The Feminine Mystique

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-11

Chapters 12-13

Chapter 14

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 12-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 12 Summary: “Progressive Dehumanization”

Friedan argues that the feminine mystique affects women and their children not only mentally but physically. Women attempting to conform to its dictates often suffer from a number of health complications. Some are overweight from lack of activity; others are underweight from trying to meet feminine beauty standards. Stress and anxiety cause many to suffer from irregular periods. As depression becomes more common among women, more and more women with seemingly perfect lives commit suicide.

This collection of symptoms can affect women’s children as well. Often, women unable to find an identity in their own empty lives seek one through their children; they engage in strategies like “noncommitment” and “vicarious living,” as psychiatrist Andras Angyal puts it. Angyal describes the need for all living organisms to grow and the strategies some organisms employ to avoid growth, usually because of fear. For women, these strategies range from low-stakes behaviors such as doing children’s homework for them to high-stakes behaviors like pushing daughters into sexuality prematurely.

Friedan draws on the work of psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, a Holocaust survivor who studied other concentration camp survivors, to claim that women who live under the shadow of the feminine mystique “are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps” (367). She elaborates that just as Jewish people in Nazi concentration camps were forced to abandon any sense of identity and thereby “became their own worst enemy” (369), so also are American women in the 1960s. She describes both populations as suffering from campaigns of dehumanization that strip them of any sense of self.

Chapter 13 Summary: “The Forfeited Self”

Focusing on psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory of the “hierarchy of needs,” Friedan further explores what happens to the dehumanized women who try to embody the feminine mystique. Maslow posits that all humans have basic needs they must meet to survive, such as food and shelter, but that once they have met those needs, they shift focus to higher-order needs. Someone who has acquired physical well-being and safety begins to experience the need for love and belonging, then esteem, and finally self-actualization.

Friedan argues that society discourages and prevents most women from satisfying the highest-order needs in Maslow’s hierarchy: esteem and self-actualization. The need for these developments does not just go away, however. Therefore, it is only natural that most American women feel unfulfilled and often find unhealthy outlets to express their unmet needs.

Returning to the idea of women’s sex lives, Friedan points out that women could have more fulfilling sex if they acquired more education. Contrary to myths about higher education “masculinizing” women and interfering with their sex lives, social science data suggests that higher education frequently leads to greater self-esteem in the woman and mutual respect between her and her partner. This allows sex to go from a pressurized activity that women are trying to use as their whole identity to a relaxed expression of love between two respectful partners.

Chapters 12-13 Analysis

Chapter 12 contains another of the book’s most controversial claims. The comparison between the feminine mystique and the Holocaust is one that many critics take exception to, with even those who are sympathetic to the feminist movement often claiming that Friedan overstates women’s predicament (and by extension trivializes the Holocaust). Moreover, the comparison’s basis in the work of Bettelheim is another instance of Friedan’s reliance on a scholar whose work has since provoked questions and critiques within the scholarly community. Many view Bettelheim’s work as blaming victims of atrocious abuse for their own psychological deterioration. Therefore, critics of Friedan’s stance in this chapter critique not only her use of a comparison that seems too extreme in the first place but also her reliance on Bettelheim’s questionable theories.

In contrast, Friedan’s reliance on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in Chapter 13 has aged well; he is one of the few major social scientists that she cites whose work has inspired little critique and features with few caveats in a variety of college courses. In tracing a link between poor mental health and poor physical health in women who cannot fulfill the needs Maslow describes as important for adult life, Friedan is ahead of her time. While the contemporary era is one in which ever-increasing numbers of people discuss mental health openly and frequently, such frank conversations were not a staple of Friedan’s era, making her insight all the more important to her readers.

In her discussions of childrearing and sex, Friedan returns to a strategy she has used throughout The Feminine Mystique: arguing that progress for women will benefit all of society (in this case, children and husbands). Rhetorically, this broadens the appeal of her work. On the other hand, one could argue that feminism should not “have to” prove itself useful to anyone but women—i.e., that respecting women’s inherent human dignity means respecting their own plight as reason enough to demand change. The strategy also raises questions about the extent to which society has historically expected women to prioritize the needs of others, and whether those expectations seep into even feminism itself.