Author: Betty Friedan
Number of Pages: 395
Original Published Date: 1963
Definition:
“The Feminine Mystique says that the highest value and only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity…and that the root of women’s troubles in the past is that women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love.” (page 43)
Summary
The Feminine Mystique has been in print for more than sixty years and has largely been considered the match that lit second wave feminism on fire. The non-fiction book, written by Betty Friedan in 1963, was a critique and counter-argument to the widely-held belief at the time that women could only find fulfillment in taking care of the home as a wife and mother and that ambitions and desires outside that archetype were a distraction, unsuitable, or even a malaise to society.
The beginning of the book discusses the origins of The Feminine Mystique (TFM) and how Friedan identified “the problem with no name” when working as a writer for a women’s magazine. In her interviews with other housewives, she discovered many of them shared the same theme in their lives; a problem that no one could quite identify and no one knew how to relieve. Many women who had the “problem” tried to distract themselves with PTA meetings, shopping for new appliances, cleaning the house, or almost anything to stay busy in hopes the feeling would go away. She quoted one woman who left college at nineteen to get married and have children:
“I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do-hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about-any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children…There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality.”
Around that time, Friedan, herself a wife and mother and a graduate from Smith College fifteen years prior, was asked to conduct a survey with her former classmates. She found the same theme of discontent among the housewives that had graduated college but never pursued a career and instead had devoted their lives to house and home. This overwhelming malaise that many married American mothers were feeling promoted Friedan to study the “problem with no name”.
“If I am right, the problem that has no name stirring in the minds of so many American women today is not a matter of loss of femininity or too much education, or the demands of domesticity. It is far more important than anyone recognizes…. It may well be the key to our future as a nation and a culture. We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’”
Following the success of first wave feminism in gaining women the right to vote in 1920, a societal shift happened after the Great Depression and WWII. Before the 1950s, women attended college and married later than their post-war counterparts, but that had all changed following WWII. According to Friedan, men who had gone to war missed home and having a family, and women worried they wouldn’t find love. The post-war American prosperity fixed that by allowing men to provide for their family and women to stay home and caretake. Hence the start of the post-war baby boom era.
The thesis of TFM claims that the post-war societal setup of the “feminine mystique” seemed like an ideal way to live on its surface, but that women were realizing that staying in the home and devoting their life to only their family leaves most yearning for something more. The “problem with no name” was a melancholic feeling that crept into picture-perfect homes and couldn’t be dusted away.
“In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no way she can even dream about herself, except as her children’s mother, her husband’s wife.”
Friedan makes the argument that women having a life and purpose outside of only being a wife and mother was essential for women to find true happiness and the way to do that was through higher education, job opportunities (breaking the glass ceiling), or creative endeavors that would establish an identity that was her own. This was the only way to cure the “problem with no name”.
This problem of unhappiness in life in TFH wasn’t restricted to women and Friedan does touch on the identity crisis that was also plaguing some American men. Psychotherapists and psychologists were finding that productive and meaningful work, not simply punching a clock or having an occupation outside the home, was having success in curing the identity crisis.
“The very argument, by Riesman and others, that man no longer finds identity in the work defined as a paycheck job, assumes that identity for man comes through creative work of his own that contributes to the human community: the core of the self becomes aware, becomes real, and grows through work that carries forward human society.”
Friedan’s arguments that having an identity and purpose in life is necessary is compelling and I can’t help but to agree with most of her thesis. Unrealized personal ambitions can lead many to unhappiness and dissatisfaction that often can’t be quenched and soon settles into the cracks and never evaporates. An unanswered life can fester like mold and although I agree with much of her thesis, I find it a true difficulty for most to obtain her suggested goals or to reach a form of self-actualization through the labor market. It’s not an impossibility and certainly a healthy goal to work towards, but there are only so many occupations or beneficial hobbies in life that will allow the majority to reach such an ideal state.
Many of the jobs that are essential to society functioning such as electricians, roofers, oil riggers, and farmers are not the jobs that women (and most men) are searching for and expecting to find their self-actualized happiness through, even though these jobs are worthy of praise and often don’t get the respect they deserve. They’re not the fun, glamourous jobs that most of us desire. There are certainly some essential jobs, such as doctors and engineers, that are more desired in society and physically less demanding, but my point is that if we all went for our dream job, we probably wouldn’t have sewer systems or a functioning electrical grid. Thankfully there are those that perform those “unseen” jobs and can be greatly rewarded for it, but I’ve never heard a kid stand up and say they want to be a roofer when they grow up. However, meaningful work doesn’t have to (and often doesn’t) come with a paycheck. Creative personal endeavors or positive exertion into bettering the human community could be a cure for the “problem with no name” for both women and men.
Discovering One’s Personal Identity
Prior to the industrial revolution, women working inside the home was a true necessity that often required physically-demanding effort. Clothes washing required hours of hand scrubbing, bread had to be kneaded, and butter churned. Men and women often worked together in the home and on the fields for survival until machines and industrialization changed that and removed much of the work that women performed leaving little behind to replace it. Moving away from a life of simply trying to survive opens us up to thinking about the why of life and the privilege to ask the question- What do I want to do with my life?
