Domestic Discontent: Todd Haynes and the American Housewife

In his career thus far, director Todd Haynes has made nine narrative feature films. Of these, four are centered around female protagonists, and three of those four tell the story of a character who has seen little representation in the body of American cinema, let alone prominent placement in the work of well-regarded male directors: The housewife. 

Housewives have been the backbone of American society for about as long as we’ve existed as a nation, but there are comparatively few pieces of art, let alone film, that truly seek to explore the lives and identities of these women. They seem to exist—to have always existed—only for the sake and in support of the family around them. Which is, really, what makes them such an interesting focal point for Haynes, whose work over the last forty years has been almost uniquely interested in poking holes in the concept of identity, of exploring the narratives that dictate our cultural norms, and exposing the danger inherent in conforming to these standards. 

Through Haynes’ lens, the American housewife is in many ways the ultimate example of dispossession. By nature of the role they play in society, nothing in their life is truly their own. Their money is made by and belongs to their husband. Their house, their car, the food they eat are all his too. Their very identity is as a wife and a mother, never as an individual. Even their friends are defined by their circumstances—wives of men their husband works with, mothers of other children in the neighborhood, women who attend the same aerobics class. 

To understand why the archetype of the housewife provides such a powerful lens through which to explore this subversion, let’s go back to the early ’80s: “When I went to Brown, there was this new program within the English department called semiotics,” says Haynes in a 2016 interview with Marc Maron. “It was like the post-Freudian, post-feminist, post-structuralist. I went to one of my first courses, and they were talking about the classic Hollywood text, and they said ‘And this film ends with the obligatory heterosexual closure,’ and I went, ‘Woah.’”

At a basic level, semiotics deals with the communication of meaning through signs and symbols. What Haynes learned as he further explored the subject was that the meaning of these signs and symbols was controlled by a heterosexual, patriarchal majority. “It was like a parallel language to things I was already starting to feel and think,” he says. “There are all of these languages that keep people in place, that conform us to a sort of set of terms.”

This early introduction to semiotics would fundamentally shape Haynes’ approach to filmmaking.  It helped him to see how the language of our society unconsciously shapes our sense of identity to cultural norms in ways so subtle we hardly realize we’re being influenced. “It's why I think of the whole idea of identity as something that’s somewhat of a straitjacket,” Haynes says. 

Haynes’ films seek to expose how these narratives are continually perpetuated in American culture in order to make people who do not conform to them feel immediately othered. The director often turns his camera on characters who are marginalized and powerless, using their “otherness” as a lens through which to challenge what we accept as “normal” and encouraging his audience to find new ways of looking at and describing the experience of human existence. 

Housewives feature prominently in Haynes’ films because the circumstances of their lives are unnatural. Their very existence is founded upon heteronormative narratives that have been so deeply and carefully embedded into the very fabric of society as to be almost invisible, and thereby unchallengeable. Haynes’s films seek to drag these narratives into the light and, in doing so, strip them of their power. 

Safe 

Haynes begins his systematic dismantling of the housewife myth in 1995’s Safe. The film tells the story of Carol White—a young woman played by Julianne Moore—who begins to manifest mysterious symptoms that she comes to believe are an allergy to the chemical-filled world around her. 

Carol lives with her husband in the rich and smog-smothered hills of Los Angeles. When we meet her, she’s doing what you’d expect a young, affluent homemaker to be doing: furnishing the family’s chic house with modern decor, attending aerobics class in a stylish leotard. It quickly becomes apparent that something is amiss when Carol has a coughing fit and nearly faints after driving behind a car spewing plumes of black exhaust on the freeway. 

As Carol’s physical symptoms rapidly progress, so too does her detachment from her everyday life, suggesting that her illness could be a psychosomatic reaction to an unconscious realization that she lacks any connection with the world she inhabits. Carol begins to disrupt the picturesque landscape against which her friends and neighbors live their lives, and it’s quickly made clear that she no longer fits into the aesthetic of her surroundings. Hoping to better understand what is happening to her, Carol leaves her life in California for a specialized treatment facility in New Mexico. 

There, we witness Carol’s pain and loneliness as she sheds the last vestiges of the life she knew. On her first night at the facility, after a jarring introduction to the cult-like practices of her new companions, Carol breaks down in hysterics alone in her cabin. She is a woman on the periphery. Her old life is gone, and this new life doesn’t quite feel right. 

Carol is right to be weary, as her new community quickly proves to be more of a cult than a sanatorium. She’s no more in control of her identity or circumstances in the remote mountains of New Mexico than she was in the busy streets of LA. We watch Carol begin to piece this truth together for herself. At first she tries to resist conforming to the new narrative she’s being prescribed, but in the end her will isn’t strong enough. Desperately seeking some relief to her suffering, Carol accepts the new hegemony. Yet even as she does, her body visibly deteriorates; she grows thinner, her skin becomes sallow, a large welt appears on her forehead, angry and red against her pale white skin. Physiologically, she understands that she is sacrificing her autonomy, exchanging one set of standards for another equally debilitating one.

The final scene of the film finds Carol totally alone, staring into the mirror, and affirming over and over again her love for this new self. Emaciated and exhausted, it’s with heartbreaking certainty that we leave Carol in a state of complete isolation. Her life reduced to little more than the four walls of a fallout shelter, and her identity no more her own than when we met her. 

