For the most part, Anne represents a strong and central force in the strip, and one drawn largely from Guisewite’s actual relation-ship with her own mother. In Reflections, Guisewite explains of her mother/daughter dynamic, “none of the relationships in the strip are as intense, or as closely quoted from real life” (153) and that
if the women’s movement made those of us who were twenty years old in 1970 confused, it made our mothers berserk. . . . It wasn’t that Mom didn’t agree with the “liberated woman” concept . . . more that she had a whole life and ten thousand mother/daughter speeches in the other system. As a result, every single new idea both inspired and offended my mother to the exact same degree. She became a bundle of contradictions; a woman who sent me a sub-scription to Ms. magazine in the same envelope as a six-part series she had clipped and laminated from Woman’s Day on “The Perfect Bride.” (154)
Anne supports her daughter by feeding her and nagging her in equal measure, reducing her to a child in most of their interactions, as seen in this strip from 1978 (see figure 1.4), in which Cathy walks down the street in three separate panels, exclaiming, “I am woman! I am self-confident and self-assured! I am woman! I am independent and alive! I am strong!! I am in control!! I am woman!!!” (Cathy Chronicles 133). In the final panel Cathy arrives on her mother’s doorstep and is
greeted by her mother, resplendent in a frilly, polka dot apron and heels, who welcomes her daughter, “Hi, sweetie. How’s Mommy’s little girl?” Cathy walks through the first three panels with her arms raised in triumph, and, in an unusual focalizing technique rarely seen in the strip, the point of view shifts around her figure, emphasizing her victorious stance, reminiscent of a boxer celebrating a win. But in the final panel Cathy is defeated, her arms, eyes, and face slumped downward, while her mother pats her hair and face. She has lost her independence and her mantra of empowerment once confronted by the powerful simulacrum of domestic perfection as embodied by Anne.
However, as Guisewite indicated, Anne is marked by contradic-tions, even reading feminist literature and dabbling with a conscious-ness-raising group in 1979, with the results ultimately unraveling, yet again, in favor of traditional gender roles. In a story arc from 1979, Anne inadvertently reads Marilyn French’s 1977 novel The Women’s Room with her book group. Many of the themes of the book, includ-ing women’s empowerment, resonate with Anne, although these ideas are quickly squelched by ingrained dominant narratives of female behavior. Anne fails to recognize these incongruities, resulting in a comical disconnect for the reader, as in this example from 1979 (see figure 1.5), in which Anne explains that she thought The Women’s Room was a “cute little romance,” but after reading it came to realize,
“I’m a victim in a man’s world! An unpaid slave! My life is a waste!”
Cathy attempts to comfort her mother, stating “Mom . . . Mom . . . Let’s talk about this!,” but Anne is cheered by the final panel, as if awakening from a trance or dream of inequity, responding, “Not now, dear. I have to fix dinner before your father gets home.” This trend of representing the humorous disconnect between a realization of feminist ideals and Anne’s real life of acting out gendered
stereo-<INSERT FIGURE 1.4>
FIGURE 1.4. Cathy Guisewite. The Cathy Chronicles. Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1978, p. 133.
types is repeated numerous times in reference to the consciousness-raising group—every realization quickly unravels, becoming an affirmation of traditional, pre-Women’s Liberation archetypes of female roles, with the humor residing in the reader’s identification of the divergence between recognizing sexism in theory and practicing it in one’s own life. This is not surprising, perhaps, given that Anne learned the “10 Steps to a Raised Consciousness” from “the back of a beef stroganoff recipe.”
Anne’s counterpoint resides in Cathy’s friend Andrea, a staunch feminist who attempts to educate Cathy in female empowerment. In an interview with Makers, Guisewite explained:
The character Andrea was very much my feminist side and the side of me that embraced all of feminism and all of being enlightened and being strong and on my own. She represented a woman who didn’t doubt herself and that was, that had great vision and great energy and great commitment to her dreams, and her life was not complicated by a relationships or insecurities. She was confident, and proud, and smart and not ambivalent.
Andrea appears in the earliest strips as a contrast to Cathy’s uncer-tainty. She wears her hair in a dark bob and usually sports a dashing scarf tied around her neck—a cosmopolitan touch that contrasts with Cathy’s cutesy heart sweater. In the early years of the strip, Andrea drags Cathy to transcendental meditation, a “Woman of Today” club, a “New Horizons for Women” seminar, and “Assertiveness Train-ing,” all of which fail to inspire Cathy to wholeheartedly embrace Andrea’s feminist fervor. And although Andrea played a prominent role in a story line that tackled maternity leave and childcare for workers, she provided only a small measure of support during one of
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FIGURE 1.5. Cathy Guisewite. Cathy: Twentieth Anniversary Collection.
Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1996, p. 21.
the most interesting and rarely discussed flashpoint moments in the strip, a storyline in which Cathy was sexually harassed by her supe-rior, Mr. Pinkley.