The Feminine Mystique : 'The Problem Without A Name'

Friedan argued the central catalyst towards women’s restriction in personal development rests on their glorification of the housewife role in the family. Women knew what they wanted to be and what they were going to be at a very young age. In fact, the common little girl’s dream was to get married, have four children, and live in a house in a nice suburb.1 Friedan concluded young women had an unhealthy obsession with finding a husband in order to accomplish their objective of raising a family. This can be reflected when women would take accounting classes, attend sports lessons, and join churches just to find a potential companion.2 While Friedan believed women’s effort should be applauded, she also argued women were limiting their development by not improving their skillset through these activities. Instead of attending lessons and classes just to find a partner, women

In her essay “The Importance of Work,” from The Feminine Mystique published in 1963, Betty Friedan confronts American women’s search for identity. Throughout the novel, Betty Friedan broke new ground by seeking the idea of women discovering personal fulfillment away from their original roles. She ponders on the idea of the Feminine Mystique as the cause for the majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house, restricting them from discovering who they are as women. Friedan’s novel is well known for creating a different kind of feminism and rousing various women across the nation.

In her Feminine Mystique essay, “The Importance of Work”, writer Betty Friedan talks about how the identity crisis of American women beginning about a century ago. More and more of the work that was used by human abilities in which they could find self-realization that was taken from women. The identity crisis for women did not begin in America until the fire, strength, and ability of the pioneer women were no longer needed. Women today whom feel that they have no goal, purpose, or future will commit suicide. Betty Friedan attempts to explain the causes of women’s unhappiness as she tags it, “the problem that has no name”. (Friedan, pg.790, 1963) Friedan’s rhetoric in the essay is constructed and based upon three persuasive techniques, which are known as ethos, pathos, and logos. In her essay, her main goal was to bring about how successful her approach in determining the role of women in society. She did an excellent job at defending her argument with facts from history to back it up.

Friedan, however, was no ordinary housewife. Before starting her family, she had worked as a newspaper reporter; even after her children came, she wrote regularly for the major women 's magazines. By 1957 she was fed up with the endless stories about breast-feeding, the preparation of gourmet chip dips, and similar domestic fare that was the staple of ‘Redbook‘, ‘McCall 's‘, and ‘Ladies ' Home Journal‘. She had noticed many women like herself who worked outside the home and felt guilty because their jobs threatened their husbands ' roles as providers or took time away from their children. Thus Friedan began to wonder not only about herself as a woman, a wife, and a mother, but also about the role society had shaped women to play.

Some counterarguments that could be made against The Feminine Mystique are that it focuses on what was not a universal female problem but rather a problem endured only by white, upper- and middle-class mothers and wives. Friedan's phrase, "the problem that has no name,”(15) could actually refer to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle- and upper-class, married white women or housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who want more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.’”(32) That "more"

However, before they began to labor for activism, there was a time when they decided to devote their lives to feminism. Only one moment was needed to change Anthony’s career and the world. When at a temperance meeting, Anthony rose to speak but was told she was not allowed to, solely because she was a woman. Due to this injustice, she decided to begin petitioning for women’s rights, as well as temperance and abolition, which she also labored for. Similarly, Friedan had a direct cause to begin feminism, but unlike Anthony, it was a period of several years that inspired her. For a long time, Friedan was a housewife, with three children in the suburbs. These years, torturous for Friedan, showed her how women were expected to give up their careers in favor of cleaning house, and worse, were expected to be happy not bored, sewing and vacuuming all day. In fact, Friedan herself had been a journalist, but she was fired for asking for maternal leave- fired for being a woman. Likewise, Anthony was fired from her job as a teacher, in part because she complained about the fact that she made five times less than men in the same position- again, fired for her sex. Another similarity between the paths of these women was that neither was respected at first. Anthony was a laughingstock for wearing the “Bloomer outfit”, pants that rolled at the calves, and after Friedan wrote her bestselling book on

In The Feminist Mystique, Betty Friedan combats the notion that women could only find fulfillment and be successful by having children and taking care of the home. This book sparked a re-emergence in the feminist movement and is widely attributed for converting more supporters for the cause. Her book describes the unhappy status of women in the ‘50s and 60’s and found her proof by holding interviews with women and also researching many topics. She discusses topics such as the fact that men wrote the women’s magazines, early feminists, female education and how it was changing, and the lack of fulfillment housewives felt in their everyday duties. The Feminist Mystique is reputed to be one of the most influential books in the 1960s.

