The Feminine Mystique / Betty Friedan - short summary

The Feminine Mystique is a book by Betty Friedan , which was first published in 1963 in the United States . By the year 2000 the English edition of the book had sold more than three million copies and had been translated into many languages. "The Feminine Mystique" analyzes the lives of middle-class white women in the United States in the 1950s and describes dissatisfaction and frustration at the lack of opportunities. Among other things, Friedan wrote: "A woman today may feel strange, feel guilty and experience loneliness, if she just wants to be more than her husband's partner."

"The Feminine Mystique" is the result of a study conducted by Betty Friedan among the graduates of the 1942 Smith College class (Northampton, Massachusetts, USA) in which she studied. Most of the women in her study indicated general dissatisfaction with their lives as housewives . These findings led Friedan to conduct more comprehensive research on the subject. The study included interviews with other housewives, analysis of psychological studies, media messages and advertisements. Friedan did not intend to publish a book but there was no magazine that agreed to publish the study. According to her findings, Friedan argued that most women are victims of misconceptions that require women to find their identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and through their children.

At the beginning of a book, Friedan defines women's difficulties as "the problem that has no name," and later in the book reveals the causes of the problem and proves its existence. According to Friedan, watching women is to settle for the roles of housewife and mother and abandon aspirations for education and career and adapt themselves to female idealization. Friedan tries to prove that the feminine mystique prevents women from developing their own identities, beyond identities associated with domestic roles. The mystery appears in incessant representations in the media. These representations glorify the woman as mother and wife and the “masculine” critics of women who want to do other things in combination or instead of traditional roles.

Friedan argues that female mysticism is one of the consequences of World War II and the Cold War that also include the development of the suburbs and the baby boom .

Friedan found these perceptions, especially among communities in suburban from the class class after World War II . She speculated that men returning from war were looking for a mother figure in their wives. At the same time, economic prosperity in the post-war United States led to the development of new technologies aimed at making housework less difficult, but in practice these technologies made women's work less significant and valued. Betty Friedan's critics argued that her surgery did not successfully represent women from other classes.

The Feminine Mystique created a language in which women could define themselves and a platform for social change for women. The book is considered one of the most influential reference books of the 20th century, and is considered one of the factors that triggered the beginning of the second wave of feminism in the United States. Friedan received hundreds of letters from women who identified with the book. And she herself became one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and took part in drafting the declaration of the founders who called for equality for all women and the removal of barriers that monitor equality and economic independence.

For an interesting critique of Friedan see: Bell Hooks / Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

see our List of Great Feminist Theory Books

5 Important Feminist Thinkers to Know

Feminist and gendered thought is an amazing example and perhaps the only one of its kind in the power of a stream of thought that manages to bring about far-reaching changes in reality. It is difficult today to compare the relationship between men and women today with that of men and women a century ago so a combination of feminist thought and action began to emerge that would become a movement that would change the face of our society. The list of feminist thinkers (as well as some men) is long and respectable, we have gathered for you here some of the prominent figures worth getting to know.

 

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is rightly recognized primarily as a marvelous writer in her sensitivity but alongside her literary work also retains a place of honor at the beginning of feminist thought. In Wolfe's book "A Room of One’s Own" she wonders why women have diminished throughout history writing books. Her answer is that they never had a "room of their own" in which to write books, when in "room" Wolf means not only a physical space but what such a private physical space represents.

 

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir's feminism is found not only in the content of her library but also in her career, her role in the feminist revolution and the way she broke out and claimed a place of honor within the masculine European philosophy of her time. In her important book "The Other Sex" Beauvoir argues that woman has always been the "other" of man and has been defined in relation to him, without an identity of her own. De Beauvoir's inquiry into the sources of inequality between men and women was fundamentally an intellectual inquiry, but it paved the way for many ideas that sought to change the situation. Renowned philosopher Jean Paul Sartre is also remembered, among other things, as the stormy partner of Simone de Beauvoir.

