Monday, February 06, 2006

What a life, what a difference

Exerpt from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, 1963
"Gradually, without seeing it clearly for quite a while, I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today," Ms. Friedan wrote in the opening line of the preface. "I sensed it first as a question mark in my own life, as a wife and mother of three small children, half-guiltily, and therefore half-heartedly, almost in spite of myself, using my abilities and education in work that took me away from home." my bible


Rest in Peace - February 4, 1921 to February 4, 2006.





The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
Currently on display
From the Smithsonian Collection

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night-she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-‘Is this all?’ ” --quoted from the book, The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan

Physical Description
Artifact. Hard-cover book in a paper jacket. 8 5/8” H x 6” W x 1 5/8” D

Details
Date Made: 1963

History
In her ground-breaking book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan explored the angst and ennui of contemporary suburban life for women who defined them selves primarily by their roles at home.

http://www.vfa.us/Suffrage.htm

Photo of Betty Friedan leading a group
of demonstrators outside a Congres-
sional office in 1971 to show support
for the E.R.A.

Time magazine, June 29, 1998. This cover depicts pioneering women Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem juxtaposed with McBeal and asks "Is Feminism Dead?" It is an example of the debate which revolved around the show and how it depicted women's roles in American society in the 1990s.


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