My motherhood in television paper for my Reading Motherhood English class:
Born and bred in a Midwest rural town, I came to know I Love Lucy as one of my family’s staples, watching reruns in black-and-white that transported my sister and me into a crowded New York City apartment where one woman reigned supreme – Lucy Ricardo. As much as I adored the sitcom then, there were moments where my budding feminism, despite my lack of language, noticed discrepancies between Lucy and her exasperated husband, Ricky, power dynamics of who could touch who, who could state what, and who had the final say. In this vein, I struggled with resolving these two tensions – a joyful glimmer of my childhood and the patriarchal standards I fought so hard against – attempting to reckon which one should win, and I am inclined to believe many feminists face similar dilemmas. After all, how can you support a piece of your childhood that is embedded within the very systems you seek to destroy as an adult? Now, as a feminist scholar I wish to prove to you, dear reader, as well as my younger self, that the question was never which but rather how both can be true without canceling the other. Thus, I will argue that while motherhood in the I Love Lucy episode Lucy Becomes a Sculptress was conceived and constructed for male profit by exploiting women’s labor, women have been able to utilize their roles as mothers to exercise autonomy and freedom for themselves.
Lucy Becomes a Sculptress highlights the ways in which motherhood becomes an avenue for women’s liberation in pursuit of their own goals. To illustrate this, at the beginning of the episode, Lucy and Ricky are discussing their hopes and dreams for what their child will be like when Lucy suddenly realizes that their child will have Ricky to learn music from but no one from whom to learn art. After Ricky’s initial attempt to pacify Lucy’s concerns, gently chastising her that everything, by some sort of magic, will work out, Lucy gravely replies, “Our child’s artistic and cultural future is at stake. Well, there’s just one thing for me to do” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress). While one could argue that Ricky is simply being practical in that the child wouldn’t be practicing art at least until they were a few years older, it’s more reasonable to deduce that he has no concern in this kind of cultural education because it is not his job.
Roksana Badruddoja notes in her work “New Maternalism’s Tales of Motherhood,” that “The assumption here is that mothers alone are responsible for their children, and it is through the portal of mothering that the regulation of women’s bodies is justified” (320). As a result, Ricky’s eye roll at Lucy’s declaration of mother power is because that as the father, he is not to be concerned with the intimate details of his child’s upbringing. He is to be the breadwinner who works outside of the home and finds home as a place of rest, not artistic genius. In fact, Mary Beth Haralovich writes how during the alleged golden age of the 1950s, “Homes provide settings for women and girls to be effective social status achievers, desirable sex objects, and skillful domestic servants” (65). That is, Lucy is not supposed to be a master craftswoman because her primary responsibility is to be a token for her husband, a good wife who cooks, cleans, and makes home a relaxing haven and sensual paradise from the chaos and noise of the rough streets of New York City. Nevertheless, we see Lucy seeing this as an opportunity to explore her own creative side and escape the confinements of their apartment. Although it’s unclear if she had any artistic desire before this episode, we see the determination on her face as she argues why she should take up a medium, declaring that “I’m not doing this for me, Ricky; I’m doing this for the future of our child” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress). Lucy knew Ricky would never permit her to practice art rooted in her own desires as a person, and as she relies on Ricky for her allowance to spend money on materials, she needs his backing, or rather his checkbook, to pursue this calling. Thus, by calling on her assumed motherly desires to provide her child with the best in art and culture, Lucy is granted access to pursue her own passions in the patriarchy.
As empowering and witty as Lucy is in an antifeminist society, her decision cannot be approved without some permission from her husband. During the two’s debate, Ricky admits that “I guess it won’t hurt if you (Lucy) dabble in some watercolors for a while” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress). Although Ricky is supporting Lucy’s decisions and desire, albeit in the style of a backhanded compliment, I believe it’s essential to narrow in on his diction, specifically the word dabble. Unlike craft or make, which imply a seriousness or legitimacy to one’s work, the word dabble is often used when describing a child attempting something new for the first time or, in this setting, a manner of diminishing the validity of a woman’s work. This second connotation seems to be Ricky’s point, as he refuses to pay for a model for her and patronizingly tells her “Now look, sweetheart; if I thought that you had any kind of talent at this, money would be no object” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress). In an attempt to gently let her down and take back his word after she spent the money on art supplies that he gave her to spend on art supplies, Ricky places Lucy in the same box as a child, unable to create to a standard of his liking, in spite of this being her first attempt at art and mockingly encouraging her to quit. But Lucy, as any human being, would surely improve with practice, correct? Perhaps if Ricky would just see that time and energy, like a mother to a child, would give Lucy the ability to improve her artistic capabilities. Yet Ricky doesn’t see this child or Lucy as people with needs, wants, and potential but rather stationary stocks in which he decides how much he wishes to invest based upon how profitable he believes they are at the given moment. Consequently, Ricky only sees Lucy’s motherhood’s worth in dollars, but Lucy sees her motherhood as a way to build long-term capital for both herself and her child. Unfortunately, Lucy must contend with other men in addition to her child’s father who wish to dictate and exploit her motherhood for their own profit.
