Cover of the original paperback edition of The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique is a 1963 book written by Betty Friedan which attacked the popular notion that women during this time could only find fulfillment through childbearing and homemaking. According to The New York Times obituary of Friedan in 2006, it "ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world" and "is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century." ^[1] Image File history File links Mystique. ... Image File history File links Mystique. ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1963 calendar). ... Betty Friedan, 1960 Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist, activist and writer. ... A homemaker is a person whose prime occupation is to care for their family and/or home; the term is originally an Americanism, and while it has entered mainstream English, it is not in common usage outside the U.S. Finding a term to describe the modern man or woman...

The Feminine Mystique came about after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class. Most women in her class indicated a general unease with their lives. 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. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family. Year 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, is the largest womens college in the United States []. Smith admits only female undergraduates, but admits both men and women as graduate students. ...

Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II 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. It also served to disprove Freud's theory of penis envy among women and freed women from being strictly confined to the role of a mere housewife during the Post-War economic expansion. Critics have argued that Friedan's analysis does not apply productively to women of other economic classes. Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom France Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Charles de Gaulle Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian... everybody in the world is so cool yeah see ya later This article is about the socio-economic class from a global vantage point; for the middle class in the US see American middle class; for the band see Middle Class. ... Illustration of the backyards of a surburban neighbourhood Suburbs are inhabited districts located either on the outer rim of a city or outside the official limits of a city (the term varies from country to country), or the outer elements of a conurbation. ... Sigmund Freud His famous couch Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. ... For the Crass album, see Penis Envy (album). ...

The book has been the subject of controversy. Authors such as Bell Hooks have complained the book does not address the lives of poor white women or women of color. Hooks argues the feminist movement is dominated by white, upper, and middle class interests and perspectives, though claiming to speak for all women. For instance, when Friedan and others argue that women need to leave the domestic sphere and get jobs, Hooks says lower-class women have always had to work and domestic life is a luxury for them. bell hooks at talk for Intercultural Center Bell Hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952) is an American intellectual, feminist, and social activist. ... Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ...

Historian Daniel Horowitz has argued that the origin of The Feminine Mystique was not, as Friedan later claimed, the sudden realization of the "woman problem" by a naïve suburban housewife. Instead, Friedan's feminism was rooted in her extensive involvement with radical politics and labor journalism beginning in the 1940s.^[2]

The Feminine Mystique was listed at #7 in conservative magazine Human Events' Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Human Events is a weekly conservative magazine founded in 1944. ...

References

↑  Betty Friedan, Who Ignited Cause in 'Feminine Mystique,' Dies at 85 - The New York Times, February 5, 2006. The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

↑  Horowitz, Daniel. "Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America." American Quarterly, Volume 48, Number 1, March 1996, pp. 1-42

See also

• History of feminism

Suffrage parade in New York City on May 6, 1912 The history of feminism reaches far back before the 18th century, but the seeds of the feminist movement were planted during the latter portion of that century. ...

External links

• C-SPAN American Writers profile on the book.

• [3] Betty Friedan and the Radical Past of Liberal Feminism by Joanne Boucher