The Feminine Mystique: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

After years of sitting on an analyst’s couch, working out how to adjust to the feminine mystique, by the early 1960s, women had given up and were searching for their senses of identity. Each woman had to create a new life plan based on her own needs.

The first step in discovering one’s own image was in rejecting the housewife image. Women must also stop thinking that they must choose between a marriage and a career—that was the mistaken choice of the feminine mystique.”

Women must see housework for the menial labor that it is, not as a kind of career. When a woman stops trying to make chores into “something more,” she will be better able to resist “the manipulators” who try to run her life. She will begin to use appliances for what they were intended: to save time.

The second step is to stop glorifying marriage and motherhood as the sole and final fulfillments of their lives. Each woman should recognize herself as an individual and not “as a mother with time on her hands.” She should use her time to make her own commitment to society, which she can integrate into her commitment to her family.

The only way for a woman to find herself is through creative work. She should not merely get a job to help out with family income, for that would be a part of the housewife trap. Due to a lack of work in the suburbs, women often took community service positions, but this work does not use women’s intelligences. A woman is better off finding work that pays, that is of value to society, and that requires a commitment.

Dabbling in art and music seemed to be an ideal solution for women, especially since they could practice certain arts, such as ceramics, at home. However, the dabbler cannot gain a sense self from her work because she is not paid. She does not gain any real status or personal identity because she has not done the work of becoming a professional.

Some women who had worked and left their professions believed that they had been away for too long. Others feel guilty about finding work outside of the home.

The idea of “the happy housewife” doing artistic work at home—painting, sculpting, writing—is one of the “semi-delusions of the feminine mystique.” Women, Friedan asserts, are better off working outside the home where they can concentrate uninterrupted and make new friendships.

Women must resist all social pressures—from magazines, sociologists, psychoanalysts, educators, and clergymen—by saying “no” to the feminine mystique. They must confront the possible sense of threat that their husbands may feel and assert their right to work.

Friedan observed that, in some instances, relationships grew as a result of husbands and wives giving up the feminine mystique. In these cases, men were often relieved to bear less of the financial burden. In other instances, men did not want to give up the fantasy of having “an ever-present mother.” If the wife became her true self and stopped acting out the fantasy, then maybe her husband could see her for the person she was. If not, he might be better served by finding “another mother.”

Women who abandoned the “mystique” also faced the possibility of the hostility of other housewives. A woman who lives through her husband and children resents a woman who has her own life, though that resentment masks “a secret envy.” “Ambition,” like “career,” had become a bad word. Women who were ambitious and worked had suffered from “and solved the problem that has no name.” Work had made them feel that they were fully a part of the world, as opposed to just making extra money for their families.

Another key to escaping the housewife trap is education. Though some women believed that their educations had ill-prepared them for housewifery, it had actually saved them from some of the more dangerous aspects of the feminine mystique. Still, many women regretted not having taken their educations more seriously and putting them to real use. However, some women found ways of putting their educations to use through various community efforts, including new educational programs, efforts for and against segregated schools, the organization of arts programs and involvement in local politics.

Some women returned to school and pursued graduate study after their children grew up. They went on to earn advanced degrees in the arts, law, medicine, the sciences, and education. Women who did not go to college or those who dropped out to marry took enrichment courses, but they were not satisfactory because they were not serious pursuits of any subject. If a woman wanted to go back to university, she had to demonstrate her seriousness before joining a classroom with teenagers.

The problem that has no name had resulted in a series of social problems, including alcoholism and suicide. The only way to address it was to reshape the model of femininity so that little girls do not grow up wanting to be “just a housewife” but were, instead, offered the same resources as boys to discover their own identities.

To encourage students in the Eisenhower era to take their educations seriously, it was important to have female scholars—both married and unmarried educators—on campus as positive role models. Educators must also say “no” to the feminine mystique and abandon courses, such as “marriage and family.”

Women who had fallen for the feminine mystique had to be “re-educated.” Women who did not go to college or who dropped out needed, according to Friedan, support in the form of a national educational program, similar to the GI bill that would cover tuition fees and other expenses, such as books.

To fulfill her commitment to a life of her own, women also needed to be involved in politics. In this arena, women could speak out for needs such as maternity leave and child care.

The wasted energy of women is destructive to themselves and to their husbands and children. Who knows, Friedan wonders, what women can be if they are allowed to be their full selves?