In the following essay excerpt, Horowitz explores how events in Friedan's personal life and career in the 1950s and early 1960s influenced her completion of The Feminine Mystique.

It has become commonplace to see the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963 as a major turning point in the history of modern American feminism and, more generally, in the history of the postwar period. And with good reason, for her book was a key factor in the revival of the women's movement and in the transformation of the nation's awareness of the challenges middleclass suburban women faced. The Feminine Mystique helped millions of women comprehend, and then change, the conditions of their lives. The book took already familiar ideas, made them easily accessible, and gave them a forceful immediacy. It explored issues that others had articulated but failed to connect with women's experiences—the meaning...