In The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan discusses the plight of women the 1950’s as being ‘The Problem with No Name’, suggesting that women or more specifically housewives were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their existence. The focus of attention on the importance of the nuclear family as a source of personal well being and happiness created a child centred existence. This naturally arose from the baby boom that occurred after the end of the Second World War. This child centred existence also created rigid gender roles, especially for women. In an era of stifling conformity, exemplified by the rise in identical communities of ‘Levittown’s’, women naturally felt trapped and ‘infantised’. Their whole sense of being surrounded their culturally defined roles of house wife and mother. Women like Betty Friedan and Sylvia Plath highlighted the discontent that arose from constantly being defined as the passive ‘victim’. At the beginning of her novel Plath describes ‘The Problem with No Name’ when Esther Greenwood, her protagonist starts work in New York:

“I knew something was wrong with me that summer…I was sup

Women like Betty Friedan, Sylvia Plath and Sue Kaufman (Diary of a Mad Housewife) can certainly be identified as rebels with a cause. Their rebellion had a positive aim and laid the foundations for the modern feminist movement. Sylvia Plath is often viewed as a tragic heroine and as a feminist martyr. Feminist champions of Plath hold that she was driven over the edge by her misogynist husband, and sacrificed at the altar of pre-Feminist repressive America, much like the one she describes in The Bell Jar. Her protagonist Esther Greenwood is a rebellious character who refuses the role that 1950’s America has dictated for her. She emerges as a kind of anti-Christ of the ‘perfect’ image of a teenage girl of the fifties. Instead of being pre-occupied with Elvis Presley and twin sets, Esther broods over the execution of the Rosenberg’s, cadavers and pickled foetuses. Her dark, melancholy nature is not what society expects from an apparent ‘nice, young girl.’ The role of and treatment of women in America in the 1950’s runs almost parallel to mental illness. Both women and the mentally unstable are classed as ‘different’. When she becomes ill she is subjected to the severe scrutiny of the dominating male doctors who come to ‘view’ her, symbolic of a domineering patriarchal society.

In 1946 the anthropologist Margaret Mead reflected on society’s contradictory expectations of American women:

On the other hand it could be argued that no matter how much personal freedom a society allows individuals there will always be forms of rebellion, no matter what cause they adopt. There will always be dissident voices, especially in such a progressive and rapidly changing society. Although each generation comes of age with what it believes to be unique feelings of angst, despair and isolation, these agonising emotions have tortured the souls of every American generation of the twentieth century. It was the reaction to these ultimately normal and healthy forms of teenage rebellion that shows what an era of stifling conformity it had become. Teenager’s rejection of middle class values was seen as semi-criminal rather than a counter-cultural movement, which it actually was. Women, however, can be said to have had a greater cause for rebellion. Betty Friedan and Sylvia Plath fuelled a rebellion, or rather a counter-cultural movement that has been a significant factor in informing the modern Feminist Movement. They were rebellious voices of a cause that is still fought for today.

Some topics in this essay:
Buddy Willard, Jim Stark, Marlon Brando, Esther Greenwood, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Mead, Angry Americans, Lundberg Farnham, Elvis Presley, Betty Friedan, betty friedan, sexual behaviour, sylvia plath, american women, esther greenwood, friedan sylvia, betty friedan sylvia, friedan sylvia plath, 1950’s america, buddy willard, era stifling conformity, post war, child centred, child centred existence, sexual behaviour human,