Gendered capitalism in Lucy Becomes a Sculptress seeks to extrapolate Lucy’s motherhood for its own selfish gain. We see this most clearly when Lucy enters the art store, picking up supplies, her inexperience glaringly obvious as she does not understand the salesman’s terminology of medium or even who Michelangelo is. Afterwards, it is only when Lucy casually holds up her hands where the salesman in feign delight exclaims “Those hands… What expression… what symmetry, those long, expressive fingers, those are the hands of a sculptor!” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress) Although it’s easy to gloss over his statement as a profitable ploy, I wish to linger here for a moment and unpack the radicalness of his statement. The art world, at this historical point, in its past, and in today’s present, is incredibly exclusive towards females, forbidding women from entering the highest forms, or read male forms, of a formal education that includes painting, drawing, and, above all, sculpting. We have almost no records of any female artists, let alone sculptors, in the West until the Early Italian Renaissance, with the life of Master Properzia de Rossi, whose career was tragically cut short by systemic and societal sexism (Steffenauer 5). But here in Lucy Becomes a Sculptress, the role is normalized. When the audience laughs as Lucy molds her first work, it is not because it is a woman sculpting but because it is Lucy sculpting a poor, misshapen blob. And how is this permissible? Because Lucy already was producing a sculpture: her child.
The terrible irony of solely men being bestowed the title of great artist is that it is impossible for men’s bodies to craft, sculpt, construct, and produce the human race with their own reproductive organs; only the egg has the potential to become a fetus and eventually a living being, with the sperm merely as the sprinkling of yeast needed to start the baking process. While one could read this as a degrading and demeaning interpretation of the male sperm, this logic holds just as much, if not more, value as the Western fathers’ rationale that female bodies are simply plowed fields, breathlessly awaiting the all-powerful sperm seed (Zaina). Therefore, it fits that Lucy is only able to enter the art store in the name of motherhood, because if she’s already sculpting another body to add to the consumer capitalist market and labor force, she surely can create an artistic child through her own artwork that gives her freedom through mother power.
Simultaneously, we cannot examine Lucy’s artistic freedom without acknowledging that it’s only because of gendered capitalism that she is allowed to enter this realm. To prove this, after the salesman praised Lucy’s sculptor-like hands, he dumps clay onto the craft table and commands her to “Create something for me” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress). Notice the words he chooses. Not “Try to make something,” or “Please give sculpting a chance,” but create something for me. Even though Lucy is the one going into the store to buy art supplies for herself in order to teach her child art and culture because those are her values, the salesman takes all attention off of her and onto himself, centering himself as the object of her artistic desire. In this lens, we see not only the notion that Lucy cannot create something to satisfy her own dreams but also that men are entitled to women’s creations in both inspiration and ownership.
The former seems clear as Lucy is both visibly excited for the baby and for the chance to practice art, yet as noted previously, Ricky only allows Lucy to take up artistic endeavors on the condition that she doesn’t do anything “too crazy” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress). This may be because, as English Professor Elizabeth Velaz notes, mothering was not the prominent role of the 1950’s white, middle-class woman, but rather the wife was the primary role (Velaz). Lucy’s first duty is to be a wife to Ricky, and this serves as his main priority as she goes off on her art odyssey: she can make mud pies, but when her husband comes home at night, a real pie better be on the kitchen table. Instead, Ricky comes home horrified to witness Lucy sculpting “a child at its mother’s knee” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress), in the full artist ensemble, attentively sculpting each part of both the mother’s body as well as the child’s. Not only has she violated the sacred wife-before-mother barrier by putting her child’s artistic future, and by extension, her artistic future, above the needs of her husband, but she also has created something that reflects her experiences, her hopes, her dreams for what she sees in her future – her child learning from her and her experiential knowledge. Through this manner, Lucy has taken the same patriarchal tools meant to restrain her and dictate what and how she creates and maneuvers within the system to express herself and make something that fulfills her as a mother and as a person.
