An Excerpt from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — "Is this all?"
For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity. Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents.
In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children's clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rug-hooking class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: "Occupation: housewife."
When discussing the advantages that should be thought about in the quote from The Great Gatsby "'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had,'” I believe that these disadvantages are not related to only wealth. When people think of the word "disadvantaged," they often think about people who live in poverty. Although those people are disadvantaged and it is important to acknowledge them, this is not the only type of situation to take into account. The book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, published in 1963, discusses well-off women who were dissatisfied with their lives. Many women went to work during World War II, and when the men returned home they went back to domestic lives, working at home and taking care of children. The media and popular culture influenced women and girls to believe that being a housewife was perfect and they should be happy to stay home, cook, and clean. The book describes how "millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor." This seemed to many women like a goal in life, but some women who achieved this goal did not have a sense of their own identity. They felt discouraged from feeling this way, but as Betty Friedan wrote, they were "afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?'" Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique to show that many women all could connect to this question, and that they were not alone.
These women were disadvantaged due to the media and popular culture showing them that their situation was perfect, yet they were not happy. They had grown up during World War II and finally had the life of their dreams, only to find that the dream was more of a nightmare. Yet they had nice homes and families. Before criticizing others, it is important to think of the different sorts of problems they might have and whether it is really fair to judge them.