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The Story Of How Women's Lives, Loves, And Dreams Have Been Re-shaped Since 1950, The Year Of Walt Disney's Cinderella And A Time When Teenage Girls Dreamed Of Marriage, Mr Right, And Happy Endings... Cinderella Stories Captured The Imagination Of Girls In The 1950s, When Dreams Of Meeting The Right Man Could Seem Like A Happy Ending, A Solution To Life's Problems. But Over The Next Fifty Years Women's Lives Were Transformed, Not By The Magic Wand Of A Fairy Godmother, Nor By Marrying Princes, But By Education, Work, Birth Control - And Feminism. However, While Widening Opportunities For Women Were Seen As Progress, Feminists Were Regularly Caricatured As Man-haters, Cast In The Role Of Ugly Sisters, Witches Or Wicked Fairies In The Fairy-tale. This Book Is About The Reshaping Of Women's Lives, Loves And Dreams Since 1950, The Year In Which Walt Disney's Film Cinderella Gave Expression To Popular Ideas Of Romance, And At A Time When Marriage Was A Major Determinant Of Female Life Chances And Teenage Girls Dreamed Of Mr Right And Happy Endings. It Ends With The Runaway Success Of Disney's Frozen, In 2013 - A Film With Relevance To Very Different Times. Along The Way, It Illuminates How Women's Expectations And Emotional Landscapes Have Shifted, Asking Bold Questions About How Women's Lives Have Been Transformed Since 1950. How Have Women's Changing Life Experiences Been Mirrored In New Expectations About Marriage, Intimacy, And Family Life? How Have New Forms Of Independence Through Education And Work, And Greater Control Over Childbearing, Altered Women's Life Ambitions? And Were Feminists Right To Believe That Sexual Equality Would Improve Relationships Between Men And Women?
This book investigates how the cultural expectations, emotional landscapes, and life trajectories of women have been fundamentally reshaped by social and political shifts between 1950 and 2013. Carol Dyhouse, a historian specializing in the social history of women and education, utilizes a framework that contrasts the mid-century ideal of romantic marriage with the modern realities of female independence. By analyzing the evolution of popular media, such as Disney films, alongside historical data on education, labor, and reproductive rights, the author argues that while women's opportunities have expanded, the tension between traditional romantic ideals and feminist progress remains a defining feature of the era.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and readers frequently note the accessibility of Dyhouse's prose, which successfully bridges the gap between academic social history and popular cultural analysis. Experts highlight this work as a useful synthesis for understanding how media narratives reflect and influence the changing status of women in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Page Count:
288
Publication Date:
2021-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192597620
ISBN-13:
9780192597625
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