they are not. Friedan confesses that, as a writer for these magazines, she has contributed to this issue.

Friedan’s research into women’s magazines before and after World War II reveals that during the 1930s, women were depicted as ambitious career women with their own aspirations, separate from or in addition to marriage and family. She describes the “New Woman” stereotype, often featured in pre-war magazine articles and fiction, as someone who struggles to define her own identity and succeeds. These women are rarely portrayed as housewives; if they marry, they often attract men who admire their strength and independence. Friedan cites examples from published fiction of the era, such as the story “Sarah and the Seaplane.” In this story, the protagonist, who is learning to fly, is asked if she is in love, which might explain her distraction. On the day Sarah flies solo, she realizes that she loves the independence of controlling her own life, as well as the man who taught her to fly, who helped her achieve this autonomy.

However, during the 1960s, when Friedan was crafting The Feminine Mystique, the media's depiction of women had dramatically shifted from how they were portrayed just over two decades earlier. Friedan describes a typical issue of McCall’s, noting its complete lack of stories about ideas, politics, art, or other subjects unrelated to homemaking, parenting, sex, or marriage. She recounts a meeting of male editors who claimed to understand what women wanted from magazines, asserting that women could only handle ideas if they were tied to domestic arts or relationships. By the late 1940s, magazine stories began addressing the concept of “Occupation: Housewife”—the response many women gave to census takers inquiring about their profession. These stories aimed to teach ambivalent housewives that their role was a noble and respectable calling, urging them to embrace it instead of longing for more intellectually stimulating lives.

“Occupation: Housewife” became a pivotal image in what Friedan terms “the feminine mystique”—the belief that a woman’s highest purpose is to revert to traditional, biological roles. This mystique indoctrinates women to believe that their destiny lies solely in femininity—emphasizing passivity, attractiveness, fertility, and submission to a partner. It reinvents outdated roles and makes them appealing once again. By 1949, fewer than one-third of female characters in magazine articles or fiction had identities beyond being housewives; most female characters aspired only to motherhood. As women started to accept the notion of giving up their careers, media stories began to discourage women from having independent thoughts. These stories promoted “togetherness” with a spouse, a term introduced in 1954. According to Friedan, togetherness essentially requires a woman to surrender her identity to become an extension or satellite of her husband, deriving her sense of self solely from him.

Friedan observes that the pre- and post-war images of women were crafted by distinctly different editorial teams. Before and during the war, female editors created the image of the New Woman. However, after the war, as men returned and took over editorial roles, they crafted the images of “Occupation: Housewife” and “The Happy Housewife Heroine” to persuade women that their world should be confined to the home. She suggests that this role might stem from male fantasies of domestic comfort prevalent during wartime. While motherhood was framed as a reward for women, Friedan questions whether it truly is a reward or merely the only available option for women to prove their worth and purpose.

“The Happy Housewife Heroine” image portrays a woman's sole role as sexual: she is a baby-maker and exists to please and clean up after her husband, avoiding any disturbing or challenging thoughts or ideas—deemed unfeminine. The feminine mystique is, essentially, a glamorized form of women's repression, perpetuated by male editors returning from war who want women to stay at home, ready to comfort them and too helpless to challenge them. Friedan notes that as magazines perpetuate this image, research shows that women struggle to find happiness within it: they strive to appear glamorous, attempt to find joy in owning material goods, or are patronized by magazines that use large type fonts, treating readers as if they were children.

Female identity is prematurely cemented in adolescence under the feminine mystique. Friedan writes that both women and men experience an identity crisis as part of growing up, but under the feminine mystique, women are denied the right to question or reshape their identities. She recalls how, in college, she faced a choice between pursuing graduate studies and a relationship, ultimately choosing the latter and always feeling some regret. Women, she writes, lack an individual or “private” vision of who they want to be—or if they do, it is too weak to resist the “public” image of what women are supposed to be, as portrayed by the media's “The Happy Housewife Heroine.” This public image, however, is superficial: an image crafted by magazines and advertisers who aim to sell cake mixes, appliances, and beauty products.

Friedan writes that many mothers during the 1950s and 1960s wanted their daughters to aspire to more than just being housewives. The daughters recognize their mothers’ unhappiness but don’t know how to change the situation, thus repeating the cycle by succumbing to the pressure to be properly “feminine” and popular enough to marry and become housewives. Many of the teenagers Friedan interviews express a desire to sacrifice their individuality to fit in with their peers and on dates. The stereotype of the unhappy “old maid” is strong for this generation, but there is no longer a stereotype of strong and independent women for these girls to emulate. Friedan describes how society acknowledges that women face a “role crisis,” but suggests that societal definitions claim the problem exists because women can't accept the limits of their role. In her opinion, the issue arises because the role itself is too restrictive.

The feminine mystique prevents girls from maturing. It hinders their participation in a crucial developmental stage described by psychologist Erik Erikson. According to Erikson, the transition to adulthood involves navigating crises and making decisions that help individuals establish their own values and priorities. However, Friedan argues that women are instructed on what to do before they even get the chance to explore their options, often remaining unaware that alternatives exist. By the late 1950s, women were restricted from reshaping their identity beyond the narrow confines defined by the feminine mystique.

