‘ … you married “for better or worse”, didn’t you? You are having a spot of “worse’’’: Marital advice from the ‘Ask Lou Lockheart’ column in the New Zealand woman’s weekly, 1950

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, New Zealand attitudes to what was normal and appropriate in married life underwent the considerable changes associated particularly with the late 1960s and the 1970s. This study examines what Gramsci calls ‘common sense’ (1971) about marriage over the single year of 1950, as found in the ‘agony aunt’ columns of the widely-read New Zealand woman’s weekly in an attempt to identify and describe attitudes prior to those changes. It reveals a world where marriage was expected of everyone, and correspondents’ problems ranged from their spouses’ irritating habits to regular beatings. The agony aunt ‘Lou Lockheart’’s blunt, nononsense advice reflects a world where, despite women’s choices being limited, they were expected to have the fortitude and dignity to either conquer or endure their hardships. Close analysis of two letters shows incipient rebellions amongst housewives against what Walby terms the ‘private patriarchy’ (1990) within their marriages. These accounts of conflict about who should do the housework suggest the strict gender roles of the 1950s, although largely supported in public discourses such as this column, were privately contested at the time.