Pleasantville University

Will Landschulz
Am Lit Per. 2,
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

We see that the students enter the school with an oath to pursue knowledge and to use it.  However, the times they live in make those words hollow, as the students pursue knowledge of art history in class while using only the fine arts of Elocution, Poise, and multitasking.  Particularly creepy is the Elocution class, where all the students (in brightly colored cocktail dresses) say, in unison, "Hello, Ms. Watson" in perfect, Stepford-wives fashion.  However, the other elements are more tragic than scary.  The antagonist, Betty, applies wholesale to the doctrines taught by life, such as that the wife should stay at home and provide a pleasant, one-track habitat for her man.  As such, she is scandalized when someone breaks the status quo, and likewise breaks out the typewriter in the way others would break the covering on a fire alarm - without delay and with a great deal of noise.  For example, one of the protagonist Katherine Watson's roommates, the school nurse and a lesbian whose partner has died, gives contraception to another of Ms. Watson's students, Giselle.  Giselle, in typical rebelling attitude, hides it poorly then practically boasts about it to her roommates.  Unfortunately, this includes Betty, who is scandalized that the school nurse would give out  - gasp - contraception just by being asked.  Out comes the typewriter, out comes the school paper w/ editorial on the first page, out goes Ms. Watson's roommate.  Betty, it seems, will do anything in her power to remove "subversive" elements.  She is soon to be married, and a rather telling thing she does at the wedding is manipulate her husband-to-be into reading her favorite poem.  Thus, she shoehorns herself into a household that is "everything she ever wanted," i.e. as iridescent and ephemeral as a soap bubble, with two Stepford-smiling newlyweds trapped inside.  In this way, the 50s are portrayed as a time that forced women, no matter what they did, to conform to the standards of the time.