Betty Friedan was an American magazine writer who decided to investigate a problem many women were expressing in the 1950s and 60s: a sense of loss, inferiority, anger, resentment, bitterness, lack of fulfilment, guilt, loneliness. She was inspired to write The Feminine Mystique after attending a class reunion of her 1942 graduating class. At the reunion, she sensed that her fellow alumnae felt a general unease with their lives. She followed up the reunion with a questionnaire sent to the other women in her class. The results of the questionnaire confirmed Friedan's impressions. In interpreting the 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. She believed that 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 white 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. (Wikipedia)
What was ‘the feminine mystique’?
 It was the name Friedan gave to the way culture and society encouraged women to aspire to be ‘happy housewife heroines’ - bringing up children, living in the suburbs, having many appliances . This did not bring women satisfaction.
In what ways did womens’ roles / identity change in the 1950s and 60s?
 In the 1950’s & 1960’s post-war women were reasonably well educated but they were encouraged by the media to be frivolous, childlike, interested only in beauty, home, children. (This was in stark contrast with women in the 1920s-1930s - especially women during New Deal who worked, were determined and had ambition.)
 This meant woman no longer seen as human beings with limitless potential, equal to men. Women were now only seen in terms of her sexual role – as wife, childbearer, daughter. When she asked the question,
“Who am I?” – the answer was Tom’s wife, Mary’s mother.
 In making a role model of the housewife/mother, women were encouraged to ignore the issue of their own identity. In the 50s and 60s young women had no vision of their future identity except for marriage. Even university educated women did not plan to use their education. This was part of the problem.
 Friedan surveyed women at university. Her survey found 2/3 never completed their education. Some were even afraid of being too educated that the man would want them. Then in their 40s and 50s – the woman looked back and regretted marrying young and not developing any life of their own.
 At university in 50s/60s – it became ‘cool’ for girls not to be too interested in their studies, not to talk about ideas. They knew there was no point having a degree if you were going to marry/be a housewife (compare this to Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar.)
 Eventually universities began changing courses from chemistry to cooking.
 One woman’s college motto “We are not educating women to be scholars; we are educating them to be wives and mothers”.
What historical factors created ‘the feminine mystique’?
 30s-40s: war, depression, explosion of atomic bomb – hardship but women active in workforce
 Post war: Women had to step back from jobs they had held during the war (sense of loss). Men needed the comfort of wife, children. Advertising / Media promotes nuclear family ideal.
 Baby boom after war occurred with this generation - teenage marriage rose 165% 1940 – 1957!
Interestingly, some of Friedan’s observations parallel concerns we find in Plath’s poetry
 Advertising exploded in America in the 1950s. Friedan discusses research that shows advertising was designed to deliberately manipulate women into becoming consumers
 Friedan voiced fears that progressive dehumanisation was being passed through generations, and pointed to evidence from Korean war soldiers who were ill, the insane, and prisoners in German concentration camps

Simone de Beauvoir was a French intellectual and an Existentialist thinker. Her book ‘The Second Sex’ is about
the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist philosophy. It was placed on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books.
 Simone de Beauvoir [SdB] argues that society and culture has deemed that Woman is ‘other’ -- defined as notman, lacking a phallus, inferior.
 While Freud said that “Anatomy is destiny”, Simone de Beauvoir countered this by saying “One is not born a
woman, one becomes a woman”. I.e. It is civilization as a whole that produces this creature. She cites the following as examples….
 She says women are taught to be “other”, to try and please others (even little girls), to make herself an object – a living doll for men.
 Simone de Beauvoir says girls’ mothers teach them how to be women: e.g. They are taught cooking, sewing, charm, modesty, dressed in frilly clothes, given rules of deportment, told not to fight/ not to be like a boy.
 SdB says the girl’s doll – is her child/her double. She says little girls do NOT have natural maternal instincts but are TAUGHT and SEE than care of children falls to the mother.
What do you think? Do you think women have natural instincts towards children? More so than men?
The historical function of Marriage
 In the past, marriage consisted of a contract between father and son-in-law, a transfer of property from one man to another. The dowry [money paid from her father to husband] enslaved the woman to husband’s family.
 Others have seen it as contract required by the State to produce children as workers.
 Traditionally, in marriage Man was an independent, Woman had a reproductive, autonomous and domestic role (+ needed to satisfy sexual desires of Man).
 For women – marriage was only way of integrating into society. Celibate women (apart from nuns) were pitied or seen as pariahs [outcasts]. This was not so with bachelors, however. Fundamental link to ECONOMIC
SYSTEMS – e.g. the plight of the unmarried penniless woman.
 In marrying, women would get some legal rights and protection. In exchange, she gives up her name and takes his name, joins his family, class, religion, follows wherever his work is, gives her virginity to him.
 Before 1942, French law considered wife was to her husband as child was to his mother, ie. wife had to obey, submit, be subject to punishment or correction from husband.
 In the 18 th /19 th C Women were servants of fathers/brothers. So marriage, while it enslaved her to a man but it made her mistress of a home.
 Today single woman are seen as socially incomplete even if she has a career. So many young girls say their future goals are just marriage, but no man considers marriage his fundamental project.
Do you think these last two ideas are true today as they were in 1949?
 SdB says the tragedy of marriage is that it dooms her to a life of repetition and routine [through housework] and reduces a woman’s sense of self.
 D.H. Lawrence [an English writer who wrote openly about sex in his novels] says “the union of two human beings is doomed to frustration if it is an attempt at mutual completion (that supposes original mutilation). He argues marriage should be a combining of two whole independent existences.
Do you think marriage is about two people “completing” each other?
 SdB argues equality in marriage is an illusion as long as the man retains economic responsibility by being in workforce. He will be more positively integrated in society and have to guide the woman in intellectual, political and moral matters.
Motherhood
 Simone de Beauvoir says there is no maternal ‘instinct’ – the mother’s attitude depends on her total situation, for example -wealth. If the couple is rich, the baby is a jewel. If they are poor, it is a burden.
 While some mothers feel instant love, and amazement and curiosity when they give birth, although it is taboo to say so, some women feel empty after the birth of their child. Others feel a surprised indifference. Others feel alarmed at their new responsibilities.