1950s Gender Roles

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In the 1950s, women didn't have nearly as many rights as they do now, women were just starting to enter the workforce and it was especially rare to be a woman in college. Most women of the time were expected to stay at home with the kids and take care of the cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their husbands. Everyone wanted a large family with a weight picket fence. Most women who were married and walking down the aisle were nineteen, pregnant within seven months or so of their wedding. The media was no help as well: women were told to be “happy homemakers” stay at home moms and wives with all the shows like I Love Lucy, Donna Reed show, and the Dick Van Dike show, and even some cartoons praising the idea of women staying at home. Some things …show more content…
Hansberry’s character Mama shows all the different ways a woman should be in the 1950s. Mama handles all the money and takes care of everyone in the family. She puts them before her and her needs. When Walter wants to spend the inheritance on a licorice store, Mama isn’t instantly against it, but once it gets to the point that he is willing to go and ask for the money from others, that’s when Mama shows us how proud she is in what she’s gone through and what her past family has gone through, especially when she said: “Son – I come from five generations of people who were slaves and sharecroppers – but ain’t nobody in my family never let anybody pay ‘em no money, that was a way to walk the …show more content…
Everyone, even her brother, is against her following her dreams which is shown when Walter says: “That is just what is wrong with the colored women in this world. . . Don’t understand about building their men up and making ‘em feel like somebody. Like they can do something” (Hansberry 34). Beneatha doesn’t want to just get married and be stuck; she’s going “to be a doctor and there’s nothing you can do about it” as she says when she’s getting interrogated by her family to settle down and let her husband hand all that stuff which will not slide with Beneatha. She said, “I’m not worried about who I’m going to marry–if I ever get married” (Hansberry 50). But by the end of the show, she’s going to move to Africa with her fiance to help people there. So even though she is getting married, her dreams are the main thing on her mind. Beneatha is stronger willed and wouldn’t stop until she gets what she wants. At the beginning of the play, she sees two people, George and Asagai. George expects Benetha to be a good housewife and quit school to straighten her hair and act properly. Which is not Beneatha's style at all, she’s loud and
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