Another Enemy Within: Lesbian Wives, or the Hidden Threat to the Nuclear Family in Post-war America.

AMERICAN lesbians; NUCLEAR families; LESBIANS in popular culture; MARRIED women; PSYCHOLOGY of lesbians; LESBIANS in mass media; LESBIANS in literature; HISTORY; TWENTIETH century

This article argues that cultural anxiety arose around white, middle-class ‘lesbian wives’ during the 1950s and early 1960s. While politicians were expelling suspected homosexuals from the federal government, psychoanalysts, journalists, novelists and filmmakers could not and did not want to push lesbians out of nuclear families. Rather, by repeatedly revealing the lesbian wife to the public they hoped to reform errant wives, prevent divorce and reinforce the ‘natural’ order of power within the white family. While lesbianism has played a minor role in histories of women’s domestic containment, this article demonstrates how the discourse round the lesbian wife policed women’s behaviour within marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]