Character Analysis
Life hasn't gone as planned for Joanna Kramer.
She's smart, talented, and, for the past decade or so, she's been languishing in her Manhattan high-rise as a homemaker and mother. We think it's a safe bet that "bored, neglected housewife" wasn't her dream job.
Kramer vs. Kramer kicks off with Joanna leaving Ted. Before she bolts, she feels stuck, miserable, and so depressed that she thinks she's unfit to be Billy's mom. That means she feels forced to leave him behind, too:
TED: What about Billy?
JOANNA: I'm not taking him with me. I'm no good for him. I'm terrible with him. I have no patience. He's better off without me.
TED: Joanna, please.
JOANNA: And I don't love you anymore.
Oh yeah, and she's fallen out of love with Ted, who's married to his job, too. Ted works constantly; when he's not working, he's talking about work, and he's totally checked out of Joanna and Billy's lives. He may come home to their apartment every night, but he's not really there. For her own sanity and safety, as evidenced by the fact that she tells Ted she might jump out the window if he forces her to go back into their apartment, Joanna's got to get away: from their home, from her marriage, from motherhood.
And so she does.
Is She a Villain or What?
When Joanna comes back into the picture after 18 months in California getting therapy and regaining her independence, confidence, and sense of self, she's in a much better place. Here's how she explains her time away to Ted, before she drops the "I want custody of Billy" bomb on him and he launches a wine glass at the wall:
JOANNA: All my life I've felt like somebody's wife or somebody's mother or somebody's daughter. Even all the time we were together, I never knew who I was. That's why I had to go away, and in California, I think found myself. I got myself a job. I got myself a therapist, a really good one, and I feel better about myself then I ever have in my whole life. And I've learned a great deal about myself.
That's rad that Joanna's found herself, but, when she comes back into the picture and demands Billy, she seems like a selfish flake because, as an audience, we've just spent a ton of time with Ted and Billy and that's where our sympathies lie at the moment.
We've watched Ted struggle to balance his work and home lives. We've watched him run Billy to the emergency room on foot. We've watched him become adorable BFFs with Margaret. We've watched him read bedtime stories, and tie Billy's shoes, and feed Billy lines at his Halloween pageant when he forgets them. In short, we've been rooting for Ted to become a great dad, so when Joanna's shows up all, "Give me my son," of course we're #TeamTed.
Blame Pie à la Mode
What we're forgetting, as we wave our "Ted 4Eva!" pennants and print T-shirts with his face on them, is how Joanna got so miserable in the first place. Let's slice up this blame pie and hand out some pieces.
First, a huge piece goes to the expectations of society at large. In the late 1970s, women were fighting to get out of the kitchen and into the boardroom even harder than they still have to today. When Joanna married Ted, she gave up her career because that's what women did. It doesn't matter that she's well-educated, presumably talented, and did not want to stop working; she gave up her career because that's what women did, and because Ted was totally unsupportive. Check out this exchange between Joanna and her attorney that sums things up:
GRESSEN: Did you continue to work after you were married?
JOANNA: No, I did not.
GRESSEN: Did you wish to?
JOANNA: Yes, but every time I talked to Ted—to my ex-husband about it, he wouldn't listen. He refused to discuss it in any serious way. I remember once he said that I probably couldn't get a job that would pay enough to hire a babysitter for Billy.
GRESSEN: Tell me. Are you employed at the present time?
JOANNA: Yes, I'm a sportswear designed for Selco here in New York.
GRESSEN: And what is your present salary?
JOANNA: I make $31,000 a year.
BT-dubs, $31,000 in 2017 dollars is about $111,000, so yeah—we're pretty sure Joanna could afford to pay a babysitter.
Speaking of Ted, our second slice of blame pie goes to him. As Joanna's testimony, well, testifies, he was totally cool with Joanna giving up her job, career aspirations, and future in general to be "Ted's wife" and, later, "Billy's mom": two jobs that, as it turns out, don't come with a ton of benefits
Ted completely took Joanna for granted. He diminished her (see: affording a babysitter), and he neglected her. For example, he was so unengaged from their family life that the first time he took Billy to school after Joanna vamoosed, Ted didn't know what grade his kid was in.
