Ball and Chain

The phrase ‘ball and chain’ has long been used pejoratively by husbands to describe their wives. It conjures the image of a man being weighed down and locked into a heavy ball that limits freedom. However, Screenscope would like to pose that women are also shackled by the ‘wife’ title in the media. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a wife. Marriage is beautiful, I’m a fan even. But the evolution of the on screen wife has highlighted that wives have been moulded into a minor figure in the story, relegated to the sidelines, ultimately influencing the audience to find the labour of the wife title, well, too laborious.

I’ll Fix You A Sandwich

The wife trope has always been in media, but became more widespread from radio in 1929. There was a vibrancy that women had on there to keep people engaged, and as it transferred to TV, there was still some of that excitement when women adopted a ‘wife’ role on screen. Although still seen as secondary to their husbands, the wives from the 1920s to the 1940s had agency, they were funny and flawed in shows like ‘The Goldbergs’ (1949) where the protagonist, Gertrude Berg, produced and wrote the show as well as starred in it. At this point, the wife was more dynamic, but this changed after the Red Scare from 1947-1957. 

The Red Scare, also known as McCarthyism was a political fear campaign against left-wing ideologies. Anything that was seen to be communist or too liberal was axed. The TV networks, which relied on advertising, were wary of being labelled “un-American”, so they clung to traditional portrayals of family life. The American family was believed to be the cornerstone of society, therefore the wife became symbolic defenders of the nuclear family, a heavy ball and chain to carry. The portrayal of wives as supportive, domestic figures on TV during this time helped to reinforce a narrow vision of womanhood, family, and marriage. They still had voices, but there were shows like ‘Leave It To Beaver’ and ‘The Donna Reed Show’ that created an aspirational tone of a wife that is more polished and less phased by the trials of life; frustration was muted and the house was in order, neglecting the possible dreams that wives could have had outside of the home. By 1959, 85.9% of households had TVs, compared to the 9% figure in 1950, meaning that this vision of the flawless, docile wife deeply influenced societal norms.

Fix Yourself A Sandwich

The second wave of feminism in the 1970s sparked a shift. ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ and ‘That Girl’ in the 1960s and 1970s were revolutionary because the protagonists were not wives, but career-women, challenging the idea that marriage was a woman’s ultimate goal. They were brash, resistant, and wore trousers – the horror of it all. This translated into the 80s and 90s as well, with a new kind of wife like Clair Huxtable (‘The Cosby Show’) and Roseanne Conner (‘Roseanne’). They brought complexity to the role, balancing careers, family struggles, and individuality. While Clair Huxtable juggled polished perfection with authenticity, Roseanne unapologetically represented working-class wives with grit and humour. It should be noted that Britain has been showcasing working class women way longer than the US has, shoutout to the soap operas (which you can read about here btw).

I’ll Make A Sandwich if I Want To

The 1990s saw a decline in family-centric sitcoms, with shows like ‘Sex and the City’, ‘Will & Grace’ and ‘Living Single’ focusing on friendships and independence over marriage. Even when wives are shown in ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Black-ish’ and ‘Modern Family’, they are complex with emotional depth and highlight the struggles that wives go through even more than previous eras. But male-led sitcoms, often featuring bumbling husbands and sidelined wives, kept outdated tropes alive. (I wrote about the evolution of those shows here). Well, some of them relied heavily on the tropes of old, making the wife an accessory to the man’s antics instead of truly giving her a life beyond the home. 

A prime example of the disposable wife trope is ‘Kevin Can Wait’ (2016). Kevin James returned to sitcoms after ‘The King of Queens’, playing the same bumbling husband with a beautiful but one-dimensional wife. However, in Season 2, the wife was abruptly killed off with little explanation or remorse, with the creators claiming they had “run out of ideas.” This sparked criticism about how wives on TV are still treated as disposable, existing only to serve the male lead. This archaic view was directly challenged by ‘Kevin Can F** Himself’, a dark comedy that subverts the sitcom formula. Mimicking the setup of shows like ‘Kevin Can Wait’, it centres on a stereotypical sitcom wife who tolerates her husband’s antics under a veil of canned laughter. But when she steps out of his orbit, the tone shifts to a gritty, single-camera drama, revealing her inner turmoil and longing to escape the hell of her wife role. Notably, Erinn Hayes, the actress whose character was killed off in ‘Kevin Can Wait’, appeared on the show as a deliberate dig. ‘Kevin Can F** Himself’ is a bold statement to the TV industry. We are not tolerating lazy, sidelined portrayals of wives who exist only to prop up immature husbands. That’s why works like ‘Don’t Worry Darling’, ‘Why Women Kill’ and ‘Stepford Wives’ exist – to fight against the doting domestic housewife. Wives are much more than that – women are much more than that.

What’s A Sandwich Anyway?

Now, I think that the most popular complex wives on screen are from reality TV. ‘Wife Swap’, ‘The Real Housewives of *fill in the blank*’, ‘Basketball Wives’, ‘WAGS to Riches’. The term ‘wife’ has become an entity that you can use as you please. The use of it in cases where women aren’t even married can also highlight the need to categorise women by their marital status, but there’s not enough time to get into that!! While the label might centre around marriage, it often opens the door to explore other facets of womanhood and can be extremely contradictory as they portray wives as glamorous, ambitious, and independent, yet often tether them to the drama of their relationships. The term “wife” has become a brand and a tool for storytelling, giving wives the space to be dynamic, flawed, and fiercely independent.

So what is this ball and chain now? I guess it’s whatever you want it to be, as long as it’s not just an accessory to men’s stories, because if they are, the wife will find a way to break free – by fire by force.