Who’s Afraid of the Kitchen? Representations of the Kitchen in Three US Films, The Children’s Hour, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Blue Jasmine

This article examines the depiction of the female protagonist(s) in relation to the kitchen in three films, William Wyler’s The Children’s Hour (1961), based on Lillian Hellman’s play, Blake Edwards’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), based on Truman Capote’s novella, and Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013). Although the release year of the first two films might suggest they belong to the heyday of “a woman’s place is in the kitchen,” neither straightforwardly bows to the patriarchal cliché, even as their respective protagonists are shown in the kitchen at some point. The third film resonates in part with each of the other two, with The Children’s Hour in its socio-therapeutic approach (in this case relative to women’s choice to actively make their lives) and with Breakfast at Tiffany’s in its glamorous avoidance of kitchen-related domesticity. In Blue Jasmine, the kitchen furnishes the protagonist a homely background to express her grief, hopes and social views of women’s self-empowerment, whilst partially depending on the ‘supporting role’ of her sister, the classically ‘domestic’ woman. I interpret the films against a brief historicisation of the making of women’s kitchen-related domesticity in modern times and of contemporary views on the kitchen’s ‘homeliness’ in the West.