 

Betty Frieden

In 1963, Betty Frieden published a book called "The Feminine Mystique" with a chapter on "The Problem That Has No Name." High-middle-class white women who lived the "American Dream" in the suburbs suffered, despite all the happiness of their lives, from unexplained symptoms of depression and anxiety. Frieden was the one who pointed out that what causes these women to suffer is a feeling that they are no longer content with the life of a housewife, of a mother and wife, and that they seek self-realization outside the walls of the home. Frieden's book is identified as one of the causes of the wave of women's work in the 1960s and 1970s. Fan Fact: Frieden's theory was used by the creators of the "Mad Man" series who even named one of the main characters after her.

 

Judith Butler

Judith Butler belongs to the so-called "third wave" of feminism that seeks to abolish the gender distinctions and power relations contained within them. At the forefront of this struggle can be found Butler with books like "Gender Trouble" and formative ideas like "Performances" of "Gender". Butler examined the phenomenon of drag queens and argued that what they show is the way gender roles are something we "perform", unwritten codes of dress, movement, speech, etc. that drag queens mimic in an extreme way. This argument leads to the conclusion that gender differences are a matter of social construction, not nature.

 

Raewyn Connell

Australian Raewyn Connell is perhaps not the most influential thinker in the field of gender in the twentieth century but it is worth getting to know her for two reasons. First Connell is interesting as a gender thinker who experienced firsthand the complexity of the issue today, when she was born a man and eventually became a woman. Connell‘s biography of course influenced her thinking and she became one of the pioneers of the gendered preoccupation with masculinity, after decades in which men enjoyed the status of observers on the debate. Connell has published a highly influential book called "Masculinities" which claimed that there is more than one way to be a man and also, as Connell proves, one does not have to be a man at all.

Know your Feminism:

see our List of Great Feminist Theory Books

Betty Friedan – "The Problem That Has No Name" – summary (part 3)

Betty Friedan - The Problem That Has No Name - summary

part 1 - 2 - 3

After describing "the problem that has no name" and the attempts to work out the "feminine mystique", Betty Friedan asks if the problem that has no name might have something to do with the housewife's daily work routine, and if the repetition of domestic chores, leaving her with no time for herself, is the cause of her depression. Domestic women lost their ability to focus, and by the end of the day were too tired to do anything, a tiredness which eventually led her to seek treatment. Research of the time postulated that women's fatigue was the result of boredom, but Friedan argues that women's attempt to comply with what was expected of them locked them into an invisible trap build on misinterpreted ideas, half-truths and unrealistic choices.

The way out of this trap of the problem that has no name is according to Friedan found in psychology, sociology as well as biology, but was always over looked by academic research. Friedan lists a number of factors which led to the woman's incarceration in the house, and which have led to the phenomenon of feminine depression: the return to early marriage and large families, the call for natural birth and breast feeding, the neighborhood conformities and lack of sexual satisfaction which was rarely discussed in regards to women. Friedan finds a correlation between these depression agents and new physiological phenomena with women of the time who reported menstruation problems, sexual frigidness, adultery, fear of pregnancy, postpartum depression, nervous breakdowns and a high rate of suicides among women in their twenties and thirties.

Betty Friedan's conclusion is that the problem that has no name, that is women's depression and lack of satisfaction, so widely common among American housewives of the 50s was not due to the lack of femininity but rather to an excess of education and awareness. The problem that has no name touches not only on the wife/mother's lack of satisfaction, but also on that of her husband and children. For Friedan, understanding "the feminine mystique" and the roots of the problem that has no name can lead to an understanding of the development of the entire American nation. 

Betty Friedan - The Problem That Has No Name - summary

part 1 - 2 - 3

The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan – "The Problem That Has No Name" – summary (part 2)

Betty Friedan - The Problem That Has No Name - summary

part 1 - 2 - 3

After describing how post World War 2 American culture send women back home with the nurturing of the "feminine mystique", Betty Friedan's "The Problem That Has No Name" proceeds to show how due to the ideal image of the housewife, so deeply entrenched in their surrounding culture, women were embarrassed to admit their lack of satisfaction in their suburban domestic lives.