Friedan observes that by the late 1950s, “feminism” had become a derogatory term. Ironically, the feminist movement of the nineteenth century, led by suffragettes, aimed to grant women an identity separate from their husbands. The fight for voting rights was essentially about granting women the identity they had been denied. Interestingly, during the dominance of the feminine mystique, the idea that women might need advocates to help them shape their identities was met with disdain.

Friedan explores the history of women's suffrage, connecting that struggle to the rights women seemed to no longer desire. She notes that, in the 1950s, feminists were often depicted as man-haters or as being antagonistic towards men. In reality, these women sought their own rights independent of men, not in opposition to them. In Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House, the heroine leaves her husband to discover her own identity and role in the world, separate from her spouse. Friedan writes: “It is a cliché of our own time that women spent half a century fighting for ‘rights’ and the next half wondering whether they wanted them after all.”

Friedan traces feminism's connection to various forms of independence, revisiting the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, where women demanded the right to vote. She underscores the irony in the Declaration of Independence, which states that “all men and women are created equal.” Throughout history, feminists have been mischaracterized as man-haters or as angry, inadequate women. Arguments based on nature, religion, and intellect have been used to confine women to their “God-given” roles, much like pro-slavery advocates dehumanized and demeaned African Americans.

In the mid-1800s, an early feminist named Lucy Stone fought her way through college and eventually married. However, her marriage was quite unconventional for the time because she did not adopt her husband’s surname. The couple publicized their vows to highlight how their marriage differed from societal norms. According to Friedan, Stone refused to take her husband's name to reject the concept of the “femme couverte,” which implied that a woman was "covered" by her husband’s identity, finances, and authority. Women’s efforts to secure the right to vote paralleled their fight to abolish slavery. The more they protested and pursued interests outside the home, the more fulfilled they felt, improving their marriages and parenting by leading lives of both the mind and the home.

Although women eventually won the right to vote, the image of the feminist became distorted into that of a man-hater or an uncomfortable woman who couldn’t accept her societal role. Friedan asks, “Did women really go home again as a reaction to feminism?” She argues that women did not retreat from the original goals of feminism, such as the right to vote, think independently, and have lives beyond their families. She suggests that the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychoanalyst who linked male and female development and destiny to their anatomy, may have played a significant role in this shift.

Analysis

Betty Friedan begins The Feminine Mystique by assessing the condition of American women and determining that they are unfulfilled in their assigned roles.

In the first chapter, Friedan introduces the “problem that has no name,” laying the groundwork for her historical exploration of how American women, despite being liberated by early feminists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, have chosen to forsake their freedoms. She structures her nonfiction narrative about women’s evolving identity—and the cultural forces that influenced this evolution—by starting with a snapshot of women’s status in the 1950s. This allows her to delve deeper into the societal roles of women in subsequent chapters. She also highlights that many mothers desire more fulfilling lives for their daughters but feel powerless to guide them in achieving such lives.

Friedan observes that women are excessively concentrated on their roles as wives, housekeepers, and mothers—their biological functions. She also notes that this image is mirrored in the media, the most accessible and influential form of social messaging for both men and women. Women’s tendencies and the media’s promotion of what Friedan calls the “feminine mystique”—the idealization of women’s roles as wives and mothers—are interconnected. Did the media offer vulnerable women a social alternative to careers and independence—the feminine mystique—at an opportune moment? Or did women, who had other plans for their lives, absorb and then start emulating the perfect image of homemaking and marriage presented in the articles and stories they encountered everywhere? A recurring theme in Friedan’s book is introduced here: The feminine mystique permeates various fields—intellectual (psychology, anthropology) and mainstream (the media, education)—and reinforces itself within American culture.

Friedan aims to highlight the context in which the feminine mystique emerged and to expose its flawed premise. The media bolsters women’s roles and vice versa. However, during the period Friedan discusses, there was a shift from female to male editors, which altered the portrayal of women in the media. The women Friedan sees in popular magazines of the 1940s and 1950s are consistently housewives—absent are the New Women of the 1930s who grappled with the ongoing challenges of balancing their intellectual or professional ambitions with their romantic lives or family duties. Replacing the New Women were those who identified their occupation as “housewife” to the census taker. Friedan seeks to connect these two identities and examines how the media manipulated women—a theme that will reappear later in her book when she explores how advertisers deliberately exploited housewives’ insecurities to sell products.

She also examines the history of women's liberation and how, after women achieved the right to vote, the feminine mystique emerged to convince them they had no real reason to use it. Within these chapters, an interesting piece of magazine fiction, “Sarah and the Seaplane,” is highlighted by Friedan as a fitting parable for women's potential: The story centers on Sarah, a protagonist learning to fly. Her friends and family question her preoccupation, wondering if she is in love (the ultimate goal of the feminine mystique), but she is actually in love with her newfound sense of independence. She eventually flies solo in the seaplane—and also falls in love with the instructor who “gave her her wings.” Sarah, as a character, illustrates where women can aspire to: they can be both strong and independent, forming relationships that largely stem from their strength and independence. Unfortunately, stories like Sarah’s started to vanish from women's magazines in the 1940s and 1950s.