Thank you for your comment. I was angered and upset from the beginning how Betty's character has been maligned when all along it has been Don. What does it say as us as a society choose to make the woman a villian instead of a victim. I think sometimes we forget the time that Don and Betty are living in. As previously stated she gave up her career to be a wife and mother. Not like today where we as women can have it ALL. What do you expect of her really. Her husband has cheated, lied, undervalued, and ignored Betty from the beginning. I for one applaud Betty for taking a chance at some happiness for herself. Imagine how brave she would have had to been for this time. Go Betty.

I also wholeheartedly agree.

The irony of the following just kills me:

1.) Don is still suggesting that Betty see a psychaitrist.....excuse me?? He's the one with the problem. She sought therapy because of HIM, yet he still doesn't get it.

2.) Don calling Betty a "whore". Oh...OK....so all his whoring around doesn't count. Again, Don needs the shrink.

3.) He accuses Betty of "building a life raft" to get out of their marriage...referring to his discovery of Henry Francis. Um, wasn't that what Don did in Korea? Didn't he adopt the identity of another soldier to escape and grab a new life?

4.)Don tells Roger that he never saw himself working in a (classy) place like Sterling Cooper. No kidding! That's because he's lucky to have gotten this far riding on the back of a stolen identity and he knows it.....same reason he isn't too too mad at Betty for jumping ship (he lied his way into her life in the first place, the schmuck)

5.) Don didn't like Conrad Hilton "playing" with him?? Yet Don fails to see how he plays with the lives of others, especially Betty's life.

I wasn't of the Mad Men generation, but I still see this Westchester syndrome even today, among former-career-women-turned-stay-at-home-moms in a highly affluent society. I see what you're talking about here, but still I find I've never had much sympathy for Betty.
To me, she seems like a superficial woman who thinks superficial things will make her happy. I think the reason THIS character in particular is sad is because she thinks being beautiful, having a nice house, and having a hot-shot handsome husband will make her happy. She's only dumping Don beccause she found out his roots. He's not the man she thought he was, so she's divorcing him to get an upgrade.
Unfortunatley for this character, she won't be any happier with her new husband, because she has no happiness coming from within!

I really do respect what you're all saying, I just don't get it. I mean, Betty didn't dump him when she found out about Don's first million affairs, she dumped him when she found out he wasn't Don Draper, but Dick Whitman. And girls like Betty don't marry guys like Dick Whitman, right? No pity from me for Betty. At the same time, I don't sympathize with Don either.
I think all the characters on the show are pretty despicable - that's what makes it so fun to watch!

Brovo WestchesterMom! I'm not a big Betty fan, she does have her faults, and not all of Don's points about her are wide of the mark. That said, you're exactly right.

This show is about advertising, and Don gave Betty a pitch, a thing that promised happiness, but didn't, in the end, deliver. Granted, this was the lie (advertisement) that most women had to buy into, as they weren't given opportunities to be much more. But it was still a lie that every woman could find happiness in the suburban home, raising the kids, married to the successful businessman. It was an ad that sold a certain way of life, one meant to keep women content to be merely extensions of their husband's dreams.

Don's dream of wealth, wife, executive position was also a lifestyle advertisement, a bill of goods that he's been sold. It's when he realizes that it's not bringing him happiness that he finally understands Betty. The product is not as advertised, and it's time to face that, decide what it is your really want and go after it.

Otherwise, as you say, you end up trapped forever in that lie.

Betty may not have married Don for the fur coat. But from what we've heard, she didn't give him any attention until he presented it to her, probably clumsily - the stable boy to the princess. She deliberately did not ask how he obtained it. She wanted it and he delivered. He also delivered ninety percent of everything she wanted - upper middle class house, children, her own car, maid service, position and all the money she wanted.

It was only when she found out about his dirt-poor roots and that he'd been "married" before that she "didn't love him" after eleven years of marriage. True, she was enormously hurt before by his infidelities but was still content to stay married.

Furies29 -
What career did Betty give up to become a wife and mother? Modeling? Where she roomed with another girl in a tiny apartment? The possibility of becoming a call girl like her former roomie, Juanita Campbell? Betty at nineteen or twenty with two years in the modeling world was at least halfway through a successful model's (not supermodel's) average lifespan. Or, oh, yeah, I forgot, her career in Anthropology.

West, good points and well put. But you forgot that Betty didn't just have a modeling career, she had a degree in anthropology from a top university.

