"Bedroom problems" : architecture, gender, and sexuality, 1945-63

• Main Author: James, Susan Helen
• Other Authors: Adams, Annmarie (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1996
• Subjects: Architecture and women > North America; Bedrooms > North America; Bathrooms > North America
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23699

Postwar North America saw a fundamental change in the function, layout, and location of the parents' bedroom and bathroom in the typical middle-class home. This thesis argues that the representations of bedrooms and bathrooms in house plans published by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), in bathroom advertisements which appeared in women's magazines, trade periodicals, and architectural journals, and, in the 1959 film Pillow Talk, point to women's increased power in the immediate postwar years and constitute a foreshadowing of the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s. By revisiting the domestic landscape of postwar North America, this thesis provides an account of women's changing role in postwar society and suggests that architecture played a part in this transformation.