Accurate or Appalling: Representations of Women Lawyers in Popular Culture

• Author: Laura Grosshans
• Position: B.A., Russian Language and Literature, Columbia University
• Pages: 457-485

Page 457

B.A., Russian Language and Literature, Columbia University, Spring 2000; J.D. Candidate, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Spring 2006. I would like to thank my notes editor, Annie Cantor, for her encouragement during the writing of this somewhat unconventional student work. I would also like to thank the editors and staff of the Cardozo Public Law, Policy, and Ethics Journal, particularly Alicia C. Hayes, Cathy Song, Sharon Samuel, and Tami Suh, for their work in preparing this note for publication. Finally, I dedicate this note to Jordyn A. Buchanan, for whom I am every day grateful.

The Female Advocate. Have you met the female advocate- (Now I don't mean just a tete-a-tete),

But when before a magistrate She pleads with manner passionate?

She has, it seems, a slight desire- (Now, I don't mean for male attire),

But that we should a bit admire The heights to which she would aspire.

Her mouth has just the right formation- (Now I don't mean for osculation),

But for continued exhortation, Without the slightest dislocation.

She asks in voice disconsolate- (Now, I don't mean, "My hat on straight?")

But for a verdict adequate To make her fee commensurate.

She has the instinct to embrace- (Now I don't mean the populace),

But every vantage in the case; She's bound to win just by her face.¹Page 458

Introduction

The characters Amanda Bonner, from the 1949 film Adam's Rib,²and Miranda Hobbes, from HBO's long-running television series Sex and the City,³are both successful female attorneys making their way in a profession traditionally dominated by men.⁴Both women graduated from top law schools,⁵have high-power jobs,⁶employ housekeepers,⁷and are occasionally involved in tumultuous romantic relationships with men who make less money than they do.⁸This note focuses on thesePage 459 characters for several reasons. First, critics have referred to both Adam's Rib and Sex and the City as groundbreaking works because of the way they portray their female characters.⁹In addition, Miranda and Amanda are bookends to the second half of the twentieth century, which was a pivotal time for women in the law-Amanda made her debut in December 1949 and Miranda first appeared in June 1998.¹⁰But do these portrayals of female attorneys really reflect the realities facing female attorneys during the beginning and end of the twentieth century? What do the similarities and differences between Amanda and Miranda say about the evolution of the woman lawyer from 1949 through the present day? To answer these questions, this note will examine various aspects of the personal and professional lives of Amanda Bonner and Miranda Hobbes and compare them to the experiences of female attorneys in America during the past fifty years. This note focuses on two aspects of the characters' lives: their work and their romantic relationships.¹¹

Surprisingly, the depictions of both characters accurately reflect the eras in which they live. This is surprising mostly because Amanda Bonner (seen through twenty-first century eyes) seems to be a woman lawyer ahead of her time, both in terms of where she works and her family relationships. Though many aspects of her personality, as well as her legal arguments, are quite extraordinary for a female attorney, Amanda's living situation and work situations are realistic depictions of the issuesPage 460facing female lawyers in the 1950s. Miranda Hobbes is also a fairly true-to-life picture of what many modern female lawyers experience, both in their work and home lives. Despite being realistic, both of these women have experienced a degree of luck in their lives without which they could not have achieved the same amount of success. As a result, Amanda and Miranda are exceptional, though realistic, representations of female lawyers in their respective eras. Both women also fit the paradigm of women lawyers in popular culture which has existed for decades.

Amanda Bonner and Miranda Hobbes are important characters to study because they teach the viewer important lessons about the experiences of women in the law during the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, they are illustrations of how Hollywood treats female lawyers in film and television.

