TUPPERWARE: THE PROMISE OF PLASTIC IN 1950s AMERICA, by Alison J. Clarke, Smithsonian Institution Press, 240 pages, $24.95.
THIS detailed and entertaining book explores how the plastic storage containers known as Tupperware rose to prominence in 1950s America. Developed by amateur inventor and designer Earl Tupper, Tupperware won acclaim for its design but languished for several years on the popular market. The product didn’t take off until housewife Brownie Wise established the Tupperware party as the preferred method of distribution. Yet, as Clarke describes it, Tupperware was more than just a clever use of plastic and an equally clever marketing tool–it was a symbol of its time and a perfect product for a consumerist age.
The author focuses on the culture that made Tupperware a success and discusses gender roles, suburbanization, and American traditions of ingenuity and free enterprise. She is especially adept at explaining Tupperware’s effect on women. The Tupperware party, Clarke writes, fitted neatly into the traditional “woman’s spheres” of beauty and the home and was therefore an acceptable way for women to earn money. Yet at the same time, selling Tupperware made many of these women economic powerhouses–very much at odds with gender stereotypes.
Clarke doesn’t neglect the fascinating careers of Tupper and Wise or the sequence of events that made Tupperware a household name. Still, she is more interested in exploring ideas and meanings than in following a storyline, and the rather dry nature of cultural historians’ perspectives on consumerism and middle-class morality can often overwhelm the narrative. Readers looking for a multi-layered discussion of Tupperware’s place in the world of ideas will enjoy this book. Those more interested in a straightforward popular history will, too, but when their eyes start to glaze over, they may want to skip ahead.
Stephen Currie is the author of many books and magazine articles and lives in New York Statei>.
