The Feminine Mystique

           The research from which The Feminine Mystique was formed stemmed from a survey Friedan conducted for the 15th-anniversary reunion of her graduating class at Smith College in 1957. She asked her classmates a series of questions concerning their lives and came to some surprising conclusions; most profound being their general unhappiness within their homes. Friedan parlayed that survey into further research and subsequent articles for prominent women’s magazines like McCalls and Ladies’ Home Journal (Friedan, 45). I feel as though her initial survey may not represent the full spectrum of the nation’s women as it was only sampling the alumni who may feel as though their academic training was being wasted on mundane domestic duties. It left out those women who did not attend college (especially a liberal arts college like Smith). Further, when Friedan posed similar questions to other women, she only mentions other professionals like “phycologists, sociologists, marriage counselors and the like” (45). Without a broader sample of women from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, her research was bound to produce a form of bias. Also, I do not see that her research took into account the racial factors that could have produced different results.

            The author’s findings were that “anything we did not as our husband’s wives, our children’s mothers, but as people ourselves” made them feel extremely guilty (45). In short, they were without an individual identity that gave them fulfillment in life. This is the “problem that has no name” as Friedan puts it. Women may be living in comfortable homes with healthy marriages and children, yet they lack the ultimate fulfillment in their lives that comes from personal accomplishments outside of the “comfortable concentration camp” of postwar domestic life (The First Measured Century).

            Friedan suggests that mediated representations of women (and their happiness) were often misrepresented or dismissed altogether. Some even went as far as to contend that this was “the old problem” of education in that women would naturally feel unhappy as educated housewives (Friedan, 66). Obviously, it had to be education’s fault and not the mundaneness of domesticity. She also points out that these representations of the American women portrayed in the media has changed much when compared previous decades where they were often depicted as individuals, strong, confident and able to support themselves outside of the domestic sphere (Friedan, 79-122).  

            Profoundly, Friedan wants women to ask themselves “Who am I?” (126). She wants them to refuse the identity found within just being someone’s mother or husband and seek an appreciation of their own individuality outside of the roles dictated to them by mere biology alone.

Works Cited

 “A&E Classroom: The Class of the 20th Century—1956-1961,” director. Films Media Group,             1990, fod.infobase.com/portalplaylists.aspx?wid=105280&xtid=42346.

“The First Measured Century: 1930-1960,” director. Films Media Group, 2000, fod.infobase.com/portalplaylists.aspx?wid=105280&xtid=44378.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963. Print.