However, Friedan’s thesis is that society via the media, education, and elders was preventing women from stepping into a new identity and instead keeping them stunted and forcing them to remain in the feminine mystique. This “evasion of growth” as Friedan called it, did “not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings…”
Betty Friedan tells the personal story of how she gave up a research fellowship that would have allowed her to gain a doctorate and career as a psychologist because “no question was more important to me that year but love” and the fear that she may end up alone if she chose the fellowship.
“I never could explain, hardly knew myself, why I gave up this career…I married, had children, lived according to the feminine mystique as a suburban housewife. But still the question haunted me. I could sense no purpose in my life, I could find no peace, until I finally faced it and worked out my own answer.”
Friedan discovered that other married women who had also followed the path of feminine mystique only to find it led to a dead end without personal fulfillment felt the same. Friedan also found that young women were grappling with the same lack of identity that she had faced years earlier with many wanting to reject the example of their mothers.
“My mother’s like a rock that’s been smoothed by the waves, like a void. She’s put so much into her family that there’s nothing left, and she resents us because she doesn’t get enough in return. But sometimes it seems like there’s nothing there. My mother doesn’t serve any purpose except cleaning the house. She isn’t happy, and she doesn’t make my father happy. If she didn’t care about us children at all, it would have the same effect as caring too much.”
Many young women may not have wanted to follow in their mother’s footsteps, but they were given few other examples of how a woman could live her life, with most requiring the rejection of wife and mother, a request that most did not want to imitate.
“The only other kind of women I knew, growing up, were the old-maid high-school teachers; the librarian; the one woman doctor in our town, who cut her hair like a man; and a few of my college professors. None of these women lived in the warm center of life as I had known it at home. Many had not married or had children. I dreaded being like them, even the ones who taught me truly to respect my own mind and use it, to feel that I had a part in the world. I never knew a woman, when I was growing up, who used her mind, played her own part in the world, and also loved, and had children.”
These young women wanted something that could allow them to find personal fulfillment in their own life, but also provide them an opportunity for love and family. Much focus through writings and American thought at the time had been on men finding their identity (though men were also struggling to find their identity in the new culture) through leaving home in search of a new life to “suffer these agonies of growth, to search for and find their own identities”, but little focus had been on women’s identities.
Friedan makes the case that women should be afforded the same occupational opportunities that men have always had, but society during the TFM wasn’t allowing most women to break free from the wife/mother role and instead was pressuring women to stay in their feminine mystique. Most of us now have the freedom to choose what we want to be and what we want to do with our life, but are we happier? Are things better? I would never want to go back to having partial freedoms or being limited in what I could do for an occupation, but I wonder if the women who were diagnosed with the “problem with no name” truly believed that having a corporate job or a job using one’s creative skills outside the homes was really the solution. Nowhere in the book did I read of anyone wanting to pick up the trash or lay bricks. The jobs these women desired were the jobs that most of us want…attractive and creative jobs that make life more interesting.
“Ironically, the only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique; the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession. Such a commitment is not tied to a specific job or locality. It permits year-to-year variation- a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible. It is a continuous thread, kept alive by work and study and contacts in the field, in any part of the country.”
Well, that does sound like a wonderful and enjoyable way to live. However, such a setup is extremely unlikely or doable by anyone but the most connected or well-established people that don’t have to worry about a consistent paycheck. I’m not criticizing the plan, as I’m sure most men and women would prefer this over a typical white- or blue-collar job, but I am criticizing the reality that a significant portion of people could achieve such a life back then or today. This life plan is something I’d love to reach for and establish for myself, but it seems highly unattainable without personal or professional connections, a high-savings rate, trust fund, or someone to fund my lifestyle.
I’ve worked in a professional job for years and am grateful for the opportunities it has provided for my life, but I personally don’t want to work a corporate job anymore; I don’t find it fulfilling. It’s a benefit to be able to work a well-paying job in a safe, temperature-controlled environment, but I’d rather be able to vary my career or creative projects, depending on my current life situation, or change my focus from work to study and back that Friedan suggests in the paragraph above, but without a solid plan and solid backing, it would be hard to pull off for the average person. Being able to put one’s main effort into their personal life and leaving the job secondary would be ideal, though not feasible, for most. However, knowing I have far more opportunities than the generations before makes me grateful since so many of them had to give up what they wanted or loved.
Woman also have a unique situation compared to their male counterparts. Since women have a biological clock there is a finite time in early adulthood that allows women time to be free from familial responsibilities to work towards or achieve their goals before they have children. I think many women are torn between wanting to work and be productive outside the house, but also be heavily involved in their young children’s lives. Women have a time crunch that men just don’t. A man can decide at forty-eight after he’s risen through the ranks of his field that he’s ready to settle down and find a wife and have children while women are rarely afforded that opportunity. It may not be fair, but it’s not anyone’s fault.
