There were a lot of women at this time period that didn't know how to drive. If they wanted to go somewhere, their husband would usually drive them. 3 of my great-grandmothers never drove a car.
shareThat's actually true, espescially in New York City. Although my grandparents were the exception. Both of my grandfathers knew how to drive and one of my grandmothers didn't, but I don't think the one who did drove that much.
BTW, Woody Harrleson's character was an a**hole!
According to the book, she just never learned, although all of her children offered to teach her. Even if she could, where would she go? Her husband had the car and he was at work so much. She had to stay home and handle the household--as it's mentioned several times in the book, the few occasions that she did leave without the kids, some disaster happened that she had to deal with later.
shareMy Grandmother was a mother in that time period and she also never drove until she was almost 40. It was a sign of the times and when I asked her why this was so, she said, "I just never thought of driving, Ham (my Grandfather) would drive me everywhere." Also she said that for her everywhere she wanted to go, or had to go was within walking distance. I'm by no means saying this is right it is just what occurred for many housewives at that time.
shareMy mom grew up in the time period and never learned how to drive, and most of her sisters never learned how. They took the bus everywhere back then, or a cab, and when she got married my dad took her everywhere and sometimes we would take the bus places. I wished it was still that way some times.
shareOf my four grandparents only one learned to drive - in 1959 when Pop Pop was 66 years old. They lived in a more suburban section of Philadelphia. My Dad's parents lived in what is now Society Hill, much more condensed. You are better off not having a car in tiny streets.
You wonder if Evelyn liked her life in some way. She worked out of her house in a flexible way, responding to each contest. Her children and even husband helped her come up with ideas to submit. I work out of my house using my computer. My husband set it up and my daughters were born into using computers. Even from college, they do some work for me.
Who knows? Maybe Evelyn Ryan didn't want to work in an office, watching men steal her ideas and claim them as her own. Or, train new male employees and end up working for them. The only man bringing her down in her home was her husband, spending his weekly paycheck on his daily six pack and fifth.
(As we know from Evelyn's last contest, 250,000 other contestants responded to the challenge. So, few women earned good livings doing this?)
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
My mother never drove in the 50's in Brooklyn but at 35 she had to learn to get around in Calif because there was very little mass transit. Very few of her friends and family knew how to drive either. It was that way all over the country; you walked and the man had the car and the power that came with it.
IMDb; where 14 year olds can act like jaded 40 year old critics...another poster
A lot of housewives never learned to drive in the 50s. My grandmother never learned how. They either walked or got rides from family and friends.
shareMy mother-in-law has never learned to drive; some people don't. She does just fine on public transportation most of the time. For places that doesn't go, she takes taxi cabs or gets rides from friends who drive.
shareI am a women born in 1956 and raised during the time period of this movie. Did my mother drive? No, why would she have? We lived in Chicago in the kind of wonderful neighborhood where everything from the store, the church, and the beach was within walking distance. Want to go downtown to Marshall Fields? Hop on the train and there you were. It also has to be noted that during this time, very few families had more than one car. How would my stay at home Mom ever have the chance to learn and if she did when would she have had the opportunity to actually have the car? But just because she didn't drive did NOT mean she did not have the desire to see the world. She did. And when I learned to drive (a butter yellow '64 Corvair), she and I took off together. The scene of the mom and daughter in this wonderful, wonderful movie reminded me of my driving days with my Mom. I have to say that I loved this movie from it's creative conceptualization to the tribute it pays to the strong women in our lives.
shareI know plenty of people who do not know how to drive, simply because they choose not to/do not need to - most use bicycle or public transpo. I am not from the US though so maybe in US it is expected that every adult drives a car? It certainly would make things terrible if everyone was driving cars!!
shareMy MIL came to Texas in 1947 and was in shock that so many women drove. She finally learned to drive in 1968.
We're gonna need a bigger boat.
Neither one of my grandmothers (about the same generation as Julianne Moore's character) ever learned how to drive. As several mentioned, it just wasn't a common thing, and both sets of grandparents only had one car anyway.
My paternal grandmother lived in St. Louis, so took the bus most places she needed to go. The few times she needed a car, my grandpa drove her. In later years, it became my dad's job to take her grocery shopping (it was the 'price' he had to pay for getting to use the family car for date nights.) This lead to my dad eventually just taking over the grocery shopping for his family (he felt his mom took too long getting ready in the morning), so he'd just take the grocery money and get everything on her list so he could have the rest of his Saturday free. As a result, when he married my mom...he continued to do the grocery shopping. He just got used to it and he likes it.
His sisters (both born in the 1930s) didn't learn until later in life--one had announced she was going to become a nun, so my grandpa figured she didn't really need to learn. The other had seizures, so couldn't have gotten a license at that time. The nun quit the convent and learned to drive in her forties, the one with the seizures benefitted from advances in medicine that made it possible to control her seizures, and she learned.
My maternal grandma lived in a smaller town where everything she needed was easy walking distance, the few things she needed a car, again, her husband (and later her kids) drove her. My maternal grandpa realized that things were changing, so he insisted on his daughters (born in the 1930s and 40s) learning to drive. He apparently tried to teach my grandma, but the one lesson he gave her nearly resulted in her putting the car in the river, so she wouldn't try again.