For the most part, says Friedan, this problem went untreated and was eventually signed off as "not a problem". Friedan defines this problem as the problem that has no name. The problem that has no name was common to different ages and classes and its symptoms, according to Friedan, were: a sense of emptiness, lack of desire and an unexplained will to cry. Women suffering from this problem that has no name were treated by psychiatrists and given tranquilizers.

At the beginning of the 60's this false bubble of domestic happiness popped. Media in the United States started reporting a new phenomenon: the misery of the American housewife. Psychiatrists indicated that unmarried women were happier than married women and all of the sudden the housewife's unhappiness was the talk of the day in the United States. The problem that has no name was out in the open.

Friedan argues that the American housewife's unhappiness was not the result of material problems but rather originated from a number of unanswered problems which she refers to as the "feminine mystique" according to Friedan, doctors tended to suggest a sexual problem, namely that working husbands could not satisfy their wife's increased sexual appetite. Doctors also suggested that the housewife's lack of satisfaction was the result of being locked up at home waiting for her husband to return and give her a sense of being alive. The 1953 second Kinsey Report which described women's sexuality undermined conservative perceptions of the woman. The report argued that the American housewife is suffering from problems similar to those who suffer sexual oppression. Housewife's children also displayed problems such as the inability the bear pain or accept authority and to focus on one task. They also, suffered for a kind of Friedan's the problem that has no name – boredom, lack of self confidence and dependency.   

Betty Friedan - The Problem That Has No Name - summary

part 1 - 2 - 3

The Feminine Mystique

Summary: "The Problem That Has No Name" - Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan - The Problem That Has No Name - summary

part 1 - 2 - 3

The Feminine Mystique

I have a slight suspicion that the makers of the series "Mad Men" named the character of frustrated homemaker Betty Draper after second wave feminism champion Betty Friedan. Betty Friedan's 1963 The Feminine Mystique looks into the state of American women in the post WW2 period and provides insight into the feminine potential that was sacrificed for the sake of home and family. With the end of WW2 men returning home pushes women back into domestic space, "inventing", as Friedan puts it, the legitimate "occupation" of the homemaker. Friedan argues that post war America gave birth to the "feminine mystique" with "the problem that has no name". This mystique problem that has no name is the problem of the woman who returned home, took care of the house and children, but was still frustrated for not being able to fulfill herself. Betty Friedan's "The Problem That Has No Name" is a critical review of the transparent wires forced by oppression and exclusion on the suburban housewife.

Before proceeding to survey "The Problem That Has No Name" it is important to note that the feminine, according to Betty Friedan, is the ensemble of un-deciphered traits that propel the woman. Friedan claims that post war united-states shaped this perception of the feminine mystique in order to justify discrimination against women and their exclusion from the public sphere, this in order to reassert men's position in the conservative social order.

Betty Friedan's starting point for discussion in "The Problem That Has No Name" it that post war American culture was hard at work to create the ideal image of the suburban housewife. Media representation and women's magazines nurtures the image of the uneducated wife and mother which is content in her clean and taken care of house which is equipped with modern technological appliances. Developments such as early marriage, a large number of children and especially giving up on education all formed, according to Friedan, an ideal image of happiness. The woman was defined as having equal rights with her husband, and those rights were manifested in her freedom to choose home furniture, appliances and the family car. Self and home care were supposed to provide the right amount of happiness for the woman, especially if she dyed her hair blond. According to Friedan, the 15 years since the end of the Second World War shapes feminine mystique as the core of contemporary American culture. Women's dream was to be perfect wives and mothers. Their main efforts were directed at acquiring material goals and maintained them. Women in the sixties, according to Friedan, gave little attention to what was going on outside of their home and suburb, and proudly listed their new profession of "homemaker". The "other" women that did not comply with the spirit of the time were defined as neurotic.    

Betty Friedan - The Problem That Has No Name - summary

part 1 - 2 - 3