The Feminine Mystique, Book Review Example

Introduction

Feminine Mystique is a book written by Betty Friedan and published in February 1963 by W.W. Norton and Co. publishers. The aim of the book is to try and shows how women don’t get the chance of fulfilling most of their dreams of life because of the challenges they face being women.

Summary

In chapter starts by giving us a briefing of the problem that has is cannot be given a name; that is the misery faced by women. She gives example of cases where women show discontentment in America and questions if these miseries are associated with fact that the women have duties to serve in the houses. She goes ahead and in chapter two she reviews the magazines and stories that were featured before and after World War II. Friedan gives a transition from the usual woman in the house who was happy with being in the house and doing house chores to a working class woman so much depressed.

She also expresses the crisis women are facing as matters of identity in the society is concerned Women don’t know if they should give up their jobs to attend to their families or handle them both. In society today we find that most women are dropping out of school in order to get married for fearing that if the overstay in school they will fail to get a husband because of age (Valerie, p12). The consequences faced after taking such steps in life later on are devastating. In chapter four gives a brief look at what the women in the nineteenth century set the pace by starting the fight to rescue the women from gender discrimination. Despite the harsh treatment they received for trying to oppose the oppression the women didn’t relent but continued their fight for equality and their place in the society.

Book Discussion

In the start of her book she gives an orientation of the issue in question; this is  a predicament that people have tried to avoid handling and solving it for a long and rather post-pone it. Mainly the modern woman is the one much affected and this has left her wanting, dissatisfied and waiting the day a remedy will come for her (Ruth, p360). The problem this woman faces is that the more she goes on with her education the more she adds a lot of burden and stress to herself. We cannot explain her problem either and that’s the problem. Women who raised this issue in an attempt to get assistance wee pinned down by being advised to for-go their duties in work place and stay just as housewives. This is what many found disturbing.

At that time women not working pitied so much the career women; they did not want to be associated, getting education, working or being a self dependent woman but they would rather stay in their house and be housewives. To back her argument, she gives us a statistics taken in 1920 in where is so evident that women enrollment in post-secondary institution dropped drastically. We realize that in 1920 there were 47% women students in colleges but the number later dropped to 35% in 1958. This was a bad show; and as if is not enough, 60% of those already in school dropped out to get husbands and settle as house wives. We can all agree that surely Friedan had some intelligence in what she uncovered. But we still have to question from what we see women growing through; are these thing practical in the current America we are living in?

We can say that Friedan is not independent in the way she expresses her thoughts; there is something pushing her to write what she is writing. For example she argues that women in the 1940s and 1950s had been convince by what she terms as ‘feminine mystique’ but herself is without dispute brainwashed by the women involved in struggle for women liberation in the 1920s. She has hidden agenda definitely (Betty, p300). Way may criticize her writing a little bit as she seems siding with the communists. She portrays herself as a woman who is oppressed but research has shown that she was actuality passing the sentiments of the communists and uses the fight to liberate the housewife as a scapegoat. When she studies the Mystique that gathers around the current generation we can say that she smells a red herring.

When she makes her conclusion in fact she makes a big mistake. She tries to make us convinced that it is the so called feminine mystique that leads to all the current debacles being encountered by women in America. In saying this, I don’t mean that she is a liar but rather has done her work in a way we may fail to understand her motive clearly: in the second chapter of her book, she takes us see clearly the evidence she has from a certain magazine McCall of 1960. This issue of the magazine also agrees with what another magazine single women magazine argues. From the two magazines she makes us see that they discuss life in the domestic dwelling alone and nothing outside it.

Conclusion

To conclude the discussion we may all agree that the so called feminine mystique has made many women blind and not able to think beyond their noses. And thus Friedan has a good basis to criticize it. She argues that feminine mystique makes women not to make an effort to do any job up to their capability. It makes women ignore important aspects about their identity in the society and thus feel inferior, it has made women lose hope in live and bather burry themselves and give up the fight. Women do left not know how to define themselves in fact if you ask a woman who she is you may be surprised that she may respond by not giving her name but rather saying I am so-and-so’s wife.

From her writing Betty Friedan has achieved the status of a role model to women still hoping to acquire their deserved status in the society.

Work Cited

Betty Friedan. “The Feminine Mystique”. W.W. Norton & Co. 2001: pp1-512

Ruth Milkman, “Redefining ‘Women’s Work’: The Sexual Division of Labor in the Auto Industry during World War II, “Feminist Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, Women and Work. (Summer 1982), pp. 336-372

Valerie Matsumoto, “Japanese American Women during World War II,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1. (1984), pp. 6-14.