Into the Mystique: Betty Friedan’s Feminist Classic at 50
“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’”
This is the opening paragraph of The Feminine Mystique (W.W. Norton, 592 pp., $25.95), which the late Betty Friedan published 50 years ago this month. The feminine mystique, she wrote, “says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity.” This was, Friedan argued, what kept a generation of educated women at home, raising children in the suburbs, endlessly cleaning house, tranquilizing themselves with new kitchen appliances, alcohol and affairs in order to kill the existential dread this emptiness brought on. It was, according to Friedan, propagated by psychologists, sociologists, ad men, magazine editors, religious leaders and college presidents. And, if her interviews with women were to be believed, it was widespread and suffocating. Rise up and throw it over, Friedan said. Get to work, and stop viewing college as a marriage market. Read More
