Women struggle for identity in 'Good Wife'

If devotees of "The Good Wife" on CBS scrutinize the elegant, soothing Chicago apartment of Alicia Florrick, they can spot a subtle but symbolic motif: the butterfly.

True, subtext is easier to parse when you're touring the show's sets in Brooklyn. That's when you notice the living room coasters with butterfly designs, the butterfly in plexiglass on a bathroom shelf and the butterfly wings, framed and mounted, on the bathroom wall.

They imply fragility but also freedom, just like Alicia, who for two seasons has been testing her working-mother wings as a lawyer in the wake of her husband's Eliot Spitzer-like fall.

Certainly, the prime-time drama pays homage to the legal procedural. But it is also a heightened exploration of how several generations of fully realized female characters clamber for control and identity in the dense, slippery politics of home and office.

As these women move from moral absolutes toward gray zones of pragmatic compromise with humor, erotic longing and vulnerabilities, they have been mesmerizing about 13.6 million viewers per episode, 65 percent of them women, and have been a time-period winner for viewers age 25 to 54, according to Nielsen Media Research. Across the Internet, comments analyze their motives, options and work clothes.

(This season Alicia's officewear has become more beautifully tailored, colorful and expensive, said Daniel Lawson, the costume designer, to express her growing confidence and income.)

But in a pivotal episode last month, Alicia (Julianna Margulies) was sucker-punched.

Then she learned that her husband had slept with her best friend from the office.

Show's creator chimes in

So whose betrayal is worse: husband's or friend's?

The water-cooler question is put to Michelle King, a creator of "The Good Wife," who was in town from Los Angeles to fine-tune the season finale, which airs May 17. King's instincts shape the women of "The Good Wife." She helps determine each character's arc, edits scripts and approves character-illuminating details of decor, costume and hairstyle.

"For me, it would be the husband," she said. "But for Alicia? It reopens a wound with him. But the friend's betrayal is awful and different. And Alicia doesn't have a lot of friends. It strikes Alicia at the most enjoyable part of her new life: her work. So it's right in her face. She's questioning herself: Why did I not see this?"

"But arguing about that is half the fun," said King, who has the soft, reserved manner of her well-bred heroine, yet wears a black leather jacket, short skirt and stiletto boots that recall the show's betraying friend, Kalinda (Archie Panjabi).

Like many prime-time dramas featuring women, "The Good Wife" looks at power in terms of sexuality and romantic relationships.

"But there are a lot of other layers," said Amanda Lotz, the author of the book "Redesigning Women: Television After the Network Era." "The show keeps asking: At the end of these women's lives, what will success mean to each of them?"

A true cast of characters

These women could have followed stereotype. They include:

• Diane (Christine Baranski), a single, childless second-wave feminist who is the firm's managing partner.

• The enigmatic investigator Kalinda, in her mid-30s, whose moral compass and sexual appetite keep viewers' heads spinning. ("She's the most masculine fantasy figure and she's probably mostly from me," remarked Robert King, who has been married to Michelle King since 1987 and is the show's other creator. He is directing the finale.)

• Alicia, the 40-ish heroine, a working mother.

• Grace (Makenzie Vega) her naive, idealistic 14-year-old daughter.

Watching each of them wander off script, so to speak, is indeed at least half the fun.

"We could have made Diane a bitch, but we respected her too much for that," she added. "It's a cliché about women not being generous to each other. Alicia did become a better lawyer, and Diane did see that."

A hypothetical: If Alicia Florrick's husband hadn't gone to prison, would she have remained at home?

"If Alicia didn't have to work," Michelle King said, "it wouldn't have occurred to her. She was contentedly going about. The tragedy with her husband was what allowed her to realize herself."

During a break, Margulies continued that observation.

Alicia exemplifies how women over 40 can stop being people-pleasers and start hearing their own voices, said Margulies, 44.