Word: margarete
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...typical plot had one of the kids getting into a social gaffe or an ethical scrape before Jim stepped in to adjudicate. OK, but where did that leave Margaret...
...Margaret was the image of suburban chic in her short-sleeved blouses, her slim waist cinched by a kitchen apron, her pretty face set in a near-permanent smile. As each episode?s plot played out, she would be baking cookies or measuring the living-room couch for new slip covers, assuring that the mother ship was shipshape. In a show that ventured infrequently into Jim?s office or the kids? school, where the home was the essential set, Margaret - the only Anderson without a nickname - was also the only one whose daily business didn?t take her away from...
...while, Margaret was invisibly chained there; she didn?t learn to drive until season four. But she also was allowed yearnings of escape. She wants a weekend away from the kids - perhaps because, in the lodge, they won?t have to sleep in those separate beds. She takes a college English class (where Betty happens to be a fellow student), and dancing lessons (dragging Jim, the perennial square, against his will). In a 1958 episode that won the show an Emmy, Jim announces he?s building a trophy case for the scholastic and athletic prizes the kids have amassed...
...hired to do lawn work, the Korean refugee kid a friend?s family adopted. And the year after she learns to drive, she wins a car and donated her time shuttling kids from an orphanage. All this suggests that the show?s writers applied Jane?s own beliefs to Margaret, allowing her to do good within the confines of a non-controversial, pre-'60s America...
...Jane always defended Margaret?s role in the show. ?She was the power behind the throne,? she told the New York Times in 1986. ?She helped her husband out. Mother always knew best, too.? Spoken like a real-life good wife, good mother and do-gooder. But Jane was also a career woman, embodying an ideal of feminine grace and pluck that may seem antique today but was a beacon for her age. She was a great lady, a terrific person. And I?d say that even if I thought that, if I did, Jane would reach out from...