Bachelors, domesticity, and domestic space in postwar American culture, 1945--1960

Domestic architecture and culture of post-World War II America has been discussed primarily in terms of the single-family house and Suburban Expansion. This dissertation argues that the domestic space of bachelors and single women actually was central to fifties-era American domesticity. Examination of popular media reveals that representations of bachelor domestic space informed the social and cultural identities of urban bachelors and single women and subsequently helped define the domesticity and identities of the nuclear suburbs.; Nineteen-fifties-era single female domestic space is disclosed in mass-media periodicals that channeled the broader sociological and psychological literature on singlehood in articles on apartment arrangement, furnishing, and advice on appropriate domestic practices. Magazines also urged regulation of the single female body, structured free time through ethical leisure, and cultivated the career as single female vocation. The cultural discussion of single female roommates formulated domestic space in relation to traditions of companionate marriage and family togetherness. Novels as well as popular sociology constructed female office workers on a continuum of collective domesticity extending through the city, blurring the boundaries between personal and occupational or work space.; The consideration of male bachelorhood extends this discussion beyond the familiar fifties Playboy bachelor whose urban penthouse is an icon of postwar masculine domesticity. This project highlights the many Hollywood film and television representations of bachelors who are denied their own autonomous domestic space and left vulnerable to oppressive work life, predatory and civilizing women, and eviction from the home that ostensibly secured and proclaimed their autonomy.; Popular media discussion of fifties-era marital norms uncovers the origins of problematic bachelor domesticity, which offered no escape from oppressive domestic norms because postwar culture positioned viable masculinity within the nuclear domestic context. Paradoxically, this threatened traditional sex role norms. While the promise of bachelor domestic autonomy was left unfulfilled, ironically, a fantasy realm of bachelor domesticity persisted as part of mainstream domestic culture that was available for everyday consumption.