Nostalgia and Post-Boom Postfeminist Reappropriation of Domesticity in Laura Wade’s Home, I’m Darling
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Set in the 2010s, Laura Wade’s 2019 Olivier Awards-winning comedy Home, I’m Darling (2018) is a play of ideas that dramatizes Judy’s embodiment of the ideal 1950s British housewife in pursuit of her happiness. While the play offers a fierce satire on the heroine’s “choice” to retreat from the public sphere in order to become the Angel in the House, it also presents her nostalgic expressions as a symptom of crisis. What underlies the protagonist’s desire to turn the clock backwards are the difficulties that women face in the twenty-first century where uncertainty has become certain. That is, nostalgia is not a disease but an emotion that is rooted in the sociocultural, political, and economic contexts, and appears as a relevant topic for understanding an individual, a community, or a nation. Focusing on Judy’s nostalgia, this article both explores the meaning and functions of nostalgia by examining the protagonist’s personal and social experiences, and demonstrates how her nostalgia implies contemporary sex/gender, economic, and political crises undergirding life in the new millennium. The article is interested in how Judy’s nostalgic world reappropriates domesticity as “a site of undecidability,” thereby complicating boom postfeminism’s new traditionalism in the post-recession era. While the article embraces an approach to postfeminism that allows room for pluralism and difference, it focuses on the “cruel optimism” of the millennials living in the post-2008 financial crisis, era thereby articulating the complexities of post-boom postfeminist landscape.
Abstract
Set in the 2010s, Laura Wade’s 2019 Olivier Awards-winning comedy Home, I’m Darling (2018) is a play of ideas that dramatizes Judy’s embodiment of the ideal 1950s British housewife in pursuit of her happiness. While the play offers a fierce satire on the heroine’s “choice” to retreat from the public sphere in order to become the Angel in the House, it also presents her nostalgic expressions as a symptom of crisis. What underlies the protagonist’s desire to turn the clock backwards are the difficulties that women face in the twenty-first century where uncertainty has become certain. That is, nostalgia is not a disease but an emotion that is rooted in the sociocultural, political, and economic contexts, and appears as a relevant topic for understanding an individual, a community, or a nation. Focusing on Judy’s nostalgia, this article both explores the meaning and functions of nostalgia by examining the protagonist’s personal and social experiences, and demonstrates how her nostalgia implies contemporary sex/gender, economic, and political crises undergirding life in the new millennium. The article is interested in how Judy’s nostalgic world reappropriates domesticity as “a site of undecidability,” thereby complicating boom postfeminism’s new traditionalism in the post-recession era. While the article embraces an approach to postfeminism that allows room for pluralism and difference, it focuses on the “cruel optimism” of the millennials living in the post-2008 financial crisis, era thereby articulating the complexities of post-boom postfeminist landscape.
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