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'Is It Ridiculous For Me To Say I Want To Write?' Domestic Humor And Redefining The 1950s ‘Housewife Writer’ In Fan Mail To Shirley Jackson, Jessamyn Neuhaus
'Is It Ridiculous For Me To Say I Want To Write?' Domestic Humor And Redefining The 1950s ‘Housewife Writer’ In Fan Mail To Shirley Jackson, Jessamyn Neuhaus
Jessamyn Neuhaus
Letters to author Shirley Jackson from fans of her domestic-humor literature offer important new evidence about the complexities and contradictions of gender norms in the post-World War II era. They bolster scholarship that acknowledges the power of postwar domestic and gender ideology, but also locates the sites where women, however tentatively, questioned the limitations of Betty Friedan's feminine mystique. This article demonstrates that women read such domestic-humor literature as Jackson's in contradictory ways. On the one hand, these letters support, at least in part, Friedan's assertion that the so-called housewife writer and domestic-humor literature reinforced domestic gender norms. On the …