(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Wed 8 April 2026 0:30, UK
Mrs Robinson means everything, but she also means nothing. That’s what made Simon and Garfunkel such geniuses for creating her.
It spoke volumes about American society at large that one of their most iconic and timeless songs centred on the death of their most idealised and stereotypical way of living. After all, this was the swinging sixties, a time when the world illusioned itself into believing that it was on a high. It took a lot to crack through that veneer.Â
Of course, much has already been said about how Simon and Garfunkel came to write the song for the soundtrack of The Graduate, but it’s a rare occasion in which a song from a film has come to take on its own lifeblood far beyond the silver screen. That’s testament to the power of Mrs Robinson herself, the figure of the everywoman that everyone knows.
She cooks, she cleans, she prays to the Lord – or does she? The whole point of the song ‘Mrs Robinson’ was to expose the truth behind the mirage of the star-spangled, seemingly perfect suburban living, where older women could serve nothing but peace and platitudes in their prim and proper existences.
If you’ve ever seen The Graduate, naturally, you’ll know this couldn’t be further from the case. Underneath, the titular character holds so much more darkness and disguise than she ever lets on, and in becoming the 1960s symbol for sex and having affairs outside her marriage, she also became a cultural icon.Â
What was the deeper meaning behind ‘Mrs Robinson’?
The question still remains, though: what exactly does a figure like Mrs Robinson represent? In this sense, she’s the outdated image of a housewife who has become all too restricted in the norms and values that society has placed on her. She runs the house, she bakes cupcakes stored in the pantry, and she goes to church on Sundays.Â
On the face of it, this is the reason why Jesus keeps professing to love her so very much. Externally, she is the vision of the American dream that every woman – and every man looking to take possession of said woman – would want. Only internally, in her heart, does she hide her deepest sins. Essentially, Jesus is in love with a lie.
That depth of songwriting is obviously difficult to capture in any capacity, but for Simon and Garfunkel, as young as they were back then and never having written anything for the big screen before, they truly delivered a phenomenon. Yet they narrowly changed the song from being called ‘Mrs Roosevelt’: what secrets was she hiding?
In any case, there was no denying the fact that ‘Mrs Robinson’, both as a song and a character, changed the musical landscape forever from the moment she first dropped in, praising God and being the perfect woman, but really symbolising so much more. It was true when they said that revolution actually starts at home.
