Phoniness, falsehood, uneasiness, tension, indecision, gray flannel aspirations, and insecurity were the defining propositions of the decade. Suburbia, American dream, and gender roles also ruled the decade. When men entered domesticity after a long absence after postwar they found it very difficult to settle down. They felt uneasiness and frustration and found it difficult to manage home, work and their very identity. The unrest in the mid-1950s was gauged by the same uneasy representation of gender roles in both fiction and film. In the Sloan Wilson novel,The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), a best seller, World War II vet Tom Rath is caught between two worlds-home and work and present and past. He cannot settle down in suburban
