Alice Kramden, A Woman For All Times

Episodes of the sitcom The Honeymooners are being rerun on weekend nights. Always a favorite of mine, I caught one of these episodes recently. The dilemmas of Ralph and Alice are always funny and this one was no exception. But I was quite surprised by the message behind it. 

The episode opens with Ralph coming home from work and is in a hurry to eat and go out bowling. He becomes quite upset when Alice does not have dinner ready, did not iron his " hurricane " bowling shirt, and had no time to sew the hole in his sock. Ralph questions Alice on what exactly does she do all day rather than tend to his needs. Alice, exhausted, begins to list the chores of her day: washing the windows, cleaning out a closet, defrosting their ancient ice box, etc. she just simply had no time to do anything else. Housework is exhausting she tells Ralph and she is just plain tired of it. Alice wants one of those 9 to 5 jobs like Ralph has. So she gets one of these jobs stuffing jelly in donuts at a local bakery. They hire a maid to take care of the housework.As usual it turns into a disaster and the maid quits so Ralph hides this from Alice and does the housework himself. After a few days, Ralph has had enough. Begs Alice to come back home and admits that her  job at home is harder than his driving a bus and promises to never complain about her housekeeping again. The episode, like all the others, ends with Alice and Ralph embracing in a kiss.

What amazed me about this episode was that Alice, a 1950's housewife was complaining about her chores. Most shows of that era and beyond displayed beautiful, spotless, homes with smiling, pearl wearing housewives. No one complained about cleaning. They seemed to enjoy it. But here was Alice telling her husband how difficult it was to get everything done each day, every day. I smiled to myself as I watched because I thought, Alice only lives in a two room apartment and she and Ralph do not have children. I wonder how Alice would handle a three bedroom house and a couple of kids,and a full time job. This is the life of many women today. 

So women did complain back in our mother's and grandmother's day. Housework was always a necessary evil! Thank you Alice Kramden for speaking up for tired housewives everywhere even back in the '50's when it was not popular to do so.
We still haven't found a solution because houses do not clean themselves but we have learned to delegate these chores to our dear husbands and children. Still the bulk is being done by us, brave women. Perhaps they will invent a housecleaning robot in the future. Hopefully one that works for cheap! Until then, we continue to wage war with the dust bunnies everywhere!