Betty did not "give up" any career. She went to college, studied anthropology and wound up modeling! Yeah, that's putting your education to good use. She, like many of her generation, went to college for an M.R.S. degree and not much more.
Her inability to show warmth and emotion to her children, dad, brother, etc. stems from the fact that she is a spoiled woman/child. She tolerated Don's behavior as long as he provided what she thought she wanted. She has never been happy, always frustrated. And she made the break, not based on the infidelity or the subterfuge, but simply because she found another guy who was anxious to bail her out of it. She has never done anything on her own, and never will. She needs the support of a strong daddy figure - without it, she sits and takes and tolerates. That life raft was really built by Henry. I hope it sinks.
Feel bad for the kids!
madmanfan

Betty is the woman who grew up pre-war II. The expansion after the war created those people who grew up in a fantasy of "the American Way". Their parents had one foot in the old ways of female purity and non expression of emotion. I never heard my parents fight and we never spoke about how we felt or expressed love and affection in a physical way. The mother's of my friends were just like Betty. Those were the days when parents slapped and hit children without consequences. I don't ever remember seeing a parent hug a child. Children were controlled the old Bible way, spare the
rod, spoil the child. Women got a taste of freedom during the War. They worked. Divorce became more accepted and women who left their abusive, two timing husbands had to work to support their families. Fortunately for the women, the booming post war economy created more jobs than the number of white males available. The 60's became the defining point of breaking out of the Calvinistic suppressed sexual mores. Betty's children are the beginning of the Baby Boom generation. You can see that defiance in Sally, God Bless Her. Economics determine so much of social behavior. It's a great fun MadMen, isn't it?

I agree with what most people have said with regards to Betty's tolerance of earlier behavior. If she were just upset about Don's infidelity, she would've hooked up with stable boy last season. Instead, she chose to avoid him and then play him off onto her friend. No, it was after the lies of the Dick/Don past that she came across an opportunity in Henry and pursued it. I am curious to see how this plays out. Henry, working in public service, cannot possibly support her, her three kids and his own kids (as he claims he will) on his salary. And she claims she'll take nothing from Don so that she doesn't owe him anything. I'm sure she'll get the kids and the house and the sale of her father's house will help, but unless Henry has some secret slush fund that we're not privy to as of yet, the days of dinners in the city, Carla working at the house, and fur coats are gone with her marriage. Maybe once the 'extras' are stripped away and the curtains pulled back (so to speak) she'll realize what makes her truly happy. Let's hope so. She's been a miserable person for a long time.

I'm kind of amazed by these comments about how Betty ONLY decided she didn't love Don when she found out about his lies. Maybe you mean this ironically, but it's not true. She wanted to leave him last season after she found out he was cheating on her. But she was preggers, couldn't get rid of the child (she tried!), and in the way of those times, believed it was best for the child to stay together and try to work it out.

I don't think Betty has loved Don for a while. Since before she almost crashed the car back in Season 1. All finding out about the lies did was break the camel's back. It was the depth charge that brought everything to the surface--foremost among those the realization that the patches she'd been putting on the marriage weren't working. The boat was sinking and no amount of bailing and patching was going to save it.

You can't blame a girl for trying and trying and trying. And she has tried and tried from seeing a shrink to sexy underwear, to fancy dinners for his clients, to being the candy on his arm at important parties. She has tried to patch up the leaks in the marriage, give herself a place, be happy as his better half, etc. But none of these attempts has ever been successful in the long run.

You've all missed a lot of the show if you think it was ONLY when Betty learned about Don's dirt-poor beginnings that she decided she didn't love him. That loss of love has been happening from the second episode of the show on. The truth about his past was the final straw, not the only staw.

It's Don who pushed Betty away or kept her away from his life. On many occasions the writers have let us know that Betty was madly in love with Don. Remember she told him in Season One how she longed for him sexually? She also wanted to be a true partner to him.... remember how she told him in the car how she loved being made a part of his life on the drive home from the Utz apology dinner? She hosted dinner parties for his clients, attended numerous functions with him, and yet, he never shared with her what went on in his business life. As truly strange as the Campbell's past has been, they seem to have a real partnership going for them. That's all Betty ever wanted, and Don withheld it.

Thirteen -
I never thought that Betty loved him in spite of his infidelities. How far back that went, I don't know but her love was there in the beginning of S1. She knew he was cheating, she as much told the psychiatrist when she said, "sometimes it's the way I want, sometimes it's the way someone else wants."

However, it was only after she opened the box that marriage became intolerable and she told him she didn't love him any more. Actually, that's not right.

It was after they returned from Italy. She found herself right back in the same grind, the action with Henry hadn't stopped the project from going forward and Betty wanted out - out of the town, their friends, the house, everything. Even after their romantic visit to Rome, she refused to extend it with a little bed romp with Don after his first day back at work. She even sneered at the bracelet charm he got Connie to send. (That in itself could have been a story.) The box was just the catalyst.