Far From Heaven 

In Far From Heaven, Haynes’s 2002 homage to the films of director Douglas Sirk, we’re introduced to his second housewife. Again played by Julianne Moore, Cathy Whitaker is vivacious and self-possessed. She’s the epitome of the 1950s housewife, tending to her large suburban home and two adorable children while her husband works his way up the corporate ladder. In fact, Cathy is such an exemplary woman that she is being profiled by a lady’s magazine to show all their young readers what it means to really have it all. Cathy is the face of the American Dream, until her life suddenly begins to unravel.

The trouble really begins when Cathy becomes friendly with her new gardener, Raymond, a widowed black man roughly her own age with a daughter of his own. When Cathy bumps into Raymond at an art gallery and talks to him openly about the paintings on exhibit, she’s ridiculed by the town busybodies for conversing with a black man. Cathy tries to play it off, but she becomes quite the scandalous figure when she’s later seen getting lunch with Raymond at a restaurant just outside of town. Cathy’s husband is furious when he hears the rumors going around. Meanwhile, he’s enthralled in his own scandal as he too finds himself pushing against societal norms. 

As Cathy comes to see the hypocrisy and intolerance of the community she was once so happy to be a part of, she begins to push back, and in doing so, her whole world collapses. Her friends abandon her, her marriage ends, and her budding relationship with Raymond is cut down by the forces of hate and bigotry. In the end, Cathy is left alone, standing on a platform, as the men in her life go off to find fresh starts elsewhere—a luxury that she as a woman cannot afford.

Douglas Sirk is lauded for his use of melodrama in exposing domestic discontent. Some of Sirk’s most famous films, including All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956)—both noted influences of Hayne’s film—presented a critical look at contemporary American culture, particularly the consumer lifestyle and the idea that wealth equates to happiness. Sirk often disguised his cultural critiques under dazzling technicolor and stories centered around female protagonists who ultimately find a happy ending, at least on the surface. 

 In Far From Heaven, Haynes takes direction from Sirk, staging his story as a melodrama to spotlight the dictums that trap Cathy Whitaker in an idyllic sort of hell. The expectations of a white, suburban housewife in the ‘50s strip Cathy of her autonomy, and any effort she makes to take control of her own narrative leads to disastrous results. Departing from Sirk’s formula, the film does not give its protagonist a neat ending. At its close, Cathy’s life is in upheaval. Her old identity has been shattered by the events that have transpired, and it’s not clear who she is or how she will navigate her new circumstances.

And yet, even as tears fill her eyes, one can’t help thinking that Cathy will be okay. While she may, in this moment, be hitting the bottom, has she not uncovered something sacred in learning the truth? From this moment on, Cathy moves forward in the world, not as a woman burdened and defined by arbitrary societal boundaries, but as a human being aware of life’s complications, understanding that a person’s character is not defined by the color of their skin or who they choose to love. 

Carol 

Based on The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, Carol marked Haynes’ first time directing a film not based on his own script. The adaptation also came with a certain amount of pressure, as Highsmith’s novel is a beloved work of lesbian literature. 

Regardless of having not written Carol himself, Haynes once again finds his camera pointed at a woman whose life is defined by her role as a housewife, the titular Carol. This time, however, things are a little different. The Carol played by Cate Blanchett is a far cry from the Carol embodied by Julian Moore in Safe. This Carol is glamorous and self-assured. She’s also all too aware of the rules that govern her existence and of the risk she’s taking in striking up a relationship with young Therese, played by Rooney Mara. 

In fact, while Carol represents to Therese all the beautiful potential of what life and love can be if you follow your own heart, Carol herself has been there before. She’s taken female lovers, and she’s dealt with the consequences of those actions. She’s blurred the lines of what is conventional and she’s continuing to push those boundaries. While still technically married to a man, Carol’s relationship with her husband is estranged, and she does everything within her power to maintain some sense of the independence that she has managed to forge in the midst of their life together.

As the film progresses, we watch Carol struggle against the expectations that society has for her as a wife and a mother. We see her husband and the “normal” people that make up her society group try to trap her with their mores, going so far as to separate her from her daughter as punishment for her indiscretions. Fortunately, Carol finds some support from a friend who also lives on the outskirts of this society. Carol’s saved from the total isolation that is the shared fate of the protagonists of Safe and Far From Heaven because there is at least one person in her life that understands her need to live her own truth. 

Haynes’ films draw attention to the lines that cut through our society. His movies tell the story of women who have been silenced, who have been ridiculed, who have been forced to live in a world that is constantly trying to erase their individuality. He opens these women’s eyes, allowing them to see the strings that control them, to question the role they’ve been unwittingly assigned and search for authenticity—often at high cost to themselves. Tragically, this search is not always successful. As the fate of Safe’s Carol demonstrates, freeing oneself from one set of societal standards doesn’t protect you from falling into the web of another. Individuality is no guarantee.  

Exposing the lines that divide us doesn’t erase them. It does, however, force us to acknowledge them. While many people will do their best to continue to ignore them, to willfully disregard the message that Haynes is sending out loud and clear, there are those for whom his films act as a beacon, or perhaps a warning. This world is full of stories and voices that aren’t recognized by the hegemonic American culture. It’s in their nonconformity that these stories find their power. Haynes’ housewives suffer in the hopes that others will avoid the same fate.