Mother of the Movement:The Writings of Betty Friedan

4. Life So Far: A Memoir by Betty Friedan

This research of her participation in the movement focuses on these four works.

graduating from Smith College with top honors in 1942 and working for a short period of time, Betty Goldstein got married to Carl Friedan and the couple quickly had three children. She settled into the typical housewife/mother role, which she would later call “the feminine mystique” and became increasingly uncomfortable with what her life had become. In 1957, after speaking with some of her fellow graduates from Smith, Friedan realized that other women were unsatisfied with their roles at home (C-Span 2002). She began to research this topic and ultimately wrote The Feminine Mystique, which was published in 1963. Friedan wrote what every other woman was afraid to say. According to Alan Wolfe (1999), with this book, Friedan was “credited with launching the contemporary feminist movement.” She did so not by giving the history of women’s oppression, but by telling her own story. She wrote about the opportunities that were presented to her after college and how she refused them because she wanted to start a family. Wolfe (1999), also stated that Friedan’s work did not go without academic merit. She involved the work of some outstanding scholars in her book in order to give it some credibility. Although she was on the frontier of a revolution, she realized that she was not the first feminist, and this became apparent with the criticism that followed the publication of her first book.

Many radical feminists saw Friedan’s views as boring and repetitive. There were women fighting for equal rights long before 1963 and some of them were of the opinion that what Friedan had written was outdated. Friedan also received criticism from women who felt belittled and threatened by her work. According to a critic of The Feminine Mystique, Sylvia Fava (1963), “Friedan tended to set up a counter-mystique; that all women must have creative interests outside of the home to realize themselves. This can be just as confining … as any other mold” (Fava, 1963, p.1053). Women like Fava felt pressured by Friedan to go out and achieve things that they were not accustomed to achieving. Some women were content with their docile, housewife lives and felt that Friedan was telling them that their lives were not good enough for womankind. It was six years after the writing of her first book, however, that Friedan began to receive the most criticism. This disparagement had to do not only with her writing, but also with her personal life and her vivacious temper.

As she grew older, Friedan discovered the neglect and discrimination against the elderly. The Fountain of Age was published when she was seventy-two years old. At this old age, she ha

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