The Feminine Mystique

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-11

Chapters 12-13

Chapter 14

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

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Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Problem with No Name”

“The problem with no name” is a phrase that Friedan uses synonymously with “the feminine mystique” throughout the book; it refers to a particular brand of oppressive femininity that denies women self-realization and an identity of their own apart from a husband and children. Although many women assume they are alone in frequently thinking to themselves, “I want something more than my husband and my children and my home” (22), they are far from it.

Friedan locates the mystique as a social problem that developed in the years following World War II. Prior to that, positive changes for women were beginning to saturate American culture. In 1920, Congress passed the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. When World War II broke out, women proved their worth in the workforce.

After American soldiers returned from war, however, society’s relationship to feminism began to regress. Societal messaging from a range of sources urged women to find fulfillment only in the domestic sphere. Receiving this message, women began to marry and have children younger and younger, often transitioning right from high school to married life or dropping out of college early to start a family; at the time of the book’s publication, the average woman married at 20.

Friedan makes clear that she is not the only person to notice the symptoms of the feminine mystique. Experts in medicine, psychology, and the media all notice women’s growing unhappiness and unfulfillment, but they usually diagnose it improperly, chalking it up to insufficient gratitude or too much education. Friedan’s purpose throughout the rest of the book is to identify the actual root of the problem and explain why such hand-waving and condescending explanations for women’s suffering do nothing to solve it.

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Happy Housewife Heroine”

Prior to World War II, women’s magazines had begun to break free of Victorian gender ideology and feature stories with daring heroines. These protagonists frequently went on adventures that not only required competence at non-domestic skills but also involved self-discovery. Just like male protagonists of fiction had for centuries, these heroines went on journeys of realization that led to stronger senses of self.

As the feminine mystique took hold, however, women’s magazines stopped featuring such heroines. In fact, they stopped featuring anything other than scenes of domestic bliss. In between ads for new household goods, these magazines printed stories about women who, for instance, briefly experimented with working outside the home only to realize they would be happier caring for their husband and children. Editorial committees staffed largely by men decided that women readers were not interested in anything outside of their small world—the home.

As a result, women became less and less informed about current events. Male editors’ pronouncements about their interests became self-fulfilling prophecies; as magazines printed fewer and fewer stories about anything non-domestic, women reported ever more fleeting knowledge of non-domestic issues in surveys, leading editors to continue the policy. Friedan understands this dynamic from an inside perspective because she herself worked in the women’s magazine industry for many years. She even takes responsibility for propagating the feminine mystique herself to comply with her editors’ demands.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

In Chapter 1, Friedan takes pains to signal that her subject is of grave importance and not something that readers can write off as silly or insignificant just because it pertains to women. By referring to the feminine mystique as “the problem that has no name,” she conveys a sense that women’s feelings of isolation, emptiness, and unimportance are pervasive in American society but are not understood as such. The very fact that the feminine mystique has not received a name before reinforces individual women’s sense that they are alone in suffering crushing feelings of emptiness; the feminine mystique seems less like a shared failing of American society and more like an individual failure on the part of each woman who experiences its pressure. Chapter 1 makes clear that one of Friedan’s foremost goals is to give women a shared language to discuss the desire for a richer, fuller life.

Another component of the book that emerges (though not explicitly) within the first chapter is Friedan’s focus primarily on middle- or upper-class white women. By writing about women who confine themselves to the domestic sphere, she automatically is not talking about women for whom housewifery is not an option, whether because they are unmarried, because they are single mothers, or because their husbands do not make enough money to support the family alone. Many such women did (and do) have full-time jobs outside the home, and often not the liberating, creative, potential-fulfilling jobs that Friedan imagines enriching the lives of women.

In Chapter 2, Friedan’s inside information about the women’s magazine industry creates a sense of trust and intimacy between herself and the reader. Because she admits to working under the sexist guidelines of this industry before walking away from it, she can take the position of the zealous whistleblower: someone with unique knowledge of the problem. She also models feminist awakening for the reader by narrating her own immersion within this world and her gradual awakening to its problems. Positioning herself as a former insider embedded in a sexist industry is a persuasive technique that she revisits in several other chapters.