Sadly, we must address the second component the salesman believed he was entitled to of Lucy’s work: ownership. When the owner of the store came out and repeatedly interrupted Lucy that she could not buy her own work of art, one could argue that he was merely trying to flatter Lucy into thinking she had artistic talent so she would buy fifty pounds of clay without asking the cost. Yet I doubt that he would have taken ownership of a man’s artwork, for that would be seen as disrespectful and overbearing, but because she’s a woman, his actions are seen as flattering and paternalistic. Like Badruddoja pronounces, women’s bodies are seen by society as “vehicle(s) for cultural (re)production” (316-317), meaning that anything our bodies create is available for auction, just as how we see Ricky interact with the art critic near the show’s conclusion. Initially, he faithfully declares that he would never sell Lucy’s bust without her permission, which is actually her face covered in power and the rest of her body concealed beneath the table. In response, the male art critic offers to pay five hundred dollars in 1950s dollars, unaffected by the fact that he is stealing the artist’s work away without her expressed and given consent. Always preoccupied with cash, Ricky quickly changes his tune and tells him “I’ll take the responsibility,” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress) in essence having sold his wife and child for his profit. As a result, we see that although mothers and wives are forced to bear the responsibility of raising and rearing their child, it is ultimately the father and the husband who have the last say in what they do and whom they belong to, Ricky having the power of screaming the episode’s final line, “Lucy!” (Lucy Becomes a Sculptress) as the art critic runs from the room, terrified that the female head he purchased can actually speak. Consequently, even with Lucy’s freedom in the name of motherhood, her wifely responsibilities ultimately restrict her freedom of expression and autonomy, placing the final nail in her sculptor career.
The I Love Lucy episode Lucy Becomes a Sculptress emphasizes the power that women have to push past their prospective roles in the name of motherhood, even as male profit and husband privilege creeps its way into mother power. As much as I love this episode and want to see Lucy battling antifeminist perspectives and owning mother power, I’m discouraged that by the end of the episode, she is left speechless, her body rendered an object for men to barter and debate over. Yet even in silence, Lucy speaks boldly. As she waits for the art salesman to attend her earlier in the episode, she explores the store on her own, an obviously pregnant woman setting a mannequin into the splits and showing her iconic goofy facial expressions, she teaches us that motherhood hasn’t changed her at all. She’s still the same person with all of her quirks, desires, and wildest dreams. Patriarchy may be permitting her to sculpt in the name of motherhood, but Lucy is choosing to sculpt in the name of herself. Womanist trailblazer Alice Walker wrote how a woman has two wombs: her biological womb and her head (144). For Lucy, engaging the former opened the latter.
Works Cited
Badruddoja, Roksana. “The Fantasy of Normative Motherhood: An Autoethnographic Account of Contesting Maternal Ideology.” “New Materialisms:” Tales of Motherhood (Dislodging the Unthinkable), Demeter Press, Bradford , ON, 2016, pp. 315–323.
Haralovich, Mary Beth. “Sit‐Coms and suburbs: Positioning the 1950s homemaker.” Looking for America, Jan. 2005, pp. 238–263, https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470774885.ch9.
“Lucy Becomes a Sculptress.” I Love Lucy. CBS Broadcasting Inc., KCBS-TV, Los Angeles, 12 January 1953.
Steffenauer, Kami. “Regardless of Their Last Name: A Comparative Analysis of the Lives & Legacies of Italian Renaissance Masters Properzia de’ Rossi and Livinia Fontana.” Term Paper. HIST 099. Georgetown University. 28 April 2023.
Velaz, Elizabeth. “Post-World War II Constructions of Motherhood.” Class Lecture. ENGL 2700. Georgetown University. 6 February 2024.
Walker, Alice. “‘One’s Child of One’s Own:’ A Meaningful Digression within the Work(s).” In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, Amistad, New York, New York, 2023, pp. 139–154.
Zaina, Lisa. “Gender and the Church: Ancient Roots.” PowerPoint Presentation. THEO 2233. Georgetown University. 22 February 2024.
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