Edith Bunker Edith Bunker Edith Bunker (nėe Baines) is a fictional 1970s sitcom character on "All in the Family" (and occasionally "Archie Bunker's Place"), played by Jean Stapleton. She was the wife of Archie Bunker (who often called her a "dingbat"), mother of Gloria Stivic, mother-in-law of Michael "Meathead" Stivic and after 1975, grandmother of Joey Stivic. Her cousin was Maude Findlay (Beatrice Arthur) who was one of Archie's nemeses. While Edith was typically a traditional and subservient wife (with several notable exceptions throughout the series), Jean Stapleton was a noted feminist. Series creator Norman Lear said on "All Things Considered" that
Archie Bunker sprinkling "incest" (incense) on their congregation, whereas he referred to incest itself as "committing 'insects' in the family". Archie repeatedly called Richard M. Nixon "Richard E. Nixon". By the show's second season, these had become dubbed "Bunkerisms", "Archie Bunkerisms", or simply "Archie-isms". The actor who played Bunker, Carroll O'Connor, is Irish Catholic, and Norman Lear modeled the character on his Jewish father, but Bunker's own ethnicity is never explicitly stated, other than identifying him as a WASP; over the course of the series, he mocks or belittles not just most minorities (including blacks, Hispanics, Latinos, Jews, and Asians), but also