Brady Life vs The Republic of Gilead

So, recently, I've been watching the first season of The Brady Bunch, from the beginning. I'm enjoying it, which surprised me a little. It's more interesting than I expected.

One thing that does shock me about it is the blatant sexism. It's more a sign of the times than the show itself, but viewed today, forty years later, it's stunning.

There's one episode where all the girls are united in their desire for a sewing machine, while the boys want a rowboat. Then there's the one where they go camping. All the girls - including Alice, who must have been camping with the Brady boys in previous years - are jumpy, nervous and very, very girly. To be fair, that could be due to the fact that they've never (except Alice) been camping before. However, in yet another episode (and all of these were within the first fifteen aired, since that's how many I've watched), the girls want a clubhouse to match the boys. The boys refuse to share, so Carol (the mother) suggests that the girls build one of their own. One of the daughters protests "But mother! We'll do it terribly!" to which their mother replies that that's the point.

So, the Brady girls start building a clubhouse, and do so terribly. The boys and their father pitch in to help, just as the girls had planned.

Thinking about this, I started thinking of feminist literature in general, but specifically The Handmaid's Tale. Written a few decades after The Brady Bunch, in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is about a dystopian future society, where women have all rights taken away. Their jobs are lost, and their bank accounts given to their next of kin. Several of the lower class men also lost rights, so it's not purely about men diminishing women - it's about a few strong men seizing power.

In the Republic of Gilead, the society described in The Handmaid's Tale women weren't permitted to do a lot of things, or think a lot of things. But, no one claimed they were incapable of it. The Brady girls truly believe they can't do things that the boys can.

Is it better not to be allowed to do something, or to not even realise that you can? To actively deny it, in fact, and use that to your advantage?

On reflection, it may be better to be a Brady than a Gilean. At least you're in a position to change your way of thinking, and therefore, your life. Whatever a Gilean woman thought, she still had to do the same things.

How very strange that there was once a time when people truly believed that women couldn't hammer nails.