We’re also now told conflicting stories, depending on who you’re listening to: we will be unfulfilled as a housewife and mother but we will also be unfulfilled as a single, childless woman. Are both true? Are both false? Perhaps it’s both because different people want different things. There is also a middle path of sorts where a woman may have a husband but no children or have both a career and children with support from her husband or family. Women are now free to choose any path they so desire. It’s just unfortunate that once one road is chosen, it’s nearly impossible to change one’s mind or pivot differently. However, I do believe that there are some women who have it all and are happy with their life’s choices. Having the choice is what TFM seems to be fighting for.
Solutions
Identifying the “problem with no name” takes up much of TFM, but Friedan spends a considerable amount of time searching for solutions and finding women who have “cured” their problem and found happiness outside the home. She called it “A New Life Plan for Women.”
One woman she interviewed learned to paint and created a studio in her extra bedroom. Another took up violin. For those who needed something more, they went back to school or became heavily involved in politics. A lawyer’s wife stated:
“I thought I had finished. I had come to the end of childhood, had married, had a baby, and I was happy with my marriage. But somehow, I was disconsolate, because I assumed this was the end…Now I’m studying history, one course a year…. soon I’ll be teaching. I love being a wife and mother, but I know now that when marriage is the end of your life, because you have no other mission, it becomes a miserable, tawdry thing. Who said women have to be happy, to be amused, to be entertained? You have to work. You don’t have to have a job, but you have to tackle something yourself, and see it through, to feel alive.”
Friedan doesn’t offer any one solution and encourages everyone to find an answer personal to them. She suggests seeing housework as a necessity and something to be done “as quickly and efficiently as possible” so the woman can turn away from housework as her identity and free up her time for more important causes. She also doesn’t suggest that a woman has to choose between marriage and career, but that women should be mindful and aware that marriage and motherhood is not the “final fulfillment” of their identity and when women have “a purpose of their own in society, they not only spoke of a new feeling of “aliveness” or “completeness” in themselves, but of a new, though hard to define, difference in the way they felt about their husbands and children”.
Thankfully the doors of society have been opened for women, but were there some unseen negative ramifications to all of this? An economist far more knowledgeable than myself could probably answer this question, but did the large influx of women entering the workforce cause a negative effect on wages? Is the simple high supply-low demand of employment allowing corporations to keep wages lower than they otherwise would because the supply of persons willing and able to work is higher today compared to the 50s and 60s?
Were women so eager to leave the house that now most women are forced to stay outside the house because the extra workers have kept wages down and the “necessities” of today and the cost of living has forced both parents to work? The way society is now setup has taken the choice for women to stay home and raise their children off the table for many because it’s simply not affordable.
If so, perhaps having more corporate and high-paying jobs that offer part-time status would be a partial solution. Employers could have more skilled employees and those employees could retain a living wage (although paid less than their full-time counterparts) while also having more personal time. If a family could survive on two part-time, high-earning jobs, it would allow employees significantly more time for personal self-fulfillment projects and/or more time raising their family.
Interesting quotes from The Feminine Mystique
Even women themselves, who felt the misery, the helplessness of their lack of self, did not understand the feeling; it became the problem that has no name and in their shame and guilt they turned again to their children to escape the problem. So the circle completes itself, from mother to sons and daughters, generation after generation.
Only sometimes I wonder how it would feel to be able to stretch and stretch and stretch, and learn all you want, and not have to hold yourself back.
But by choosing femininity over the painful growth to full identity, by never achieving the hard core of self that comes not from fantasy but from mastering reality, these girls are doomed to suffer ultimately that bored, diffuse feeling of purposelessness, non-existence, non-involvement with the world that can be called anomie, or lack of identity, or merely felt as the problem that has no name.
“It is an awakening to know that I’m not an oddity and can stop being ashamed of wanting something more.” The use of the word awakening reminded me of the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin in which an unsatisfied wife and mother drowns herself in the ocean because she is unable to live the life she desires. The novel was first published in 1899 so a sense of malaise and discontent in the choices one makes and being unable to pivot or undo them is not a new subject.
In 1956, at the peak of togetherness, the bored editors of McCall’s ran a little article called “The Mother Who Ran Away.” To their amazement, it brought the highest readership of any article they had ever run. “It was our moment of truth,” said a former editor. “We suddenly realized that all those women at home with their three and a half children were miserably unhappy.”
“You’d be surprised at the number of these happy suburban wives who simply go berserk one night, and run shrieking through the street without any clothes on,” said the local doctor, not a psychiatrist, who had been called in, in such emergencies.
Closing
I have to admit that this book was different from what I expected. Instead of a diatribe on an unfair society that was stifling women’s rights that I was prepared to read, I received a reason for why women and men may be unhappy or unfulfilled in their lives. The book’s cure for happiness seems simple; meet your basic needs in life and find fulfillment in personal and creative endeavors, but happiness is more than often aloof and felt only in small doses for most. Unhappily, it doesn’t come at all for some people and we may have to temper the dreams and expectations of our life versus the reality of it sometimes. It may also help to brush off the expectations that others put on you and focus on what you want for your life. All easier said then done.
There is much more in this book that I didn’t touch on in this essay that would benefit the reader such as sex-directed education in college at that time, uterus-envy versus penis envy, too much maternal love and devotion by frustrated mothers causing neurosis in children, housewives searching for satisfaction in their life through sexual desire, and others. It’s worth a read.