The Feminine Mystique...a question

[blueraven95]

I'm reading "The Feminine Mystique" and I was wondering if any of the people on here can tell me what the public reaction to the book was like when it was published. So much of the book is about the history of the women's rights movement, but what I'm finding is that I'm most interested in the history immediately after the book was published and I only have the most vague ideas about how it affected society. (Ironic, since in college I took classes on US History through Political Protest, The 1960's, 20th Century American History, etc.) So, I'm wondering what your stories are about the book and how it did or did not change lives.

:hi:

[iverglas]

1. I was a teenager

and I bought the book for my mother. What a presumptuous little snot. ;)

It did have rather an explosive effect. It was a first, no doubt about it. De Beauvoir's The Second Sex was actually more important, intellectually, but of course not as accessible to the US population, both conceptually and because of language. Philosophy is daily bread in France, but not in the US.

I read it at the time but don't remember it much. I think I do recall something that has been discussed here at DU -- how upper middle class it was. My mother and the other women on the street really didn't spend their days drinking and their nights popping tranqs. We were working class and lower middle class (white) families, and it being the 50s, many of the women didn't work, but some did, in the service industry largely. They hadn't gone to university and then ditched their lives to be wives and spent their time feeling unfulfilled; their husbands had jobs, but they weren't particularly fulfilling either. I think that aspect of the book spoke to a very particular demographic and may in fact have contributed to the alienation of working class women and women of colour from the fledgling new women's liberation movement.

[blueraven95]

3. thank you for your insight!

as I'm reading it, I'm definitely seeing the disconnect between the classes that you are talking about, which so far is the one huge flaw I'm seeing. Although I can't help but wonder, did the women in the lower middle class to lower class have the exact same influences (except maybe the systematic educational "brainwash") and feel just as guilty, if not more so, because they couldn't be at home with the kids...or were they better adjusted and overall happier?

I'm finding that interesting.

For me, it's like I'm not just reading about the situation society stuck all women in (or at least all middle to upper class women) but I'm reading about the situation my grandmothers, and to a lesser (but no less significant) extent, my mother dealt with, more or less successfully...and I'm only now understanding a lot of their decisions in life. It's a really sobering realization in a lot of ways.

[Ellen Forradalom]

2. I'm too young for that

but I'll ask my mother

[blueraven95]

4. thank you

I can't wait to hear what she has to say.

I asked my grandmother, and all she could really tell me was about a time she had lunch at a table next to Ms. Friedan, and how my grandmother's party couldn't really enjoy the lunch, because Ms. Friedan had so many people coming to talk to her it was disruptive. Grandma said that after that lunch she figured that Ms. Friedan was not a social pariah because of her book. <-- her actual words :)

I'd love to hear more about the actual impact of the book - and in particular the reaction from women.