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The Feminine Mystique
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Housewife phobia
I have long avoided reading this book, since I knew that Ms Friedan had a low opinion of housewives, and being one myself, I didn't think reading this book would do me any good. However, I finally took the plunge, and found it even worse than I had imagined.
Ms Friedan's loathing for the housewife is so venemous that it took me quite aback. Housewives, she reckoned, are mentally arrested, infantile women, afraid to engage in the 'real world' of work (it goes without saying that the workplace is more 'real' than the home, at any rate in Ms Friedan's estimation).
Her theory was that any woman who spent her life as a housewife was wasting her time, only in paid work could a woman really find fulfillment. And not just any paid work either. She doesn't have a kind word to say for the men who work at jobs which are not exciting, fulfilling, and challenging either. The housewife is no more making a significant contribution to society, she tells us, than is the man imagines he has built a car because he tightens the bolts on the assembly line. It doesn't seem to occur to Ms Friedan that we can't all be brain surgeons, college professors, and high court judges. Someone's got to tighten the bolts.
Ms Friedan believed that the rash of divorces in America at the time she was writing the book (early 60s) were caused by men being sick of supporting their useless wives. However, since nowadays most wives work, and since the rate of divorce has not noticeably decreased, I can't help feeling that perhaps the zombie-like housewife is not ENTIRELY to blame for this situation. She thought housewives were to blame for child-battering and homosexuality as well. Neither of those things have noticeably decreased since women gave up being housewives.
Even women who are not housewives are not necessarily safe from Ms Friedan's icy disapproval. She launches an attack on Shirley Jackson and Jean Kerr, both of whom wrote sublimely funny books about raising their children. Ms Friedan seems to be annoyed that even a career woman might think that her children are worth writing about.
But then I'm only a dumb housewife, what would I know?
Rating:  - The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan is known for her work in feminism, this book is well written. All modern women should read this book for a point of reference. Good read, a good reference book to own.
Rating:  - I'm glad that I can't relate to this book
Let me start off by saying that this book got an additional star from me because I completely agree with the point of this book: That if woman doesn't stand up and provide themselves with an identity and use themselves to their whole potential, they will become incomplete and nothing. This is mainly summed up in the chapter: A New Life Plan for Women. I recommend this book simply on this chapter. It is inspiring, positive, and relevant for women to read, even to this day. However, the rest of this book was hard for me to get through. In reference to the title of my review, I am young and perhaps I can't relate to some of the issues Ms. Friedan has brought up because of the women's movement of the '60's and '70's which has provided me with more opportunity, as a woman, to make life and career choices for myself without pressure or guilt. I am glad that I don't have the restrictions that women had back then and I am so grateful that there were women out there that knew our potential and were not willing to compromise it. But asides from possibly not liking the material because I found it hard to relate to, I did find that Ms.Friedan used alot of subject matter that is at best, subjective (for instance, the chapter Mistaken Choice was absurdly biased-- she makes references that the men in the military that were rejected for service due to mental issues usually came from homes that had doting overly loving mothers, that juvenile deliquency was non-existent in the homes of mothers who worked, that Russian children were more stable and adjusted than American children because their mothers worked or had interests outside the home etc, and that she even goes to imply that over loving a child is more traumatic for the child than raising them in a household where whippings and beatings are frequent possibilties.) There are other scattered observations that she made that I found hard to swallow as well, such as part of the chapter The Sexual Sell which implies that business caters to the homemakers because they do all the buying, and that mothers with careers or serious interests outside the home do not have the time to take to buy from business. I find it hard to believe that big business couldn't capitalize on the working mom. I can't believe that a working mom wouldn't be interested in an appliance that could cut her time to get chores done back then as well as today. That part of the chapter made no sense to me. Basically, I felt that Ms. Friedan used a lot of subjective facts, scare tactics (mother and housewife bashing), and propaganda that was unnecessary, at best, to get to her more inspiring point. I felt that all that "material" detracted from the point of the book, but I am glad I made it all the way through to get to the "New Plan." That's where the "heart of the artichoke" lies. But to those of you who feel that the point of the book is, "women who are unhappy with their lives are this way because they don't have a job" are missing the point. While although it is evident that she found her calling through her career and those around her (upper middle class women with privilege) did the same, her point is for women to challenge themselves and demand more than what is offered. Don't settle for less.
Rating:  - The Feminine Mystique-GREAT service!
This book required no wait-time. Great condition, just as I expected. No problems whatsoever!
Rating: - Friedan and Freud
All right.
There seems to be some confusion as to what Ms. Friedan's opinion on Freud was.
To clarify, she WAS NOT A FREUD SUPPORTER!!!
In fact, Freudian thought is entirely contrary to feminist thought.
If you don't believe me, either buy the book or check it out from your local library and see Chapter 5: The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud.
The following is taken from the first paragraph from that chapter:
"The old prejudices--women are animals, less than human, unable to think like men, born merely to breed and serve men--were not so easily dispelled by the crusading feminists, by science and education, and by the democratic spirit after all. They merely reappeared in the forties, in Freudian disguise. The feminine mystique derived its power from Freudian thought; for it was an idea born of Freud, which led women, and those who studied them, to misinterpret their mothers' frustrations, and their fathers' and brothers' and husbands' resentments and inadequacies, and their own emotions and possible choices in life. It is a Freudian idea, hardened into apparent fact, that has trapped so many American women today."
(Including this paragraph is in no way intended to substitute for reading the entire book. Please buy the book and read it to benefit the most fully from it.)
And for your own edification, Betty Friedan defined the "feminine mystique" as "the problem that has no name"--i.e. what women think when they realize that being a housewife (or what we call today a stay-at-home mom) is not enough for them. That they want more--that they need more. That they need to be given all the same opportunities to develop their personhoods as men have to develop theirs.
In short, the book The Feminine Mystique is about when we, women, realize that we are people too.
The book is about this and nothing more.
And people who say otherwise either haven't read the book or just don't believe that we are people. Maybe they believe that we're just half-people--wombs with brains that are dumber than men's attached to them. Although how they could believe such a thing and actually sleep at night, I do not know.
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