The roles role(s) of women in the 1950's as portrayed in the movie show that the soul purpose for a women was to get married, have kids, have dinner on the table by five, and take care and raise the children. The weren't thinking about trying to get a big job somewhere and to go to college for a career. The only thing they knew and wanted to do was to be the best house wife they could be. Katherine Watson's view on how women should live is very much different than what society thought it out to be. She lived her life as her own person and had dreams for her future and actually wanted to get a good career and be supportive to herself and not be the typical house wife of the time. 

I think they labeled Katherine Watson as subversive because the college that she was teaching at was very strict and went by the book word by word. There was no outside the box it was only out of the book and what they where told to teach. They didn't give the students an opportunity to explore their minds and really think about things instead of just all the information being fed to them. Katherine Watson was very diverse and "subversive" from all of the other professors because she didn't follow the book, she opened doors to the students way of thinking and let them have their own opinions on the art they where learning about. She didn't teach out of the book and instead chose her own art and lessons to teach. Therefore they labeled her as subversive because she wasn't teaching like everyone else.