lucy thwarted

Conflicts inevitably arise when Lucy's fervent desire to be more than a housewife run up against Ricky's equally passionate belief that such ambitions in a woman are unseemly. This dynamic is established in the pilot episode--when Lucy disguises herself as a clown in order to sneak into Ricky's nightclub act--and continues throughout the entire series. In episode after episode Lucy rebels against the confinements of domestic life for women, the dull routines of cooking and housework, the petty humiliation of a wife's financial dependence, the straightjacket of demure femininity. Her acts of rebellion--taking a job, performing at the club, concocting a money-making scheme, or simply plotting to fool Ricky--are meant to expose the absurd restrictions placed on women in a male-dominated society. Yet her rebellion is forever thwarted. By entering the public sphere she inevitably makes a spectacular mess of things and is almost inevitably forced to retreat, to return to the status quo of domestic life that will begin the next episode.

--christopher anderson, the museum of broadcast communications