I The Lives of Amanda Bonner and Miranda Hobbes

At first glance, Amanda Bonner in Adam's Rib appears to lead a charmed life. She is intelligent, articulate, talented, and passionate.¹²At home, she lives with her adoring and progressive husband, Adam, in their spacious bi-level apartment located in New York City.¹³When he works late, he brings her presents and helps her make dinner when the housekeeper has the night off.¹⁴The couple has no children, so they spend much of their leisure time together, giving one another massages and reading his and her copies of the newspaper.¹⁵As if love has not treated her kindly enough, Amanda also has an unrequited suitor who lives across the hall and who writes hit songs in her honor.¹⁶When Amanda spends time with her in-laws, it is not a stressful experience,Page 461but rather occurs at a black tie adults-only dinner party where everyone is very polite.¹⁷In addition, for those times when she needs to escape, Amanda has a vacation home that she and her husband own.¹⁸

At work, Amanda is just as blessed. A graduate of Yale Law School, she now has her own private practice that employs a secretary and male intern or associate.¹⁹Amanda is able to choose interesting cases that she can use as a means of advocating for women's rights, a topic that inspires great passion in her.

The main focus of the film is Amanda's criminal defense of Doris Attinger, a woman on trial for shooting her husband after finding him in a compromising position with another woman.²⁰Amanda's legal strategy is to highlight the idea that if Doris were a man on trial for the same crime, she would be acquitted. If Doris were male, the jury's verdict would involuntarily reflect society's idea that a man would want to, and would have the right to, defend his family against outside intrusions.²¹The Attinger case requires Amanda not only to use her intellect, but also pits her against her husband, the assistant district attorney assigned to the prosecution.²²Amanda handles herself in court with "'confidence] and independent[ce]. She strides to the jury box and the bench with self-assurance,'"²³and manages, despite provoking somePage 462 strange antics meant to amuse the movie viewer, to win the jury over.²⁴At the end of the film, Doris is acquitted.²⁵

During the trial, however, the stress of arguing opposite sides of a case takes a toll on Amanda's relationship with Adam. The Attinger case receives constant attention from the press, and several newspapers print cartoons about Amanda and her husband. One cartoon shows Adam and Amanda dueling with bats, but while Adam is ineffectually waving his bat around, Amanda's bat is striking Adam squarely in the head. Another cartoon depicts a female acrobat throwing Adam around while his wife smugly looks on.²⁶Unable to withstand the public humiliation of being bested by his spouse, Adam eventually announces that he doesn't "like being married to what is known as a 'New Woman"' and that he "want[s] a wife, not a competitor."²⁷Adam tells Amanda that if she "want[s] to be a big He-Woman, go and be it, but not with [him]."²⁸He then packs a suitcase and leaves.²⁹When the jury foreman reads the verdict, chaos erupts in the courtroom while Adam sits at his desk and looks defeated. He then says to his wife, "Congratulations. . .or should I say congratulations?"³⁰Despite these marital challenges, by the time the film ends, Amanda and Adam have overcome their problems and are once again happily living together.³¹

Miranda Hobbes' background is similar to Amanda's. Miranda, like Amanda, is a graduate of a top law school, practicing in New York, and living in a beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.³²Also, like Amanda, Miranda does not have a penchant for cooking or cleaning and leaves many domestic tasks to her housekeeper,Page 463 Magda.³³ Though unmarried for almost the duration of the series, Miranda has three best friends whom she sees regularly and who provide her with much of the emotional support she needs.³⁴ Miranda's family lives in Philadelphia, which Miranda feels is "close enough."³⁵Over the course of Sex and the City's six seasons, Miranda has many short-lived relationships with men, but frequently reunites with Steve, her on-again, off-again bartender boyfriend.³⁶One of the major problems in the couple's relationship is that Miranda makes more money than Steve.³⁷In the fourth season, Steve and Miranda have a child, Brady, the product of a one-night stand that takes place while the couple is not dating. Despite the prospect of having a child together, Steve and Miranda decide, at first, not to reunite.³⁸This decision lasts until Brady's first birthday; in one of the final episodes of the series, Miranda and Steve realize that they are ready to commit to one another and get married.³⁹Until she marries Steve, Miranda has more luck committing to her career than she does to the men in her life. At the beginning of the series, Miranda is an associate at a mid-sized Manhattan law firm, but she eventually works her way up to partner.⁴⁰In addition to the longPage 464 hours she must put in, Miranda faces many other challenges at her job because she is a woman. For example, in the first season, Miranda must deal with her colleagues' discomfort and misconceptions based on Miranda's single status. Other attorneys at her firm assume Miranda is a lesbian because they...