The Feminine Mystique (1963) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Margaret Mead: Add a description of this character.
• Freud
• Maslow
• Mccall
• Nora
• Lucy Stone
• Sarah
• Martha
• Redbook
• Bawa
• Mary
• Dr. Spock
• Susan Anthony

Quotes edit see section history

• “For all the new women, and the new men.”

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• The old image of the spirited career girl was largely created by writers and editors who were women, she told me. The new image of woman as housewife-mother has been largely created by writers and editors who are men.

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• It is my thesis that the core of the problem for women today is not sexual but a problem of identity—a stunting or evasion of growth that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique. It is my thesis that as the Victorian culture did not permit women to accept or gratify their basic sexual needs, our culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role.

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• The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity.

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• The mistake, says the mystique, the root of women’s troubles in the past is that women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love.

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• “I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.”

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• But the moral, in 1939, was that if she kept her commitment to herself, she did not lose the man, if he was the right man.

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• The problem is always being the children’s mommy, or the minister’s wife and never being myself.

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• part of the strange newness of the problem is that it cannot be understood in terms of the age-old material problems of man: poverty, sickness, hunger, cold.

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• “To make one half the human race consume its energies in the functions of housekeeper, wife and mother is a monstrous waste of the most precious material God ever made.”

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• I never knew a woman, when I was growing up, who used her mind, played her own part in the world, and also loved, and had children.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• America
• Vassar
• New York
• United States
• Vienna
• Massachusetts
• Westchester
• New England
• Africa
• India
• New Jersey

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and followed by Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.

Preceded by The Bell Jar, and followed by The Works of Charlotte Brontë (Value Pack).

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Betty Friedan (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 301.4120973

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology › Women
• Books › Nonfiction › Women's Studies › Feminist Theory
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Gender Studies
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Psychology & Counseling