The Wonder Years: Gilbert and Gubar

In this episode of The Wonder Years, Kevin’s mother (Mrs. Arnold) is fitting into the stereotype of the housewife. In the first part of this clip (1:16-1:47) the family is sitting down for breakfast, she is serving everyone while simultaneously situating their lives. She hands her husband coffee when he comes in, responds in rhythm to a multitude of questions like, mom can you, will you, do you know where… etc. She doesn’t miss a beat, but she also seems to be lacking any other identity other than “housewife” at this point. Her role in the family is to be the caretaker, as Gilbert and Gubar state, “ shine like a beacon in a dark world, like a motionless lighthouse by which others, the travelers who’s lives do have a story, can set their course” (599). Each member of the family (the travelers) presents themselves with having “external events”. She is the “lighthouse” that sets them in the right direction. She is the selfless character, nurturing her family while loosing her own identity.
In the middle of this clip (4:25-5:40) Kevin’s friend Paul is upset about his glasses. While he is complaining about them, Mrs. Arnold comes in with a load of laundry and asserts her role as housewife/ nurturer to make him feel better. About this sympathy role Gilbert and Gubar say, “She has no story of her own, but gives advice and consolation to others, listens, smiles, sympathizes…” (599). She is the embodiment of “advice and consolation” as she makes the boy feel better and soothes his ego with hot cocoa.
In the last part of the clip (7:10- 7:50) the boys are playing basketball and Paul starts talking about Kevin‘s mother and the life she had before her family. Because Kevin see’s her in this housewife/ mother role as far as he‘s concerned she is leading and has lead “a life without external events” (599). Gilbert and Gubar also say “a woman of right feeling should devote herself to the good of others… silently, without calling attention to her exertions because all that would tend to draw away her thoughts from others and fix them on herself” (601). In her failure to expose a life outside her family, Mrs. Arnold plays into the theory of the “angel” and therefore continues the cycle of her housewife ideology.
One could also say the character of Mrs. Arnold also embodies what Gilbert and Gubar define as the Angel with qualities of, “Submissiveness, modesty, selflessness; reminding all women that they should be angelic” (600). This character is angelic not only by action but appearance: with her golden hair, smiling face etc. When the family is at the table during the beginning she asks her husband about going to a play to which he essentially says no. She doesn’t respond but with only a look of dismay, “if Woman owes her Being to the Comfort and Profit of man, tis highly reasonable that she should be careful and diligent to content and please him” (600). Mrs. Arnold does not question her husband or refute his decision, she simply says nothing.
The character of Mrs. Arnold is the stereotypical housewife. She plays up themes from Gilbert and Gubar while reinforcing that women should be silent keepers of the house. For this character her identity becomes the angelic eternal feminine and continues having no story.


Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. “The Madwoman in the Attic.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 812-825.

Foucault and Faulkner

In As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the omniscient narrator Darl can be analyzed with Foucault’s theory of Panopticism. The story is as follows, Addie Bundren in an attempt to get back at her husband for making her conform to society with multiple children and a loss of freedom, requests that after her death be buried in the town she was originally from, Jefferson, which is a week’s trip. With decaying body in tow, Addie’s husband and her children make the journey to fulfill her desire. The narrator, Addie’s second eldest son, is all knowing, all seeing, much like the supervisor in Foucault’s Panopticon. The family are very much in their cells, being watched until the tide changes ultimately reversing the roles. Darl becomes even more so, the outsider of the family and once this happens, he is sent away for mental help. The Panopticon idea encompasses two areas of focus. According to Foucault, “ The first is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined society” (Rivkin, 468). The need in society to categorize with binary division labels people as productive members of a society or parasites. For example those that are crazy as opposed to sane, those that are dangerous as opposed to harmless, and those that are normal in society as opposed to those that are abnormal (469). In Faulkner’s novel, Darl Bundren seems to threaten the pure community and disciplined society of the family. He is the least favorite of his deseased mother, hated by his half brother, despised by his sister, and also ultimately replaced by his brother as omniscient narrator. In looking at the Bundren family as a society, he becomes undisciplined and eratic as implied in some of his behavior. The family begins to view him as crazy and not in compliance with their norms. They use binary brandings dubbing themselves normal, where Darl is the abnormal one, although in my opinion he is the most sane. Because Darl is “abnormal” he is sent away to the hospital on the basis of insanity. At the beginning of the novel, Darl starts out as the supervisor in the middle of the panopticon. He watches everyone in their “cells” and thus is the all knowing narrator. However, once his family see’s that he is not acting like them in relation to determination in transporting his dead mother for burial, he breaks the normalcy’s of the family and therefore becomes himself in a cell, being watched. Foucault says, “ Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (470). This causes a change in power as Darl having power over the reader, is replaced by Cash. Not only is Darl sent away, but it is at this point the reader may question Darl’s reliability as a narrator.



Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 549-566.