“The Feminine Mystique”, by Betty Friedan (1963). (This section is a supplement to the discussion in “Women’s Liberation” section of the Songbook.)
Friedan’s book was based on a series of interviews she had with her college classmates, fifteen years after graduation. She asked them about the problems and satisfaction of their lives. Although the book was published 1963, it was based on post-war experience and observations of the women, and that was largely a 1950s experience. The mystique referenced in the title was this strange paradox wherein contemporary women were doing everything they were told to do that would make them happy—housekeeping, raising children, and catering to their husbands—and yet, American women’s rate of depression, alcoholism, and suicide skyrocketed at this time. (Friedan 22.) Almost without exception, she claimed, the women she encountered were married, with children, living in prosperous, upper-middle-class suburbs. They were living out the dream that affluent bourgeois society had created for women in the postwar years, what Friedan called the “mystique of feminine fulfillment,” by acting out the expected roles of wives, mothers, and homemakers. They responded to questions about their lives with forced, chirpy reports of contentment—proud talk of husbands, children, and homes. And yet, as Friedan pressed further, she found that behind this mystique, in virtually all the women she interviewed, lay a fundamental sense of uneasiness, frustration, vague unhappiness that most women had great difficulty articulating. Friedan dubbed this the “problem that has no name,” a problem that even women themselves had been unable to identify or explain. The real problem, Friedan said, was embedded in the nature of the gender roles society had imposed on women. The women she met were intelligent, educated, talented; and yet they had no outlets for their talents except housework, motherhood, and the companionship they offered their husbands. “The feminine mystique,” she wrote, “has succeeded in burying millions of women alive.”
In the 1950s, women felt tremendous societal pressure to focus their aspirations on a wedding ring. There was strong social pressure that sought to persuade women that work and education would destroy their chances for marriage and a happy home life. The media and pundits of the day instructed women that their only true fulfillment could be found as wives and mothers, that sexist discrimination was actually good for them, that the denial of opportunity was, in reality, the manifestation of the highest possible goals of womanhood. (Id. at p. 73) The U.S. marriage rate was at an all-time high and couples were tying the knot, on average, younger than ever before. Getting married right out of high school or while in college was considered the norm. A common stereotype found that women went to college to get a “Mrs.” (pronounced M.R.S.) degree, meaning a husband. Advice books and magazine articles (“Don’t Be Afraid to Marry Young,” “Cooking to Me Is Poetry,” “Femininity Begins at Home”) urged women to leave the workforce and embrace their roles as wives and mothers. The idea that a woman’s most important job was to bear and rear children was hardly a new one, but it began to generate a great deal of dissatisfaction among women who yearned for a more fulfilling life.
Although women had other aspirations in life, the dominant theme promoted in the culture and media at the time was that a husband was far more important for a young woman than a college degree. Despite the fact that employment rates rose for women during this period, the media tended to focus on a woman’s role in the home. If a woman wasn’t engaged or married by her early twenties, she was in danger of becoming an “old maid.” People married younger in the Fifties. The 1950 median age for a first marriage was 22.8 years old for men and 20.3 for women. In the late 1950’s, about three-fourths of all women between the ages of 20 and 24 had already married. Divorce was not a common thing. In 1950 there were 385,000 divorces which only rose slightly to 395,000 by 1959. Why? Societal pressure for one thing. You were supposed to get married and stay married, regardless of how miserable you were. To put those numbers in perspective, only 2.6 people out of 1,000 were divorced in 1950, whereas it climbed to 4.2 out of 1,000 in 1998.
“Is That All There Is,” Peggy Lee (1969) (This song is a reflection on the malaise that Friedan wrote about in The Feminine Mystic.) https://youtu.be/LCRZZC-DH7M
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me up
in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over I said to myself, is that all there is to a fireIs that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there isAnd when I was twelve years old, my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads
And so I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what, but when it was over
I said to myself, “is that all there is to a circus?Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there isThen I fell in love, head over heels in love, with the most wonderful boy in the world
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love
Then one day he went away and I thought I’d die, but I didn’t
and when I didn’t I said to myself, is that all there is to love?Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancingI know what you must be saying to yourselves
if that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment
for I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my first breath, I’ll be saying to myselfIs that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is