The wife is at home with the kids and the husband goes to work. Women are the ones who were seen to cook, clean, and take care of everyone else. Did anyone ever wonder if women were truly happy being a housewife 24/7? That idea was one of the factors that lead for Betty Friedan to write “The Feminine Mystique”. The book was was published in 1963. She talks about how women were unsatisfied with their daily lives. In the book, she states, “Sometimes a woman would say "I feel empty somehow ... incomplete." Or she would say, "I feel as if I don't exist." The problem was that many women felt they had more to offer besides being a housewife. Women were so into their families that they don’t have time to truly think about their happiness. So where did she get this information to write the book? In the article , “Betty Friedan” by Mario Kaplan from the Jewish Women’s Archive website, it states , “In 1957, she surveyed two hundred of her Smith College classmates and found that many of them suffered from “the problem that has no name.” Betty Friedan was also a psychology student at Smith College. She was one of the first women to actually speak and write about “ the problem with no name”. She wrote an article in Good Housekeeping with the title “ Women

She believes American women have the potential to change their identity; however, women who do not give an effort to change their future will be “committing some kind of suicide” (12). Friedan also uses emotion to restate her main points in the concluding paragraph. Friedan claims the feminine mystique has “buried millions of American women alive.” She encourages women to “break out of their comfortable concentration camps” and take charge of their own futures. Friedan ends the last paragraph with the statement, “Only by such a personal commitment to the future can American women break out of the housewife trap . .

It was expected of women to stay home and cook, clean, and take care of the kids. The problem undermined with this concept, was the recent upgrade in American living; dishwashers, washers and dryers increased efficiency. This lead to women having even less to do and they started to get fed up with this lifestyle. As described as “the problem with no name,” in Betty Freidan’s book The Feminine Mystic, women were expected to live their lives in ways that didn’t appeal to them. Some tried to stray from this course and support themselves with their own job, but the circumstances were outrageous. Women were considered secondary workers and they only earned about half of what men made, and that’s why getting married was a safer

What were the issues that Betty Friedan‘s The Feminine Mystique make visible? Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, made visible how truly problematic the idea of women being “homemakers” was. Her book helped to bring attention the idea that women were not truly happy in this position, and they were not being allowed to live up to their true potential as individuals.

The Feminine Mystique is a first person narrative about the struggles of feminism. It highlights the problems of women in the 1950s to the 1960s and challenges gender roles. The book includes several first person interviews and discusses the Second Wave of feminism. It introduces the idea of the sexulization of women being used in consumerism and the lack of sexual education in school during the time. The Feminine Mystique is a useful resource because it is considered the groundbreaking book about feminism and lists issues that women have had to deal with from the 1960s until now. The book could be used to argue the struggles that women have faced and continue to face.

In the book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan brings attention to what she calls the feminine mystique, or “the problem that has no name”. Through the use of anecdotal narratives, her own personal experiences as a journalist, editor, mother, and the interviews of many women from different backgrounds in order to unveil the truth about the women of the 1950’s. The problem which sparked the second wave of feminism in the United States is one that focuses on the inequality between men and women and the undervaluing of women in both the social and private spheres. The women of the time gave up pursuing their passions, such as getting an education or careers in science or business in order to fit the image of the stereotypical stay-at-home mom whose main goal in life is to raise her children while providing a safe and comforting home for her husband. The Feminine Mystique, as she called it, was the idea of widespread unhappiness of women, despite the preconceived notion that women were happiest when they have a family. Throughout her work, she dives into many of the problems associated with the feminine mystique and builds a powerful concept of what would eventually be labeled feminism.

Betty Friedan singles out women to be the invisible minority in America. The invisible women in the American society

"She has no identity except as a wife and mother. She does not know who she is herself. She waits all day for her husband to come home at night to make her feel alive." This sentiment "lay buried, unspoken, for many years, in the minds of American women", until "In 1960, the problem that has no name bust like a boil through the image of the happy American housewife." Betty Friedan coined the phrase `the problem that has no name' during the second wave of feminism in the 1960's. By the time Judith Butler began articulating her views on