Bedroom eyes: women dressing and redressing in <italic>The Best Years of Our Lives</italic>.

Despite the years of research scholars have undergone to discuss <italic>The Best Years of our Lives</italic>’ men, this paper takes a new approach and looks at the film’s women, their agency, and their sexuality. By understanding Millie (Myrna Loy), Peggy (Teresa Wright), Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell), and Marie (Virginia Mayo), their use of bedroom spaces, and the ways in which they remove military markers from, and apply civilian ones to, their men, I argue that these women make their respective partners into what they want them to be and resist the saint-like image of maternal postwar womanhood that has historically been attributed to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]