Adorno

234 Part III: Emigration Years

surprisingly enough when we consider how much he disliked the psycho-
analyst. He expounded his ideas to Fromm in detail: he believed that
women, even more than men, are dominated by commodities and that

they act as the agents of the commodity in society.... It would be

necessary to analyse the completely irrational attitude of women

towards commodities, shopping, clothes, the hairdresser, and what

would emerge, in all probability, is that all these things that seem

to serve sex-appeal are in reality completely desexualized.... What

would be needed here is a theory of female frigidity. In my view

frigidity stems from the fact that even during the act of coitus

women appear to themselves as objects for exchange... though

of course for a non-existent purpose, and that, because of this

displacement, they never manage to obtain pleasure.^100

At the time, none of the institute members was willing to take up these
ideas. However, Adorno himself tried to apply them in a variety of
theoretical contexts.^101
Did these enigmatic reflections on women’s sexuality have any
connection with Adorno’s newly married status? Up to that point, as a
bachelor, he was able to make his own decisions about the organization
of his life and was under little pressure to consider the needs of his
partner, with whose peculiarities he was now confronted and which
he now had to respect. Another novelty for him was the fact that his
wife wished to make changes in the way he lived and that questions of
style and taste had to be considered. He soon perceived that she wished
to assume the role of housewife, concerned herself with food and meal
times, went shopping in a big way, spent money and put her own ideas
about how to organize their daily routine into practice. He kept his
distance from all these practical tasks – and had to do so, since he was
faced with the task of bringing the Husserl study to a prompt con-
clusion. Just as he was attempting to concentrate on it, there was yet
another surprising turn of events in his life. Shortly after the wedding,
the opportunity opened up for him and Gretel to move to the United
States. This had been arranged by Horkheimer, who sent him a telegram
on 20 October 1937 and wanted him to come as soon as possible. He
was being offered a position in a research project on the impact of
radio. The couple had scarcely had enough time to make themselves
at home in Palace Court when they found themselves facing the much
greater upheaval of the move to New York.
The fact that Adorno agreed in short order to move to the United
States was by no means a choice without risk. The research project that
he would join under the leadership of Paul Lazarsfeld was a subject
in an area of social research that was completely new to him. A further
factor was that the institute, or rather Horkheimer, was unable to give
him a full-time position as had been the original plan. Instead, he was