and affordable and confidential abortion, which is a big enough issue to turn discontent into tragedy. There’s always the dark underside hidden in any period, any neighborhood, almost any gathering. For the Fifties, besides Mad Men, there was Little Children that had deeper trouble brewing–the child molester, or flasher–and a good film, can’t remember the title, also set in Conn with Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, forbidden relations between black and white, and homosexuality. I guess we have gone almost past those issues and can congratulate ourselves, but there’s something about period pieces set in times you yourself remember, or almost remember, that often don’t ring truly true. I feel it’s a good moment to go back and read John Updike.
February 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I agree, barbara. let’s go back and read Updike’s Rabbit et al. Talk about some uncomfortably real people. Speaking of which, U[dike’s last book, The Widows of Eastwick, was not particularly flattering to older Witches.