ABSTRACT
The domestic sphere seemed under a double threat, for wage work carried women—civilization’s potential wives and mothers—away from the home. Demoralized because of their wives’ independence, the husbands often sought remedy in divorce; equally, armed with “ideas” and a means of self-support, wives in ever increasing numbers found divorce a relief from marital burdens. The specter of the divorced woman undermined the magazine’s notion of the ideal family structure, but an equally explanation for the total absence of representations of divorced women workers was the anxiety that, once shown the way, more women would be empowered to leave the home. “The Homemaker” demonstrates how the working wife threatens the stability of her marriage because she devalues her husband’s masculine role as provider. The working girl has to look over a period of years before taking up her life career, and is meanwhile distracted by a largely or wholly unrelated wage-earning occupation.
