The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique is considered a classic text of feminist non-fiction. It was enormously influential in kick-starting the second wave of feminism, a movement that began in the 1960s advocating increased rights and new social roles for women. By voicing the despair that many women felt, The Feminine Mystique galvanized readers across the US to join the feminist movement and prompted others to at least to take its criticisms of mid-century American society more seriously.

While the book’s impact and historical significance is undeniable, contemporary commentators have critiqued some elements of its content. Friedan concentrates on the plight of the white middle- and upper-class housewife, almost entirely ignoring lower-class women and women of color. Feminist and social activist bell hooks famously criticized this narrow focus in the introduction to her 1984 book From Margin to Center, noting that Friedan wrote as if she were speaking of a universal female experience when in reality she was only speaking of a specific kind of woman. The Feminine Mystique has also drawn criticism for its negative tone toward gay men and women.

Formally, the book’s reliance on thinkers such as Freud, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kinsey has eroded some of its timelessness, as these theorists themselves have been criticized for flawed research methodology in the decades since Friedan penned her book. Due to these criticisms, discussions of The Feminine Mystique often involve caveats about its shifting relationships to contemporary norms.

Throughout the book, Friedan writes in first person, explaining her own dawning realization of the concepts laid out in each chapter. She incorporates a huge volume of research but intersperses her formal citations with more informal anecdotes, such as interviews she conducted with friends, neighbors, and strangers. By comparing the plight of women in her era to previous eras, Friedan illuminates her generation’s unique experience of sexism, countering the popular notion that sexism essentially ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment (which granted women voting rights). Each chapter explores a different facet of what Friedan calls the “feminine mystique,” from the people and institutions responsible for enforcing it, to its many problematic effects, to Friedan’s suggestions for combating it.

Summary

The Feminine Mystique’s first chapter explains that while many women might think they are alone in experiencing feelings of emptiness, boredom, and incompleteness, they are mistaken. The problem, Friedan says, is “the feminine mystique”: an ideology in mid-century America that holds that women’s foremost value and responsibility lie in their femininity. By “femininity,” promoters of the mystique usually mean women’s ability to bear children. Women therefore learn to think of themselves in relation to their families rather than to think of themselves as whole people who need to grow and develop throughout life.

The second chapter explains the role that the women’s magazine industry plays in promoting the feminine mystique. Because Friedan freelanced as a writer in this industry, she offers an insider’s perspective, revealing that the mostly male editors usually exclude any ideas for content that fall outside the home. Chapter 3 makes clear that the feminine mystique affects women’s lives at the deepest, most personal level possible: It creates the feeling that they do not even know themselves because they are not taught to pursue their own interests. Chapter 4 then attempts to reposition the feminists of the 19th and early 20th centuries as heroes who fought for human rights not just for women but for many oppressed groups.

Chapters 5-7 revolve around ways that academic institutions reinforce the ideology of the mystique. Chapter 5 focuses on Freud; Friedan argues that his extremely poor opinions of women make his theories about them untrustworthy. Chapter 6 discusses Margaret Mead and functionalism, a branch of cultural anthropology and sociology. Friedan claims that functionalism encourages women to stick to the domestic sphere in order to keep society running smoothly, while Margaret Mead, often considered a feminist anthropologist, actually hurt the feminist movement by emphasizing women’s sexual roles over and above their other capacities. Chapter 7 looks at colleges and universities more broadly, charging them with discouraging women from taking their studies seriously through policies such as offering women-only courses in home economics.

In Chapter 8, Friedan explains that women’s sharp turn to the domestic sphere after World War II mirrored the country’s larger turn to personal, private concerns. Weary from the Depression, the war, and the horror of atomic weapons, many Americans wanted to turn away from the traumatic world events of the past decades. Chapter 9 excoriates the advertising industry for its role in perpetuating the mystique by persuading women that they could fill their emptiness with endless material possessions—especially ones that would make them more efficient homemakers.

Chapter 10 establishes that while some housewives might fear their households descending into filth if they step away from full-time homemaking, housework actually does not demand that much attention. In Chapter 11, Friedan explains that many housewives, desperate for some sense of identity, try to find it in sex, which leads to mismatched sexual drives and tension in their marriages. Chapter 12 pushes the idea of the mystique’s negative effects even further, claiming that women who suffer under it become dehumanized—they evidence listlessness and passivity rather than any real zest for life. Chapter 13 draws on Abraham Maslow’s theory of human development to bolster this idea, arguing that society discourages women from pursuing activities that would meet their needs for self-esteem and self-actualization.

To conclude, Friedan offers some concrete steps to overcome the feminine mystique. Some of these suggestions are psychological adjustments that individual women must make, while others are sweeping social changes. She argues that letting women develop into complete people who participate in all facets of society will ultimately improve everyone’s quality of life, not just women’s.