The Feminine Mystique is a modernized version of the old formula for domestic enslavement more bluntly expressed as “Woman’s place is in the home.” The new element is the poisoned bait of the Mystique by which women today are voluntarily lured back into the trap that their grandmothers fought to escape from.īetty Friedan reminds us that in the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth, progressive middle-class women led an inspiring “feminist” struggle for women’s rights. This book should help settle their doubts. In this way distorted ideas and values seep down to infect masses of women, including some working women who wonder whether they might not lead a better life as a full-time housewife. These set the pattern of behavior and aspiration for working-class housewives, who mistakenly believe that because middle-class women have all the advantages, they also have all the answers. Few escape the pathology flowing from the “Feminine Mystique.”īetty Friedan’s findings have a wider relevance than the well-to-do housewives she has investigated. She also describes the catastrophic consequences that this debasement of women inflicts upon the whole family. And yet most of them have forfeited development of their higher capacities to enroll in the ranks listed as: “Occupation: housewife.”Įxposed by the author are the realities behind the show-windows of Suburbia where female residents suffer agonies from “a problem that has no name.” This is their inability to “adjust” to their narrow, stultifying sphere of existence. They have access to all the advantages of our culture - education, scholarship, interesting and well-paying professions. But the women that Betty Friedan examines are more fortunate. Most women have no choice except to be tied to a household or chained to a factory or office job - or both. The author, a mother of three children, analyzes the plight of women like herself who belong to the privileged upper middle strata of American society. The Feminine Mystique is an outstanding sociological study - an overdue challenge to the mercenary mythmakers who have invented the glorified image of the Happy Housewife Heroine and imposed it upon American women. Public Domain: this text is free of copyright Review of “The Feminine Mystique,” by Betty Friedan, W. Source: International Socialist Review, Vol. Evelyn Reed 1964 A Study of the Feminine Mystique
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