This project takes the shape of a gendered walking tour of the post-war American suburb using John Cheever’s The Swimmer (Cheever, 1964) and Bryan Forbes’s The Stepford Wives (Forbes, 1975) as its primary texts. The decision to set it out as a walking tour allows the analysis to unfold spatially rather than chronologically. Each stop corresponds to a recurring suburban space and shows how locations in post-war American literature are used as symbols rather than merely backdrops.
This approach mirrors the narrative movement in The Swimmer (Cheever, 1964) as Neddy Merrill takes a physical journey through suburban landscapes. Through these landscapes a gradual exposure of post-war masculinity is evident. Mobility is a gendered practice in both texts associated with autonomy. In The Stepford Wives, (Forbes, 1975) women are repeatedly associated with fixed domestic spaces, revealing how suburban architecture reinforces gendered confinement.
The blog format was chosen to support a multimodal and accessible method of literary criticism. Visual materials accompany each stop such as art, advertisements, photography and film stills. These emphasise how suburban ideals circulated through popular culture and visual media. Wordpress was used for its ease and accessibility. The target audience would be people interested in literary criticism or the darker side of the suburb, it could be used to support students.
Ultimately, this project shows how post-war suburbia is a gendered performance through mobility in both texts. The characters are trapped in the routine and consumption of the suburbs, and they expose this by attempting to move through, resist or escape it.
A gendered walking tour of post-war suburbia 