Primary Source Documents

Betty Friedan attacks the Feminine Mystique^*

In 1963 Betty Friedan jolted the myth of the contented suburban housewife when she published The Feminine Mystique. Friedan tried to explain how the image of independent career women, popular in the 1930s, had become trivialized into a cult of domesticity and submissiveness. She further wanted to urge women to expand their horizons and develop a stronger sense of personal identity.

By the end of 1949, only one out of three heroines in the women's magazines was a career woman -- and she was shown in the act of renouncing her career and discovering that what she really wanted was to be a housewife. In 1958 and again in 1959, I went through issue after issue of the three major women's magazines…without finding a single heroine who had a career, a commitment to any work, art, profession, or mission in the world, other than "Occupation: housewife." Only one in a hundred heroines had a job; even the young unmarried heroines no longer worked except at snaring a husband.

These new happy housewife heroines seemed strangely younger than the spirited career girls of the thirties and forties. They seem to get younger all the time--in looks, and a childlike dependence. They have no vision of the future, except to have a baby. The only active growing figure in their world is the child. The housewife heroines are forever young, because their own image ends in childbirth. Like Peter Pan, they must remain young, while their children grow up in the world. They must keep on having babies because the feminine mystique says there is no other way for a woman to be a heroine. Here is a typical specimen from a story called "The Sandwich Maker" (Ladies Home Journal, April, 1959). She took home economics in college, learned how to cook, never held a job, and still plays the child bride, though she now has three children of her own. Her problem is money. "Oh nothing boring, like taxes or reciprocal trade agreements, or foreign aid programs. I leave all that economic jazz to my constitutionally elected representative in Washington, heaven help him."

1		From reading this passage, how would you define the feminine mystique?
2		What historical source material does Friedan use to document her case about changing women's attitudes??
3		What does Friedan's choice of sources tell you about her view of the role the media play in shaping popular values??
4		Based on Friedan's brief description of "The Sandwich Maker," sketch a hypothetical story that would be consistent with what the women's magazines were publishing. How would the happy homemaker reconcile her need for money with her obligations to family? Check your version against either the original or Friedan's summary of the story in The Feminine Mystique?