The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan and its role in the Feminist Movement

The 1960s and ‘70s are remembered as a time of great ferment in American civil society and indeed in many parts of the western world. Along with anti-war uprisings sparked by the immense loss of lives in the Vietnam War, there were movements demanding greater equality for all races, classes and sexes. In fact this period saw the rise of the second-wave feminism in the US in which a significant role was played by the ground-breaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan.

The title of the book The Feminine Mystique, refers to “the problem that has no name". She relates this "mystique" to the worthlessness women feel in roles that require them to be financially, intellectually and emotionally dependent upon their husbands. Published in1963, the book took shape after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class. Friedan and her classmates all indicated a general dissatisfaction with their lives. This led Friedan to conduct more detailed research into the lives, thoughts and emotions of women, interviewing many other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising of the time. 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.

Put in the simplest terms, The Feminine Mystique refers to the idealized notion of woman as a housewife and mother. The early chapters place this image of ideal femininity in historical context and also examine products of popular culture to see when and how it emerged. Freidan finds that women's magazines from the In 1930s feature confident and independent heroines, of whom many are involved in careers. However, in the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, most women's magazines highlight the Happy Housewife, whose only ambitions are marriage and motherhood, and who has replaced the career-oriented New Woman from before and immediately after the Second World War. Friedan calls this homemaker ideal of femininity the feminine mystique.

Freidan then puts the issue in a personal context, remembering her own decision to conform to society's expectations by giving up a promising career to get married and raise children. She finds that other young women also struggle with this decision and feel compelled to drop out of school early to marry, afraid that if they wait too long or become too educated, they will not be able to attract a husband. Ironically, even after giving up opportunities for professional advancement, many women do not find fulfillment in the narrow roles of wife and mother and are plagued with a vague unhappiness.

And yet it was always not so. Freidan goes on to salute the early activists of women’s liberation movement in the nineteenth century, crediting them many opportunities men enjoyed, including education, the right to pursue their own careers, and, most important, the right to vote. However she notes that as soon as this last major goal was fulfilled, the early women's movement petered out for absence of objectives.

While the examining the sources of ‘the feminine mystique’, Betty Freidan delves into influential psychological theories of the time. As part of this effort, she criticizes the sexual solipsism of Sigmund Freud who not only explained all humanity in merely sexual terms but saw women as childlike and as destined to be housewives. Freidan in particular criticizes the notion of penis envy which was used by proponents of the feminine mystique to dissuade women from intellectual development and encourage them to remain within the home. As part of the role played by the academia and media in building up the feminine mystique, Freidan also criticizes the theory of functionalism according to which institutions were studied in terms of their function in society, and women were confined to their sexual biological roles as housewives and mothers and told that doing otherwise would upset the social balance.

After this Freidan goes into the commercial motives of the feminine mystique and finds that the notion of the idealized wife and mother was built up to discourage women from remaining in the workforce so that the World War II veterans and other men could have no trouble finding jobs. This as well as the fears and anxieties of the Cold War also made Americans long for the comfort of home, so they tried to create an idealized home life with father as the breadwinner and mother as the housewife.

Finally Freidan explorers the consequences of the feminine mystique ranging not only from general dissatisfaction among married women and unhappy affairs but also to bringing up maladjusted and emotionally disturbed children. She ends the book with several case studies of women who have begun to go against the feminine mystique and more importantly postulates several options which can help women to emerge from the trap of the mystique to a more meaningful existence.

However Freidan’s epoch-making book has been criticized on some fronts. Cultural historians have pointed out that that many of the contemporary magazines and articles of the period did not place women solely in the home, as Friedan stated, but in fact supported the notions of full- or part-time jobs for women seeking to follow a career path rather than being a housewife. More significantly Friedan has been criticized for focusing solely on the plight of middle-class white women, and not placing the issue in other pertinent contexts like class and race.

Despite its faults, The Feminine Mystique went on to become an international bestseller. After it was published in 1963, Friedan received hundreds of letters from unhappy housewives after its publication, and she herself went on to help found the National Organization for Women, an influential feminist organization. By the year 2000, The Feminine Mystique had sold more than 3 million copies and had been translated into many foreign languages. It continues to be taught as a key text in Women’s Studies and U.S. history classes.

The Feminine Mystique is credited with sparking the beginning of second wave feminism in United States. Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s would later say The Feminine Mystique was the book that “started it all.” It gave a voice to the discontent and disorientation many women felt in being shunted into homemaking positions after graduating from college. Freidan’s book highlighted the fact that even acquiring the right to education, employment and vote, women were still and essentially unhappy. At its most fundamental level, The Feminine Mystique exposed that women’s issues were not merely a private matter but were shaped by forces of politics, culture, media and commerce. At the same time, the feminist thinking inherent in The Feminine Mystique went on to influence theories in many other related fields such as politics, sociology, history and literature as well as women’s studies in the years to come.