From Jo's and Christine's posts to the Yates Interview

Two excellent reviews, from the New Yorker and the Guardian. It is significant that as you both point out, they see Revolutionary Road as dramatising contemporary issues: Friedan's 'problem without a name,' and the sense of despair at the apparent success of the US in the 1950s (Eisenhower smugness; the suburbs). Behind both of these, I would suggest, is a still-relevant sense of the wider inabililty of capitalism to deliver the fulfilment that it promises. It is significant also, again as you both point out, that the reviews position the film as dealing with these wider issues tangentially; suggesting that its dynamic derives instead from the pecularities of the relationship between the central couple. Christine notes how Denby foregrounds April's 'neuroses' as sufficient explanation for the film narrative and emphasises the 'theatricality' of Mendes' approach as a director; Jo similarly echoes French's sense that the opening revelation that the couple 'hate each other' drives the narrative. In which case, any commentary on the wider issues would be beside the point.
This question is very similar to that dealt with by Richard Yates in the interview, which pivots exactly on insisting what is 'the problem'. Yates denies that either 'the suburbs' or 'marriage' (which links to the Friedan-informed reading) is the problem - referring to the blaming of these things as the 'Wheelers' delusion.' Where do you think this leaves us? Must this short-circuit into the film's apparent emphasis on the couple's personalities and relationship? I would suggest not: and that Yates is trying to insist on two things in the interview. First as a novelist he is insisting on the specificity of his art (literature as not being reducible to sociology - see the Denby and French reviews). But at the same time, he seems to be thinking of the suburbs, and marriage, as symptoms rather than causes. Symptoms of .....capitalism; and thereby perhaps, of individuals' relationship with work.
A final thought: both blogs and reviews refer to Friedan and the beginnings of second-wave feminism, which the book immediately pre-dates, and the film, arguably, post-dates. It is worth thinking through these relationships by reference to work: How far are the couple's problems circumscribed by the gendering of work?