Phyllis McGinley

Phyllis McGinley
Born	March 21, 1905 Ontario, Oregon
Died	February 22, 1978(1978-02-22) (aged 72) New York City
Nationality	U.S.

Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children’s books and poetry.

She studied at the University of Southern California and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where she was a Kappa Kappa Gamma, graduating in 1927, then moved to New York City. She wrote copy for an advertising agency, then taught at a junior high school in New Rochelle, New York for one year, until her career as a writer and poet took off.

Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor and satiric tone. She embraced domesticity in the wake of second-wave feminism, wrote light verse in the wake of the rise of modern avant-garde and confessional poetry, and filled the gap between the housewife and feminist intellectual who rejected the domestic life. McGinley actually labeled herself a “housewife poet,” and unlike Anne Sexton who used the term to be ironic and self-deprecating, McGinley used it as an honorable and purposefully crafted identity. She wrote mainly for white, middle-class, educated women and her work was published prolifically in periodicals, including the New Yorker and Ladies’ Home Journal. In her poetry, McGinley humorously depicts a life that revolves around the children and routine of domesticity.

Though her work as largely faded into the annuls of history, McGinley was a hugely popular author in her time and she was the recipient of many literary prizes, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for her “Times Three” piece. In 1964 she was honored with the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame (described as 'An honor to a man or woman who has "enriched the heritage of humanity"'). She also holds nearly a dozen honorary degrees - "including one from the stronghold of strictly masculine pride, Dartmouth College" (from the dust jacket of Sixpence in Her Shoe (copy 1964)). Time Magazine featured McGinley on the magazine's cover on June 18, 1965.

She moved to Larchmont, New York in 1937 with her husband, Charles Hayden, and raised two daughters there, singing the praises of domesticity and small town suburbia for nearly 40 years. McGinley died in New York City in 1978.

Early Life

Born to a land speculator father and pianist mother, Phyllis McGinley’s first home was in Oregon. From there, Phyllis and her family moved to Colorado where she, at a very early age learned to farm. At the age of 12, her father died and the family moved again, this to Utah to with a widowed aunt. She studied musical theater at the University of Utah and in her 20s, she moved to New York where she worked writing commercial jingles and teaching, finally marrying at the age of 33.

Personal Views

To Phyllis McGinley, femininity was of extreme importance and she highly valued the uniquely woman ability to be both wife and mother. She felt that the capability to foster familial relationships was what gave women their power and she fought to defend their rights to do so. McGinley loved the pride that came with being a woman, the respect in being a wife, and the immense gift of being able to bear children and be a mother to them. Despite her admiration for the housewife and her duties, she did not embrace the immaculate, commercialized image of the “perfect woman”, one always smiling and always finding pure happiness while performing her household duties. McGinley fully recognized the monotony and drudgery that went along with this role; however, she felt that the pros far outweighed the cons.

Though McGinley embraced domesticity, she did not discredit those who chose the working life (after all, McGinley was a working woman herself). She did feel though that a balance could be struck between the two worlds and one could live both the domestic and working life, a role at which she excelled. She believed that women needed to embrace the skills housewifery without letting go of the progress that women had made in the world. McGinley was able to refute the “either/or” mentality of the time and carve out for herself a unique place in society where she was a merged possibility: a woman, a mother, a professional, domestic, and cosmopolitan. Most of all however, Phyllis McGinley, no matter what path a woman chose to follow, felt that the most important thing was for a woman to recognize and acknowledge her unique and honorable place in life.

Content throughout her poems reveals insight into her personal views, for example -

"A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe,

She can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby,

She can use her intuition instead of her brain,

But she can't fold a paper in a crowded train"

(Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978), U.S. poet, author. Trial and Error.)

Criticism

McGinley has been criticized for providing readers with transient humor but not actually effecting any change. Betty Friedan has said that McGinley was a good craftsman but did nothing to improve or change the lives of housewives. To Friedan, domesticity cripplingly confined women and did not allow them a chance to pursue their own interests or careers. This was a reoccurring opinion amongst many of the second wave feminists who were McGinley’s contemporaries. As a result, her poetry was largely ignored by feminist critics attempting to escape from the life of mother and wife. Another criticism was McGinley’s use of light verse poetry. Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal, “Phyllis McGinley is out – light verse: she’s sold herself” (Leroy 14-15). Her use of light verse in the midst of the rise of modern avant-garde and confessional poetry made McGinley’s poetry seem dated in form, as well as in ideology.

Use of Light Verse

Light verse poetry is poetry that attempts to be humorous and was the style of choice for Phyllis McGinley. She chose to write in this manner for multiple reasons, one of which being its practicality. The New Yorker, for which she very often wrote, paid more for “light” poetry than it did for “serious” poetry. McGinley wrote mainly for white, middle-class, educated women, most of whom were housewives. Her ability to target this audience and make humorous routine responsibilities made her very popular. Another reason for her use of light verse was that it allowed her to vent her frustrations with the drudgery and routine of being a wife and mother without her seeming unfit for the job.

Perhaps the main reason for her utilization of light verse though, was that the skills needed for writing this style were similar to the skills of mastering familial life. “Like writing light verse, housewifery took seemingly effortless skill, nuance, and balance; it, too, required a balancing act of mother/housekeeper/hostess where wit and humor were employed just as much as in McGinley’s poetry. Delicacy in awkward situations not only was the role of the hostess housewife, but also could be said of McGinley’s verse as well. Both professions benefit from perfect form and the ability to be light with one’s feet.” (Leroy 16).

McGinley’s skill in crafting perfect verses of poetry not only produced brilliant poems poking fun at the everyday happenings of life but also, like all great poets, provided a medium in which she could espouse her views on society. Within her humor, there routinely was an underlying ridicule of the commercial, perfect housewife.

Works

Collected poems

• On the Contrary (1934)
• One More Manhattan (1937)
• Husbands Are Difficult (1941)
• Stones from Glass Houses (1946)
• The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley (1954)
• Merry Christmas, Happy New Year (1958)
• Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades (1960), winning a Pulitzer Prize
• Sugar and Spice (1960)
• A Wreath of Christmas Legends (1967)
• Fourteenth Birthday (date unknown)
• The Adversary (date unknown)
• Daniel at Breakfast (date unknown)
• Without a Cloak (date unknown)

Collected essays

• Province of the Heart (1959)
• Sixpence in Her Shoe (1964)
• Wonderful Time (1966)
• Saint Watching (1969)

Children's books

• The Horse That Lived Upstairs (1944)
• All Around the Town (1948)
• Blunderbus (1951)
• The Make-Believe Twins (1953)
• The Year Without a Santa Claus (1957)
• Boys Are Awful (1962)
• How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas (1963)

Individual poems

• "Collector's Items" The New Yorker 25/49 (28 January 1950) : 28

Bibliography

Walker, Nancy. "Humor and Gender Roles: The Funny "Feminism" of the Post-World War II Suburbs." American Quarterly Vol. 37. No. 1, Special Issue: American Humor (Spring, 1985), pp. 98-113. JSTOR. Web. 08 Feb. 2012.

Beuka, Robert. Suburbianation, reading suburban landscape in twentieth-century american fiction and film. Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.

Donaldson, Scott. The Suburban Myth. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2002. Print.

Leroy, Megan Anne. Writing the Mean: Phyllis McGinley and American Domesticity. University of Florida, 2007. 02 Feb. 2012.

Bellafonte, Ginia. "Suburban Rapture". New York Times 2008. (December 24). 02 Feb. 2012.

References

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