Discuss Ralph and Alice’s relationship in The Honeymooners. How does Ralph’s modest income as a bus driver compromise his authority in the home? Sheehan discusses his threats of violence against Alice. What do you make of Ralph’s and Alice’s adversarial relationship?
March 6, 2019 at 2:35 pm
Ralph’s economic status yields failed manhood by the standards of the time, and the resulting insecurity fuels the show’s plot structure. Ralph’s bus driver income only affords a life in a Brooklyn tenement-style apartment with minimal interior decorating and pre-war appliances. Ralph’s income, standards of living, and attitude towards Alice all represent the pre-war. According to Sheehan, in the post-war consumer culture, the husband’s authority was derived from his ability to provide material goods to the house, and the wife’s worth came from how effectively she used these resources to better the home and family. Every episode’s structure is a result of Ralph’s socioeconomic status and failed manhood, as the grand schemes and paranoia that drive plot structure are rooted in his personal insecurity.
The structure of episodes depends on Ralph’s “big ideas” or paranoia creating a problem and then his attempts to resolve the problem digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole. For example, in one episode, he devises a fool-proof “get-rich-quick” scheme to buy a thousand multi-purpose kitchen utensils and use the power of TV to sell the tool at a higher price in a commercial. Despite his confidence in the plan, he freezes on live TV and in a hilarious scene, the commercial goes completely awry. At the end of “Head of the House”, Ralph thinks he can cook well enough to convince his co-worker that Alice follows his orders, but the scheme ultimately fails because of Ralph’s inability to cook. The situation is only resolved when Alice, who is secure enough to take the blame for something she did not do, rescues her helpless Ralph. In doing so, she demonstrates to Ralph and the audience that she is the Boss in the house. Overall, the show’s structure of Ralph trying to get ahead or improve his life but only creating further problems, which often he require Alice to resolve, demonstrate his dependency thus establishing him as a failure by the contemporary standards of masculinity.
In contrast, Alice is proficient in her cultural duties as a woman in the 1950s. She cooks, tends to the house, and is friendly with Ed’s wife. Her ability to excel is capped only by Ralph’s very limited budget. Ralph’s failure to earn sufficient income for the consumer society’s standards is the root of Alice’s inability to live up to her full potential as a woman by having a nicer home interior. For Alice, Ralph’s low income and his obesity act as argument capital. Pairing Ralph’s failures with Alice’s quicker wit gives Alice the upper hand in every argument. When arguing, Alice sternly looks at Ralph and waits for his animated rant to end so she can deliver a witty comeback. Her apathetic calm contrasted with Ralph’s animated yelling show her assuredness in relation to Ralph’s insecurity. While Ralph may threaten to send Alice “to the moon” (a.k.a threats of domestic violence), the audience knows he would never do this, and the power dynamic is clearly in Alice’s favor. Sheehan largely agrees with this idea, describing the root of Ralph’s anger as “a fundamental point of inadequacy and self-loathing” (539). Overall, Alice is the head of the house, and the root of the show’s plot and humor is Ralph’s shortcoming as a man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22oCaiccz3w
^clip of the failed commercial, Ralph advises Norton to be calm like himself, but in reality, Norton is calm and Ralph’s nerves ruin his “get-rich-quick” scheme.