Lust for Life: How Women Might Not Fit into the American Dream

Meredith Antley

Film, Noir, and Novel

Prof. Sinowitz

16 November 2017

Lust for Life: How Women Might Not Fit into the American Dream

If you’ve never lived in a small town in your life, you’re lucky. It’s hard to break out from what you’re used to, and the majority of people who leave inevitably find their way back. In my hometown, the majority of the girls marry their high school sweethearts, buy or inherit property on Jamestown Road near the Walmart, and live a perfectly normal life. They live the basic American Dream. They have a job, a house with a white picket fence, and kids who end up going to the same high school as their parents.

I always see these families, and wonder if this is what their mother had in mind when they were growing up. I wonder if they wanted to stay in this tiny town with its gossipy citizens, or if these people ended up being stuck. Stuck with these boys who inherit their family’s tractors, with their parents down the road from them, and stuck with the same friend group that they graduated high school with. And perhaps they are happy, but I am always curious if this was their American Dream. When I read James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cora instantly reminded me of these women.

Her role in this book is perfectly labeled by the French as a femme fatale. She brings nothing but destruction to herself, Frank, and her late husband Nick Papadakis. In the novel, Frank and Cora have an affair, and Frank inevitably asks her why she married the Greek if she hates him as much as she claims. She explains that she won a beauty pageant in Des Moines, won a trip to Hollywood, and never came back. She ended up working in a hash house for two years because she couldn’t get work anywhere else, and then she says, “Then he came along. I took him, and so help me, I meant to stick by him. But I can’t stand it any more” (Cain, 15). To Cora, it felt as if she were stuck, much like the women I have described previously. To her, it was her only way out, her only safe haven. She settled for a man that she didn’t even care about, and as time went she began to resent him more and more, until she cracked. She felt as if the Greek took something from her that she couldn’t get back. She had dreams to make it in Hollywood, and she did not pursue them because she was tied to this greasy man. On page 16, she says, “I want to work and be something, that’s all. But you can’t do it without love. Do you know that Frank? Anyway, a woman can’t” (Cain, 16). I wonder if that’s how the women from my small town felt. If they felt like they couldn’t pursue their dreams past the county line. Maybe they were scared to, like Cora is when Frank tries to persuade her to leave. I’m not saying that all women feel this way, but I wonder how much women are influenced by the small town mentality and their role in the American Dream. To them, do they feel if like it is just their sole purpose to care for the property that the men own while they are off working? I assume that like Cora, these women have their own dreams and aspirations, but I believe that their own desires were put aside because they fell for the first man to give them admirable attention, and they didn’t want to let go of the that feeling. And now, they’re stuck. Cora was tired of being stuck, so she thought of a plan that could free her.

Cora wanted to kill her husband.

From the beginning of the novel, Frank shows obvious signs of infatuation with his employer’s wife. By the end of the second chapter, they’ve already begun their abusive affair, and from then on their love grows. Cora feels as if the only way that they can be together is if they both murder Mr. Papadakis, and since Frank is so obsessed with Cora, he would do anything to be with her. On page 46, Frank confirms my theory by saying, “I had to have her, even if I hung for her” (Cain, 46). This clearly indicates how dedicated he is to pleasing her, to having her for himself. And to prove himself, he plots his murder of Nick Papadakis. It took them two tries to successfully off the Greek, and after that the relationship between Frank and Cora shifts. It shifts from a hot and heavy love, to a distant and abusive one revolved around alcohol. After the Greek’s murder trial was over, when they first make it home, Cora says to Frank regarding the incident, “And we kissed and sealed it so it would be there forever, no matter what happened. We had more than any two people in the world in the world. And then we fell down. First you, and then me. Yes, it makes it even. We’re down here together. But we’re not up high anymore. Our beautiful mountain is gone” (Cain, 85). The trial is over, and now they can finally be together. However, since Cora feels betrayed by Frank since he turned her in, she feels like she can’t ever trust him again. The love that that they had idolized is now gone, and she doesn’t think they can get it back. And this is the moment that their relationship shifts into the abusive, alcohol based relationship I recently mentioned. Throughout the novel Cora wants more, she continuously says how she wants more and how she wants to be something. It seems that to women similar to Cora, the basic American Dream is not enough. After the death of her husband, she has land and a job, but still it isn’t what she wants. It isn’t until she is pregnant that she thinks that she could potentially be happy, and even then she talks about ending her life. Near the end of the book, she states that she wants to go swimming. She continues by saying, “Tomorrow night, if I come back, there’ll be kisses” (Cain, 110). If. She tests Frank with this simple two-letter word. She wants him to want her to come back. And he does, he does want her to come back to him. He wants the relationship they previously shared. The sad part is that she doesn’t make it back.

The relationship between these two reminds me of a specific family I came into contact with growing up. The woman involved grew up in Morganton, married the first man she met outside of high school, had a daughter, and then had an affair with a married man. Eventually, the woman got pregnant, had her second child, and the marriages the two had prior were broken up and then the two got married. Their relationship had begun with the excitement of an affair. The secrecy, the sneaking around was the foundation of the relationship, and then they were attached together for life. Much like Frank and Cora, these two had seemingly no other choice but to stay together. Of course, there were other options for the couple I had mentioned. It was obvious that their first marriages were compromised, but nothing forced them to get married. Cora and Frank could have easily gone their separate ways, forgotten each other, and moved on. But they didn’t. They stayed together. The fact that Cora was pregnant was the spark they needed to continue their relationship. It’s almost as if that there was no baby that Cora wouldn’t have returned. And maybe that would have been good for her, not returning to the toxic relationship she had with Frank.

It’s hard to tell whether these women, who became stuck in a life that they may not have imagined, are happy. I have observed these women, gone to school with their children, but I am not heavily apart of their life to get a sense on whether or not that they are emotionally fulfilled. Of course, they love their children, their husband, but I wonder if they too wanted to become something. Maybe their something was to be a mother, and they got what they wanted. Or, like Cora, maybe they wanted something more. The American Dream seems to be more successful for the men. They get to become something. To have property, a job, and a family was all they could ever want.  It was what they were used to, what their fathers did. Their wives, however, don’t have the pleasure in securing their own plot of land, or the job they may have dreamed of. Similarly to Cora, they settled and became stuck in a life that they had been dropped into. And yes they are happy, or they seem it anyway, it just seems like they only fulfilled the American Dream, and not their own.