Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies

by Steven Dillon

"Popular culture in the 1940s is organized as patriarchal theater. Men gaze upon, evaluate, and coerce women, who are obliged in their turn to put themselves on sexual display. In such a thoroughly patriarchal society, what happens to female sexual desire? Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies unearths this female desire by conducting a panoramic survey of 1940s culture that analyzes popular novels, daytime radio serials, magazines and magazine fiction, marital textbooks, Hollywood and educational films, jungle comics, and popular music. In addition to popular works, Steven Dillon discusses many lesser-known texts and artists, including Ella Mae Morse, a key figure in the founding of Capitol Records, and Lisa Ben, creator of the first lesbian magazine in the United States." -SUNY Press

321 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2015

Reviews

[Jon Frankel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent analysis of the way female desire was portrayed in 1940s popular culture. Dillon unearths some material that has been known to Queer and feminist studies, like Lisa Ben's hand-typed lesbian newsletter, and other books, radio shows and magazines largely ignored or lost to the world. The wolf-women and phantom ladies of the titles are the two stereotypes that dominated the decade. One of Dillons innovations is to treat the entire period as a whole, and not divide into the prewar, war and postwar. Despite a thoroughly documented dominant culture of male sexual liberation and female servitude Dillon shows that some women , in a variety of fields, were well aware of their situation. The book is not theory heavy and is well written in a lively prose. His discussion of the role of psychological theory in American popular culture, and the conflicts between them is particularly interesting as psychoanalysis is challenged by Alfred Kinsey's books and the emerging literature of anthropology, especially Margaret Meade. Of course, these altyernate theories are assimilated easily into the mainstream discourse. Dillon is not monolithic in his thinking and his book opens up much for future consideration, especially the rich area of women's fiction and the increasingly open portrayal of sex, which was nevertheless still concealed by suggestion as censorship laws were in full affect, and would not be broken down until the 1960s. Yet all of the later obsessions are on view, if partially clothed. The forties were the incubator of the conflicts in American society that would dominate the culture wars of the second half of the century, including the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, but also, crucially, the Women's and Gay Rights movements.