 Cover of the original paperback edition of The Feminine Mystique |
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| Author | Betty Friedan |
|---|---|
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | non-fiction |
| Publisher | |
| Publication date | 1963 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-393-08436-1 |
| Followed by | It Changed My Life |
The Feminine Mystique is a 1963 book written by Betty Friedan which attacked the popular notion that women during this time could only find fulfillment through childbearing and homemaking. According to The New York Times obituary of Friedan in 2006, it “ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.”[1] The Feminine Mystique came about after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class. Most women in her class indicated a general unease with their lives. Through her findings, Friedan hypothesized that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family. Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II middle-class suburban communities. She suggests that men returning from war turned to their wives for mothering. At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable. It also served to critique Freud's theory of penis envy among women and freed women from being strictly confined to the role of a housewife during the Post-War economic expansion.
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Criticism
Some critics contend that Friedan's analysis is only relevant to middle-class and rich women, as many poor and working-class women worked outside the home out of necessity. Feminist commentator bell hooks, among others, saw the book as archetypal of Second-wave feminism, which she contends was dominated by white, middle-class interests and perspectives but nevertheless claimed to represent all women. Historian Daniel Horowitz has argued that the origin of The Feminine Mystique was not, as Friedan later claimed, the sudden realization of the “woman problem” by a naïve suburban housewife. Instead, Friedan's feminism was rooted in her extensive involvement with radical politics and labor journalism beginning in the 1940s.[2] Furthermore, questions have been raised about the statistics and other factual material Friedan used in backing her claims about the baby boom and the status of American women in higher education and the labor force at the beginning of the 1960s.[3]
References
- ^ Betty Friedan, Who Ignited Cause in 'Feminine Mystique,' Dies at 85 - The New York Times, February 5, 2006.
- ^ Horowitz, Daniel. “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America.” American Quarterly, Volume 48, Number 1, March 1996, pp. 1-42
- ^ Cheerless Fantasies — A Corrective Catalogue of Errors in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
See also
External links
- C-SPAN American Writers profile on the book.
- [1] Betty Friedan and the Radical Past of Liberal Feminism by Joanne Boucher
