The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Freidan is one of those books I have been aware of for most of my time as a student. It came up in World History, American History, Sociology classes, Geography classes, etc. I have written about it. I have used it to support essays on exams. I have written about its importance, impact, and the issues it spoke to. However, up until this week, I never actually read any part of it. It was, I knew, a work that was a result of and inspired the feminism of the 1960s, while questioning and criticizing the purely domestic roles women were forced to take in the 1960s Really, I see now, I only thought I knew what it was about. While I was not wrong, I appreciate having a deeper understanding of the text now.
I had not realized for example, that the very title was used ironically. The Feminine Mystique is an idea of Freud that Freidan criticizes: a way of understanding women by simplifying them.
She writes
“…The feminine mystique derived its power from Freudian thought; for it was an idea born of Freud, which led women, and those who studied them, to misinterpret their mothers’ frustrations, and their fathers’ and brothers’ and husbands’ resentments and inadequacies, and their own emotions and possible choices in life. The new mystique is much more difficult for the modern woman to question than the old prejudices, partly because the mystique is broadcast by the very agents of education and social science that are supposed to be the chief enemies of prejudice, partly because the very nature of Freudian thought makes it virtually invulnerable to question. How can an educated American woman, who is not herself an analyst, presume to question a Freudian truth?”
Freidan criticizes this approach to reducing women to “penis envy,” noting that his ideas reflected the Victorian times he wrote in. His ideas should not be applied to American women today and their experiences, which differ much from the Viennese middle class of the Victorian Era.
I mention this in my movie response as well, but I think this reading is extremely important in light of the depiction of women we saw in The Warriors. In many ways the characters featured in Warriors seem like transplanted caricatures of the cases Freud discusses and Freidan criticizes. Their identities stem form their desires, or lack-there-of, to be with men. Everything we learn about them stems from their sexual engagement with the male characters, while the Warriors themselves can exist outside of their interest in women.
Jerome Krase
March 15, 2017 — 4:52 pm
Both Sol Yurick and Betty Friedan were on the same wavelength when it came to many subjects but their methods for providing foundations (ideas) for progressive change were different. Note: The tropish “Lizzies” girl gang scene, the undercover female cop, and the young NOT SO VULNERABLE woman Mercy who becomes a Warrior. I doubt that the book was as marketable as a screenplay and Sol was not happy about much of it.
For example both singed this “Writers and Editors Protest” :
25 September 1967
Dear Mr. Weisberg: (https://archive.org/details/nsia-WritersandEditorsProtest)
I am enclosing a copy of the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers
and editors who pledge to refuse payment of the proposed 10 per cent
income tax surcharge or any tax increase earmarked for the Vietnam
War. At this writing, seven New York Times writers and editors have
signed. We plan to run a full-page advertisement in the Times in
mid-October, giving the quote from Thoreau, the pledge and the list
of names. The placing of the ad will coincide with Congressional
debate on the tax surcharge. By that time we hope to have 500 per-
sons pledged to refuse payment.