Gender Roles and Narrow Norms

She Loves Me is often remembered as a charming, funny, and occasionally sweet romantic comedy. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t reflect, (and occasionally reinforce), 1930s gender norms that can and should feel uncomfortable today. One thing that is always interesting when telling a story like this, which is meant to reflect norms from decades ago or more, is that while some things are very different, others are frustratingly similar.

At its core, the show’s central relationship between Georg Nowack and Amalia Balash is built on a dynamic of mutual irritation that hides something else. On the surface, their banter is witty and balanced between the two. But if you look more closely, Georg’s early treatment of Amalia includes dismissiveness and condescension, and he sometimes assumes intellectual superiority. That dynamic reflects a broader pattern in classic romantic comedies where a woman’s worth is “revealed” or validated through a man’s changing perception of her, rather than her own independent trajectory. In essence, her worth is dangerously close to being entirely dependent on the value a man ultimately gives her. However, and fortunately for the audience, and for the actors who are creating these character portrayals, there is a bit more to work with in this story. Amalia is written as intelligent and assertive; she can clap back as quick and as well as anyone, if not better. She argues and holds her ground in ways that would have been considered quite progressive for the time.

The subplot involving Steven Kodaly, (pronounced “Koh-dai”), and Ilona Ritter makes the gender politics more explicit. Kodaly is a serial womanizer who manipulates Ilona, treating her as disposable…just like he does every other woman. At first, Kodaly is a comical character, however, the musical clearly wants us to feel sympathetic toward Ilona, and by the end, he may not be in our good graces. Ilona herself has a fun, unexpected arc.

It’s also worth noting the workplace setting: a 1930s European perfume shop where male authority figures dominate. Women like Amalia and Ilona are employees whose economic stability is tied to male management, reinforcing a power imbalance that shapes their interactions. At this point in time, a woman would not have been the manager. The conventional wisdom was that when a woman married and had kids, she would stay home, and the husband would work, (queer couples were not legally recognized anywhere at this point). To that end, men were the ones “providing for a family,” not women…supposedly…and that was one of several excuses for why women should always be at the bottom of the workplace ladder.

Despite some of these points, the show rewards emotional honesty and mutual respect by the end. So rather than being a love letter to hetero gender norms, She Loves Me sits in a more ambiguous space, since it reflects the gender assumptions of its era while offering glimpses of resistance to them, and each production can lean into some of that unspoken space in ways that make it clear where the director stands.

Classroom Work – Building the Skills First

Since students have not seen the show yet, these exercises focus on core skills they will need when they do. Think of this as training the muscles before game day.

Status and Power

• Give students a simple task, like ordering food or asking for help
• Assign one student high status, the other low
• Replay the scene with status reversed

Quick Reflection

Ask students:

Are there any stories that have come out recently – whether film, television, books, etc. – where the plot has elements of things that you think we should be past as a society, but when you watch/listen to/read to that piece of media, you realize it is still relevant?

For example, when I (Trista) decided we would perform Miss Holmes Returns this past fall, the idea of the show ending on a “Votes for Women” march seemed almost quaint. Like…”awww, yeah, Sherlock would totally be for that, when it was a thing, 100+ years ago.” And then, as we were in rehearsals, a wave of political influencers started trending on “repeal the 19th,” (the amendment that allowed for certain women to vote), and certain prominent leadership figures started talking about having one vote per household, instead of per adult person. I realized that some of these stories need to be told over and over again, or people will take for granted what they have, and forget how hard it was to get here. Stories help us to know where we’ve been, and where we might be going.