She made me understand why my grandmothers are the way they are. Marginalization and infantalization turned them into petty, boring, gossipy, WASP wives with nothing better to do.

And it is easier to talk to them and care for them now that I know it.

He’s more of a spoiled little child than Betty. Betty may stomp her foot and pout, but Don will just disappear and screw other women. (Don’t get me started on the hoarding money thing…) The whole internal conflict they’ve created for Don/Dick rings as complete and utter bullshit to me. He’s all Oh Betty I need you. I want this life. I want this to work. then the next minute Hey Midge/Rachel/Joy/Bobbie/Suzanne, you make me so happy, I’m so free!. It’s like the guy gets off on being a duplicitous asshole. And what he said to my Big Gay Sal! Fuck Don. Fuck Don right in the ear.

I watch the show for Peggy, Joan, Harry, Ken, and the dude with the beard who’s name I can never remember. (Pete’s on thin ice with me too). I keep hoping Don will get the clap or crabs or whatever STD people got back then and then his career will be ruined or something.

I have a different perspective on my mother now — and I’d say she is someone who perhaps should not have had children. I like what both Sarah MC and Penny posted above, that taking into account the roles that woman had grown up with and how it shaped her does matter in how she approached the early feminist movement. And ditto to the poster about depression possibly being involved.

I think it’s easy to tear down someone who chooses inaction and passive-agressiveness to deal with their misery, especially when we feel we have so many choices today. I can’t say I appreciate what my mom or those like Betty went through, but I do understand it on some level. It’s one of the reasons why the fight for feminism is so important. Feeling trapped causes a person to behave in all sorts of negative ways and not everyone is built with the capacity to fight the status quo. It’s up to those if us who are to fight for change for those who cannot.

I think the rage against her misses the fact that she is a very stylized character – she’s not supposed to be accessible like Peggy or Sal. She’s somewhat inexplicable, like Bert Cooper.

Spot on. It got me thinking. I’m going out on a limb here and say that I believe that in people’s appreciation of the female characters on this show, present-day views play an important role and I’m not sure that’s fair.

In most modern drama, we’re used to see characters obtain either victory or tragedy: we are supposed to root for them when they’re trying to reach their goals, or we are supposed to root for them when they sacrifice themselves and their needs for others or a ‘higher calling’. It’s either hero or martyr. I haven’t thought this out very well, but I feel that dichotomy is mostly fixed for women, who in drama overwhelmingly tend to fulfill the latter part. In that respect, Mad Men is not that different in its treatment of female characters. But it is when it comes to Betty.

There is Peggy. At the beginning of the show she discovers she wants something (a career), and while the deck is stacked against her, she is fighting for it and trying to beat the system with all she has. Then there is Joan, who states flat-out she wants something in the beginning (marrying well), and uses her considerable powers to get it. People respect characters who are clear in their wants and straightforward in fulfilling them, at least as long as nobody else is hurt, and Peggy and Joan always were straightforward. (though note the backlash with viewers against Peggy when she gets one over Kinsey, and against Suzanne, who is straightforward but is also seen as hurting Don’s family) They are heroes as the present day defines them.

On the other side there is Married-Joan. When she gets what she wanted – and we have seen how, something we haven’t seen with Betty – she sticks with it in spite of the horror that is her husband. She brings in the money, she plays the good wife to further her husband’s career, she helps him wherever she can. She does all that in spite of what he has done to her, and she puts all her talent at his service. She has sacrificed her freedom and continues to sacrifice herself to support him. Married-Joan is a martyr. (until she stands up for herself once, and everybody loves it)

But then we have Betty, who we get to see right from the start as having got what she allegedly wanted already. And so much of it! But though we never exactly know why, she’s restless and unhappy. We don’t know what she wants, I believe she doesn’t either or at least doesn’t have anyone to articulate it to. She has no goal to pursue. And while there is therefore no chance of her getting to be a hero, she won’t be a martyr. She won’t swallow her own unhappiness for long to make their marriage more palatable for Don, who is one of the sources of her unhappiness, and she won’t sacrifice her own needs for her children either. She doesn’t fit into the dichotomy at all. I think that makes her more unsympathetic in our eyes. And the show doesn’t make it easy for us to understand her.

I believe the key word for the three main female characters in the show is choice. Peggy chooses a career, and while she makes her sacrifices – the understanding of her family, pursuing traditional relationships – she sticks with it in spite of it all. She’s successful. Joan chooses a “good” marriage, sacrifices her freedom and talent, and while it is unsuccessful she sticks with it. Betty chose a life that she thought would make her happy, but when it doesn’t she simply doesn’t know where to go from there.

We are immersed in the thinking that you choose your choice and when it doesn’t turn out to be what you thought it would be, you get to have a choice in what to do next: stick with it or get out. You have your fate in your own hands. But I think one of the key points of the show is that it wasn’t like that in that era (and I’d say it isn’t like that now either).

I don’t think we make enough allowances for difference of temper or unbringing or context or era when it comes to Betty. I’m pretty sure she is only gradually becoming aware of what is making her unhappy, and she is not at all aware of what would make her happy. Choice, for women like Betty, with their upbringing in that time, is an entirely different beast. I’m not sure she knows there are other options or that she realizes that they are open to her. Or that when she does, she would be willing to make the – many, hard – sacrifices that other options would require, or go against what her society was telling her her duties were. Personally, it makes Betty all the more human for me, in a way that other, male characters are, with all their faults and restrictions and lack of purpose and repressedness. She is so much a product of her time that I don’t believe it’s fair to hold her to modern-day standards, but I think at least a part of where the Betty-hate comes from is that viewers do.

(I tend to compare her to my mum, who is only a few years younger. My mum was always a bit rebellious, but not rebellious enough to truly go against what she thought was expected of her: have a family, keep the peace, raise children. She automatically got fired when she got pregnant, she could only work again when my father gave her permission and as long as he wasn’t impacted negatively, and when there were irreconcilable differences, her family made it very clear that she was supposed to stick with her choice and not get a divorce)

This is my first comment, but I’ve been reading here for a while and I really really like the blog.

Betty is a bit more than moody, she’s incredibly repressed. I’m not sure if she doesn’t want anything, or if she can’t bring herself to admit what she wants.

But I think of my grandma, who was a widow with three children in the late 50s/early 60s and had to go back to school and then work full-time while raising kids on her own….she would have killed to have Betty’s easy lifestyle.