Plath, domesticity, and the art of advertising

College Literature, Summer 2002 by Bryant, Marsha

Crazy Kitchens on Madison Avenue

Most of the advertisements I will discuss appeared in Ladies' Home Journal, a leading women's magazine with a white, middle-class readership. Friedan calls the Journal a "service magazine" because its features addressed women's role as housewives in the 1950s (1983, 52); for example, regular sections covered cooking, decorating, and marriage.Yet the Journal's attention to poetry was rather impressive for a homemaking magazine; as many as 10 poems could appear in a single issue. Moreover, the magazine published poems by John Ciardi, Richard Eberhart, Donald Hall, Randall Jarrell, Galway Kinnell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Theodore Roethke. Much of the Journal's poetry was not of this caliber, but the inclusion of now canonized poets complicates Friedan's claim that the magazine assumed a "brainless" readership (65). According to Linda Wagner-Martin, Plath "devoured that magazine" during her high school years (1987, 51). She submitted several poems to Ladies' Home Journal in 1949 and published one there in 1958. Plath also considered the magazine as a market for her short stories. An avid reader of"my beloved Journal" during her final years in England, Plath wrote of her eagerness to try the "exotic" recipes-most of which appeared within advertisements (1975, 455). As she told her mother, the magazine provided "an Americanness which I feel a need to dip into" (433). Plath's engagement with the Journal proves as significant as her engagement with Mademoiselle, which shaped The Bell jar. Because Ladies' Home Journal is not so enmeshed in the crises of Plath's life, it prompts interpretations that are more culturally than biographically invested. As we shall see, the magazine's often surreal images of domestic life would reappear in Ariel's kitchen, thus challenging standard claims of "a fake, Ladies' Home Journal Sylvia" (Heller 2000, 30).

On Madison Avenue, the kitchen was a magical site of miracles and transformations. "Magic" was, in fact, a prominent word in ads for a variety of 1950s kitchen products, from food items to cleaning powders. When cooking, the middle-class housewife could enliven her meals through the "Sunday Dinner Magic" of Hunt's Tomato Sauce, "the magic spoonful" of McCormick's vanilla extract, or the "Red Magic" of Heinz 57 soups.While she didn't pull a rabbit out of a hat, she could open the "helping hand in every can" of Dole fruit. Cleaning up was a snap with S.O.S. "Magic Scouring Pads," or the "blue-magic action" of Blue Dutch Cleanser. And after she washed her dishes, she could renew her hands with the "Skin Magic" of Mennen lotion. In short, these products transformed the housewife into a kitchen magician. But cooking and cleaning were only part of her magic act. She could levitate herself by opening a box of River or Carolina rice, becoming a domestic version of Hermes in this excerpt from a 1955 ad (Figure 1). She could fly like a jet if she made Junket fudge (the "world's fastest"), or like an angel if she used Sucaryl artificial sweetener. She could make dishes fly if she used Lux liquid, as we see in a 1956 ad (Figure 2). She could even turn her children into "eager beavers" by feeding them Big Top peanut butter. While such ads didn't exactly objectify or degrade women, they did place housewives in an otherworldly dimension.