After the Fact Interactive: Rosie to Lucy

This module invites students to investigate the dramatic shifts for women from the exigencies of wartime employment symbolized by Rosie the Riveter during World War II to the cultural pressures of domestic life dramatized by the nation's favorite television wife and mother, Lucille Ball. Recent works in women's history and primary sources will show how women faced on one level a turbulent symbolic battle over the ideal of femininity and on another level were coping with surprisingly steady but nonetheless dramatic changes in employment and social conditions.