Don had been trying since he'd returned from California in S2, with one out-of-town exception, up until they came back from Italy and she refused him. So when an opportunity arose in the next episode - Suzanne was out running and given the uncertainty of high-maintenace Connie wanting him at odd hours...

Don probably was right when he said Betty never forgave him. I don't think Betty had even been trying since Jimmie spilled the beans in S2. She continued the marriage only because she was pregnant.

As far as Don not sharing his business life, that's a two-way street. He didn't volunteer the information and Betty didn't ask, even of Mona who could have told her how much Don as a partner would have made from the sale of SC. If she'd wanted to know, all she had to do was ask and be prepared to say the question, Why? In a rare bit of sharing, Don told her no contract meant he had all the power in what he does. Betty didn't care. "You don't know where you're going to be in three years?" [Would that a lot of us could know.]

Trudy knows a lot about Pete's business life because he's a whiner and she wants to be a mommy. Don's the classic strong silent type who doesn't whine when things go bad but did share that he might be going to London and later did take her to Rome.

Put a fork in it and start slicing, the marriage is done even before the beginning of S3.

It was 1963. Divorce was a scandal beyond imagination. Helen Bishop was the talk of the neighborhood and the scorn of Betty. So, playing devil's advocate:

Let's say Thirteen is right (and I think she is) and Betty started to realize she didn't love Don before she almost wrecked the car in season one. What are her options?

1) stick it out and make the best of it

2) divorce with 2 young children and no guarantee of financial support.

And, as we learned this past episode, she couldn't even get divorced in the state of NY unless she could PROVE infidelity. Right. That would be likely.

Given all this, the fact that Betty is using Henry as an escape hatch is both logical and expected from any woman who might consider herself sane.

All the comments regarding Betty's behaviors, motivations, etc. have much merit. Yes, things were different then. But what irks me most about Betty is her inability to act on her own - without the help of a man - to do what she apparently believes is the right thing to do. It was harder in those days, yes, but not impossible. She is the antithesis of all that I respect in my 'sisters' - dependent, non-assertive, superficial and cold.
My own mom left my dad (much to this little girl's dismay) in 1957. Had to wait two years for divorce - had to make it on her own. She did it without any Henry waiting in the wings.
So, Betty should either have sucked it up and gone on with the charade or left Don without using the life raft of Henry that she built for herself. She is a loser. Don is a winner.
my opinion of course.

Oh, please. "Westchester Syndrome." Let's go right now, up to Westchester and ask some of the poeple there if they would trade places with a member of the working class of Brooklyn.

Yes, there were a great deal of women who suffered from boredom in the fifties. Not EVERYONE. Many women kept themselves busy, with charity work, clubs, etc. etc.

Betty Draper, from the portrayal I've been watching, is a spoiled, vapid, borderline nut. Go! Be a model if you want. If you think all her problems would disappear from a fullfilling career as a "model," you're as vapid as she is.

Nonsense.

I agree almost completely with New Girl. How convenient and still modern of Westchester Mom to excuse all of Betty's factual faults and misdeeds and hold Don accountable for them. It sounds so familiar to the broken relationships I see today. Wasn't Don sold a bill of goods when it came to the American Dream and what happiness means? Which of the two had the happier childhood - if Betty's problems are the result of an oppressive husband and society (gender-wise, which is certainly true), aren't Don's problems the result of an abusive, destitute childhood, and the real-world brutality that men (and now, often, women) endure to create and perpetuate the American Dream (including fighting wars)? Why is Betty the one deserving of sympathy? Or are we really talking about self-identification and exoneration. Who is responsible for Betty's near abusive relationship with her daughter? Is it just or moral that Don's social class deception is Betty's avowed fault line of her relationship with him? How did each of them break their marriage vows: Love, honor, obey...(Don - infidelity; Betty - I don't love you anymore). How do modern conception of marriage comport with the factual act of commitment, the marriage contract? What is the real purpose and meaning of marriage?

Don: "Let me ask you something, What do women want?" Roger: "Who cares....You know what they want? Everything, especially if the other girls have it..."

This very sexist conversation reveals some hidden truths about marriage - What good is it if only serves the wants/needs of one partner at the expense of another? Several men I know tried to have a clear-eyed discussion about these things at the beginning or before their marriages, only to find such talk upsetting or outright rebuffed by their partners. Only after problems arise did the women want to talk about these things; usually to say that any problems were the man's fault - for not fulfilling unstated needs or desires.

Don was a good provider, and provided a stable and loving male figure in the Draper household. I hold him accountable for his infidelity, as I am certain that it was at least implicit that their rules would not have countenanced his serial philandering. But, it was Betty's responsibility to get to know who he was BEFORE they got married. Check the basic questions she asked him about who he was in S1E2. And so I defend him.