Rewatching The Sound of Music in the Age of Tradwives, Trump, and American Fascism

Last summer, when times were slightly less tough, we had the energy to be collectively horrified by a tradwife. An article came out about one of the blonde haired, blue-eyed mothers of about seven-to-ten children so popular on Tik Tok.

In her interview, the woman talked about her artistic dreams. She was once on the precipice of becoming one of the most promising artists of her generation but then fell into a relationship with a man who ignored her when she said she wanted to graduate from her prestigious performing arts school before she was married.

A year later she was pregnant, the weight of his desire for her to be his wife, totally destroying the thing that was hers. Her vision for her own life, her desire, her ambition set aside by marriage. She abandoned her art and focused on her family.

Women of the internet winced. Angry that she fell for it, frustrated that once again, a woman who wanted something for herself was swallowed up by a man’s traditional vision for who she was supposed to be.

The collective reaction by progressive women gave voice to a feeling I’d been grappling with for a long time in my novel She’s a Lamb!, a story about a young actress who is desperate to be cast in a production of The Sound of Music, but when passed over for the role, takes the part of the kid actor’s childminder instead.

As a kid, I watched The Sound of Music many times. The story itself is compelling, the setting, gorgeous, and the romance, full of longing gazes, and sexually charged folk dances. And yet, when I was forced to revisit this musical years later, while working at a theatre company, something about it really bothered me.

Maria is the textbook likeable female character. When we first meet her, she loves to sing and flop around in meadows and watch the clouds. She doesn’t fit in amongst the other prudish nuns at her nunnery, who argue about her suitability for their order.

“How do we solve a problem like Maria?” They ask over and over again. It’s catchy. Yes, but also as an adult I was forced to wonder what the problem, exactly, is. Their complaints: she’s flighty, she’s immature, she doesn’t do what she’s told, essentially.

“She’s a darling!” One of the nuns says during a particularly spicy refrain.

“She’s a demon!” Another cuts in, a death blow.

“She’s a lamb!” Another says, definitively.

Despite all their fussing, Maria, at the Abbey, is seemingly happy. Does she live up to the high expectations of her fellow sisters? No. But she wants to. This is where she wants to be. Still, the nuns ponder. How do we fix this woman who simply wants to be who she is?

Their solution? Give her seven-ten children.

In the film, Maria is, by some estimation, lucky. In the time she lived in, it’s completely likely that she could’ve ended up working for a man who was less accommodating to her joie de vivre. Captain von Trapp is, at least, a very moral person. He’s a man who stands by his beliefs and is willing to lose everything—his family home, his and his family’s personal safety, and his wealth—to reject the Nazis who threaten to take over his beloved Austria.

As film adaptation of The Sound of Music turns sixty this year, the world is suddenly looking a little too similar to the years in which it is set. Fascism is lapping at all of our edges, men with side-slicked haircuts yelling themselves hoarse on television about how our collective attempts at liberation will be our downfall.

Women simply need to stop wanting things. Why? Because their wanting is getting in the way of them stepping into the roles these men are casting them in—as wives and mothers.

Women are rapidly losing access to the tools that have helped liberate them. Tradition is rearing its ugly oppressive head and makes us wonder, what, exactly, can we possibly learn from cultural artefacts like The Sound of Music?

It is interesting, then, to note that two songs were cut from the stage musical when it was adapted for film. One really stuck out to me. Titled “No Way to Stop It,” it’s a song sung to Captain von Trapp by his betrothed, Frau Schraeder and his skeezy friend Max about the Nazi invasion of Austria.

In it, Max and Frau Schraeder encourage von Trapp to open the door to Nazi invaders. To step aside and betray his integrity because it’s the only way he can hold onto his personal and political power. What is the point of standing up when things have gone this far? Better to just put your head down and see it through.

“There’s no way to stop it,” they sing. “No you can’t stop it even if you tried….So I’m not going to worry. No, I’m not going to worry. Every time I see another day go by,” they sing.

In the stage production, it is this moment that Captain von Trapp breaks up with Frau Schraeder. Because he sees in her a vision of the future that he can’t abide. It is Frau Schraeder’s politics, how she acts on her beliefs, that force him to turn toward Maria. The statement here is clear: a woman’s values, her personality, and her politics, flawed as they are, matter. Frau Schraeder is her own person. What she believes means something.

And when Captain von Trapp proposes marriage to Maria, he asks her what she desires and can you guess what she says?

Nothing.

Because she wants nothing more than to be married to him, to care for his children. Here she is: the ideal woman. One who loves her seven-ten children and wants nothing for herself.

In the film, politics were cut. The song isn’t there at all. The female characters only exist in relation to the man they’re both after, the prize. Who they are matters very little.

The message this edit sends is frank and clear: Women shouldn’t think about politics, they shouldn’t seek power or opinions, no. The only thing that matters is the man they marry. What does he believe?

Frau Schraeder, as disgusting and awful as her politics are, represented a woman with a brain who believes in something. Captain von Trapp rightfully rejects her, but at least in the stage production she exists as a human being. Reprehensible, sure, but alive with a brain. Imagine that.

As we approach the sixtieth Anniversary of The Sound of Music, the narrative of the woman who wants nothing for herself isn’t just on our old, cheerfully packaged VHS tapes—it’s on our phone screens, in our politics, clawing back our rights in the most overt and obvious way. And we’re all falling for it.

The influencer in question at the beginning of this article has more than twenty-two million followers across platforms and counting, nearly triple the population of Captain von Trapp’s beloved Austria. A country he heroically gave up everything for. So as we celebrate sixty years of The Sound of Music this spring, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves which kind of woman we’d rather be and leave this archaic narrative in the dust where it belongs.

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She’s a Lamb by Meredith Hambrock is available via ECW Books.