The third, and final, piece of the blame goes to Joanna for not leaving sooner. It's a tiny little sliver, but, still, Joanna's not completely without responsibility here. She didn't have to stay so long…but she also didn't want to leave Billy. That's one seriously tricky situation. We'll let Joanna explain her decision to leave in her own words, in this revealing monologue she delivers from the witness stand:
JOANNA: During the last five years of our marriage, I was becoming more and more unhappy, more and more troubled, and I really needed somebody to help me, but when I turned to Ted, he just wasn't there for me, so we became more and more isolated from one another, more and more separate. He was very involved in his career, and because of his attitude towards my fears and his inability to deal with my feelings, I had come to have almost no self-esteem. I was scared, and I was very unhappy, and in my mind, I had no other choice but to leave. At the time I left, I felt that there was something terribly wrong with me, and that my son would be better off without me. And it was only after I got to California that I realized, after getting into therapy, that I wasn't such a terrible person, and just because I needed some kind of creative or emotional outlet other than my child, that didn't make me unfit to be a mother.
See? Joanna isn't a selfish jerk; she was just depressed and driven to an existential crisis by being married to Ted in 1979, when women struggled to be defined by more than marriage and motherhood.
Just to be clear: Plenty of women in 1979 were working moms, but we're guessing they weren't married to men like Ted Kramer.
Joanna Accidentally Games the System
The irony is that Joanna ends up winning custody of Billy because of the same sexist attitudes that led to her being miserable in the first place; this time, they just happen to work in her favor.
Given the evidence we see presented, the court seems to rule in Joanna's favor primarily because she's Billy's mother. Let's be objective about it: Joanna's been AWOL for 18 months (a lifetime in kid years), she gets skewered by Shaunessy on the stand, and Ted's grown into a terrific father…yet Joanna still wins, most likely because she's a woman, which, according to the cultural attitudes of the time, makes her the better parent by default.
Alrighty then.
For her part, Joanna also seems to buy into this idea that mothers are better parents, at least a little bit. Here's how she concludes her final monologue before the court:
JOANNA: Billy's only seven years-old. He needs me. I'm not saying he doesn't need his father, but I really believe he needs me more. I was his mommy for five-and-a-half years, and Ted took over that role for 18 months, but I don't know how anybody can possibly believe I have less of a stake in mothering that little boy than Mr. Kramer does. I'm his mother. I'm his mother.
"I'm his mother," she repeats. "I'm his mother." That word, "mother," is supposed to mean something to the court, and, ultimately, it does. Joanna gets Billy, and Ted gets a pretty lame visitation schedule that neither he nor Billy are particular stoked about. Sleepovers every other weekend? Dinner once a week? Yay?
Girl Power, '70s Style
It's hard to root for Joanna at times. For starters, "finding yourself" seems so 1979. It's also hard not to see her as fickle. She leaves. She comes back. She spends thousands of dollars to win custody of her son; then she decides to let him stay with his dad. If you're screaming "Make up your mind, woman!" at your screen through a mouthful of half-eaten Junior Mints, you're not alone.
Here's the thing, though: if you look at her in context, through the lens of 1970s America, she's a complex, and even fascinating character who embodies the era's attitude toward gender roles and parenting. By her own admission, leaving Billy was hard:
JOANNA: I know I left my son. I know that that's a terrible thing to do. Believe me, I have to live with that every day of my life. But in order to leave him, I had to believe that it was the only thing I could do, and that it was the best thing for him. I was incapable of functioning in that home, and I didn't know what the alternative was going to be, so I thought it was not best that I take him with me. However, I have since gotten some help, and I have worked very, very hard to become a whole human being, and I don't think I should be punished for that, and I don't think my little boy should be punished.
Leaving Ted, on the other hand, probably wasn't as difficult. (No offense, Ted.) Still, it took guts for Joanna to essentially declare "I want more." It took even more guts for her to go out and get it when Ted ignored her for the 7,825th time.
That's the catch: Joanna had to take care of herself before she could take care of Billy. You might think about it like the oxygen mask warning you hear on airplanes—you know, how parents should put their masks on first, before they attend to their kids. Joanna needed to breathe before she could take care of Billy.
If Ted had been willing to support his wife, maybe Joanna wouldn't have had to drive across the country, jammin' out to some Supertramp, to find somebody who would lend an ear, see her as a human being, and let her catch her breath.
(Yeah, we're just assuming it was Supertramp. Because 1979.)
Joanna's Timeline