In a world of mad men

“And who are you supposed to be?” a neighbor asks Don and Betty Draper after he hands their children Halloween candy. The question is seemingly innocent, but damning as well, because this one question finally voices Don Draper’s struggle over the past three seasons.

One is left to admire once again the genius of Mad Men’s team, because after the question is asked, almost accusingly, the camera shifts to not just Don Draper, but to a very uncomfortable Betty Draper as well.

I, like most avid Mad Men watchers, have been expecting the inevitable: when Betty finally discovers Don’s secret and accuses him, and we see the king dethroned (I must admit, my heart went out to the broken Don when his usually suave fingers betray him as he pulls out a cigarette). But I didn’t expect to feel sorry for Betty during this entire incident – feel sorry for her not because she is a trapped housewife, but because she, like Don, is looking at her life from the outside in.

Let’s face it: both male and female viewers get drawn into the machismo of the world of misogynist money-loving alcoholics. It is difficult not to love the moments when Don boldly brushes off anyone who talks to him. And I’m not entirely sure if it’s because of his troubled past, or because of the fact that his affairs occur as often as he pulls out a cigarette, but I always forgive Don’s extra-marital affairs. Thus I am ashamed to admit that when Betty clumsily slept with a stranger in the back room of a bar during the Drapers’ brief separation, I was disgusted with her and her disregard for her husband and children who spent the night in a hotel room awaiting the impending doom of nuclear war.

So I was surprised by my own realization while I watched this last episode of Mad Men: Betty makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know her anymore. I want her to be either a submissive and naïve housewife, or a carefree girl breaking lines of acceptability of the 1960s. But she’s teetering.

Although I knew Betty Draper was as “damaged” as the rest of them from the first season when her psychiatrist visits foreshadowed some instability, she remained boring: her suffocated life predictably led her to frequently yell at her kids, and frankly, she had nothing interesting to say to keep Don’s sole attention. After all, wasn’t it she who once explained her flawless housekeeping with, “My mother always said, ‘You’re painting a masterpiece, make sure to hide brush strokes”?

Betty Draper has always been in the margin of the world of Mad Men, and predictably so. But the beauty of this show is that her transformation from a perfect Stepford wife to a frustrated and lost woman has occurred in the margins as well, slowly and surprisingly. Anyone who closely watches this show realizes from her fledgling affair and her unexplainable episode after the Drapers come back home from Rome, that Don’s now unveiled secret affects Betty as much as it affects him, maybe even more so.

And she realizes it, too. I had to admire her sass when Don defends himself by pointing out that many people change their names:

Don: “You changed your name too.”
Betty: “Yes. I took your name.”

What Betty is afraid of is her identity being based on a man who doesn’t even know who he is, who claims to be someone else all together. And in that simple retort, she accuses Don: changing her name was never her choice, and now she doesn’t know who her name even belongs to.

Betty Draper is no longer going to be the perfect housewife blind to her husband’s vices, nor is she going to break all boundaries and define the new woman of the era. Instead, she teeters on that point of non-clarity and doubt that is not unlike those experienced by women now. While Joan and Peggy represent the struggle of choosing between career and family, and advancing in the workplace as a female, it is Betty that begins to scratch at the fundamental question that is no longer reserved for just men: who am I?

While the neighbor smiles expectantly at the Drapers as he holds his bowl of candy, we come to realize that both Don and Betty struggle to answer this question. We trust that Don will be able to arrive at some answer, because he has the confidence to be a good liar. But Betty, well, I don’t know her. But I’m expecting this woman on the margins to continue surprising me.