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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Discussion Questions

Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary: “The Mistaken Choice”

The choice that Chapter 8’s title refers to is that between freedom and security. Friedan describes women’s retreat to the home in the post-World War II era; she claims that women returned to letting men protect and provide for them rather than maintaining the momentum toward independence that had been building in previous decades. This trend mirrored the national attitude of the time. After the collective trauma of the Depression, the war, and the atomic bomb, most Americans were eager to turn away from large-scale catastrophes and instead focus on the smaller, more controllable sphere of the home.

While the ideology of the feminine mystique dictates women’s choices, Friedan writes, it also punishes even those women seemingly doing what their society encourages them to do. Mothers almost always shoulder the blame for their children’s neuroses, no matter the context of the individual child’s life. Some mothers receive blame for being an overbearing presence, while others who work outside the home receive blame for spending too much time away from their children. These two criticisms are incompatible and reveal an underlying strain of sexism rather than a valid, consistent critique.

One of the most famous studies on the supposed detriments of education and career ambitions for women was the famous Kinsey Report, a well-known publication that later developed into a series of reports about Americans’ sex lives. An initial version of the report showed that educated women achieved orgasm less often than their less-educated counterparts. After refining his methodology, Kinsey showed in a later report that the opposite was true. By that time, however, public opinion had latched onto the first version as further evidence that education does not help women adjust to their social role.

Chapter 9 Summary: “The Sexual Sell”

Using portions of an interview with an anonymous advertising executive, Friedan details the many methods that advertisers have of manipulating women into buying an endless stream of household products. Because one of the primary tenets of capitalism is that manufacturers “have to develop the need for new products” (269), advertisers employ psychology to convince women that their arsenal of cleaning products must forever keep expanding.

Advertisers accomplish their goals by emphasizing the scientific superiority of their products—a new all-purpose cleaner, for instance, might be advertised as scientifically proven to remove 99.9% of germs. This method appeals to housewives’ desire to use their intellects; they can practice good judgment by selecting a cleaner developed using the scientific method. Ads are also likely to appeal to housewives’ desire to be good household managers—to hold a position of respect in the only sphere available to them.

Friedan points out an irritating irony in the fact that the psychologists who inform advertisers understand women’s desire better than most other people or institutions; they see women’s need to access life outside the home in whatever way possible. They use this insight to ignoble purpose, though, trapping women even further in domesticity by selling household products that both reinforce the ideology of the feminine mystique and fool women into thinking they can find comfort in materialism.

Chapters 8-9 Analysis

Chapter 8 serves as a useful example of the way that Friedan continuously alternates between researched material and personal material. Having just spent three chapters dissecting the ways that prominent academic theorists have reinforced the feminine mystique, she switches gears to discuss the influence of big-picture forces like the war. She does not cite specific theorists or studies that support her contention that the war made Americans weary of paying attention to societal problems; instead, she relies on the reader’s own experience to validate her claims.

Notably, Chapter 8 also marks one of the places in the book where Friedan most clearly puts some of the blame for the power of the feminine mystique on women themselves. By titling the chapter after a “choice” and speaking of women’s “retreat” to the home, she indicates that American women themselves played a part in letting themselves become confined to the home. By choosing security over the chance of self-realization, American women bought into the ideology that many social institutions were promoting.

Chapter 9’s revelations about the advertising industry’s efforts to manipulate women into buying endless domestic products may not seem particularly shocking to many modern readers. In contemporary society, high school and college courses often teach young adults to spot persuasive techniques used in a variety of media, including advertisements. However, such instruction was not as common in Friedan’s time. Friedan’s critique exposes the way in which many advertisers were essentially making consumerism the housewife’s primary job. Purchasing things for the home allowed her the chance to get out of the house, to be around other people, to exercise her own judgment, and to demonstrate financial skill by finding bargains. Advertisers had to find a delicate balance between exploiting these needs and avoiding drawing attention to the fact that these needs could be met outside the home.

Friedan’s discussion of the advertising industry also stands out for its blunt critique of American capitalism, which was in its heyday (and all but unchallenged) at the time Friedan was writing. Although The Feminine Mystique does betray Friedan’s preoccupation with the middle and upper classes to the exclusion of working-class women, it arguably reflects an awareness that women’s subordination and capitalism are interconnected.