Beatrice Horseman: The Consequences of Forced Motherhood in the Second Wave
Known for its meaningful social commentary, complex character development, and sophisticated thematic elements, Netflix original “Bojack Horseman” covers its profound, heavy plotlines with playful, colorful two-dimensional animation—and not even side characters are exempt from facing intricate mythos. Flawed and morally ambiguous protagonist Bojack Horseman raises the age-old psychological debate: how much are parents to blame for their adult child’s limitations and failures? Upon meeting his mother, Beatrice Horseman, the answer becomes clear—upbringing is everything, and Bojack isn’t the only victim of neglectful parenting. Born in 1938 and coming of age at the start of the second wave feminist movement, Beatrice Horseman is an example of how both nature and nurture can affect a young woman’s frame of mind in the face of a patriarchal society.
When we first get a glimpse into Beatrice’s life as a child, she’s reading in her bed—her father, Joseph Sugarman, appears, saying that Beatrice must “stop making books [her] friends,” as “reading does nothing for young women but build their brains, taking valuable resources away from their breasts and hips.” At an impressionable age, Beatrice’s father conditions her to believe that her only value lies in physical appearance, which affects her for the entirety of her adult life. Considering the gender roles of the post-first wave 1940s, Joseph’s words towards his daughter aren’t entirely unexpected. Socialized to believe they can be nothing other than mothers or housewives, young women quickly learn that without a husband, life is meaningless (Friedan). And how do you get a husband? You fixate on your appearance, you center your life around finding an eligible bachelor, you remain compliant in your patriarchal duties as a woman. The only dream women had “was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands” (Friedan). So-called real women “were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted… careers, higher education, and political rights,” and this was only enforced by the male figures in a woman’s life (Friedan).
It only makes sense that Joseph hosts a debutante ball for Beatrice—a ball where daughters of elite, well-connected families can show their “glory and grace” as a woman to those in the aristocratic circle, signaling that the woman is ready for suitors to approach her for marriage (Yarborough). Beatrice, now 25 years old, knows that debutante balls are outdated, as she snarkily asks her father if the ball will “end war, poverty, and injustice or bring back civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was shot in Mississippi [that] week.” It’s clear that Beatrice is a well-read, shrewd woman who is Barnard-educated on social issues, but her father could care less about her interests: in Joseph’s eyes, she’s lucky “[he doesn’t] fill a jar with jellied beans and marry [her] off to the man who can closest estimate the amount.” When Joseph later tries to force Beatrice into an arranged marriage for business efforts, she tells him that “[he’s] a reminder of the disparity of wealth in this country,” to which he reminds her that “[he] sent [her] to Barnard to get [her] MRS from a fine upstanding Columbia man, but instead of a bachelor [she] returned home with a bachelor’s degree and a mouth full of sass.” Joseph and Beatrice’s relationship is a clear example of when “two human categories are together, each aspires to impose its sovereignty upon the other,” thus leading to a perpetual state of tension (Beauvoir, 1953, p. 87).
Coincidentally, Beatrice’s debutante ball takes place in 1963, the year that the second-wave feminist movement gained momentum following the release of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (Grady). Unlike the first wave, which focused on suffrage and opportunities for women, the second wave focused on dismantling the systemic sexism that forced women into domesticity and “that taught women that their place was in the home and that if they were unhappy as housewives, it was only because they were broken and perverse” (Grady). Women came to resent the societal expectations placed on them—and sometimes, even the most outspoken feminist women could not escape their domestic fate. When Beatrice runs into cunning, rebellious Butterscotch Horseman who crashes the “dumb debutante’s party,” she’s immediately intrigued—perhaps a man so drastically different from her father wouldn’t assume the same expectations of her. Perhaps she can escape the forces pushing her into motherhood and wifehood. She decides to run away with Butterscotch at her debutante party because “Daddy wouldn’t like that, would he?” Though her fling with Butterscotch was fleeting, Beatrice becomes pregnant with his child—to which he says he will “do the gentlemanly thing and pay for the cab fare” to an abortion clinic. Beatrice apprehensively tells him that she cannot abort the child, and they attempt to make a relationship work—a decision that Beatrice quickly regrets.
The same life Beatrice feared became her reality. Instead of spending her time following the dreams she set out for herself, she is forced to be a stay-at-home mother and raise Bojack without the help of Butterscotch. Her sarcastic, bitter personality hasn’t changed, however—just because she was forced into motherhood doesn’t mean she wants to be a good mother. Like many women trapped in domesticity, she faces “the problem that has no name” and “the voice within women that says ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home’” (Friedan). The resentment causes Beatrice to neglect and abuse Bojack for the entirety of her life, blaming him for “what [he] did to [her] body” and for her issues with Butterscotch.
Once a bright-eyed girl passionate about the world around her, Beatrice’s life dulls with the responsibility of domesticity. A resentment—partially imposed by hearing her father’s critical words at a young age, partially imposed by society’s expectations of women—grows in Beatrice that follows her to her death. Forced into housewifery, Beatrice lived to spite her father, continually and purposefully failing at the duties placed on her as a mother and a wife. She never quite realizes that she can never win the battle against her father, as his words have already infiltrated her mind too deeply to reverse. Instead of living a gratifying life, she never escapes the gilded cage she grew up in: a sentiment many women are all too familiar with.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, S. de. (1953). The Second Sex (pp. 87–97). Great Britain: Lowe and Brydone.
Bob-Waksberg, R., Bright, N., Cohen S.A., Fetter, B., Wiseman, J., Arnett, W., Paul, A., & Weil, A. [Executive Producers]. (2014-2020). Bojack Horseman. (Season 4, Episode 11) [TV series]. Tornante Company; ShadowMachine; Netflix.
Friedan, B. (1963). The Problem That Has No Name. Retrieved from https://www.oneida-boces.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=1716&dataid=1910&FileName=The%20Problem%20That%20Has%20No%20Name.pdf.
Grady, C. (2018, March 20). The waves of feminism, and why people keep fighting over them, explained. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth.
Yarborough, Z. (2019, October 24). Debutante balls: From past to present. StyleBlueprint. Retrieved from https://styleblueprint.com/everyday/debutante-balls/.
Photo courtesy of Netflix.