In “Rethinking Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” Daniel Horowitz sets out to reshape our understanding of both Friedan’s past and her reasons for writing The Feminine Mystique (1963) by bringing to light a new way of looking at a time in Friedan’s life that is absent from the book. What Horowitz also finds in the process of rewriting Friedan’s history is a new way of viewing the second wave of feminism.

As someone who has read portions of Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Horowitz’s detailed analysis of Friedan’s life before writing this book is extremely eye opening and enlightening. He truly sets out to expose a side of Friedan’s life that is absent from the book. Her life prior to the book involved her time as a radical in the 1940s and 1950s, working as a labor journalist. Without the detailed context of Friedan’s life, The Feminine Mystique can appear to paint Friedan as a privileged suburban and middle class housewife who is out of touch with the realities of women who fall outside of this category, but Horowitz attempts to shatter this image of Friedan, instead showing her as a woman who spent years as a radical fighting on the side of working class women, women of color, and even for the rights of men.

One of the points that Horowitz attempts to get across to the reader in the paper is that Friedan’s life early on, beginning after she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Smith College, provided the foundation for what would eventually become The Feminine Mystique. Horowitz sees this time as part of the process for her reasoning behind writing the book. The idea of the feminine mystique is that a woman has a natural place in society to be at home, submissive to men, and to be mothers. Women felt a need to conform to this ideal. Although, when many women did not conform, they felt depressed, which stemmed from unfulfillment with their situation. Horowitz describes Friedan as feeling as if she needed to conform years before she ever wrote the book or lived in suburbia. Right out of college, she was offered a fellowship, yet she turned it down because a boyfriend at the time threatened to leave her if she were to take the fellowship. She ended up turning it down (p. 4). Horowitz describes various moments in Friedan’s life where she herself felt trapped in the feminine mystique, feeling torn between her career, husband, and motherhood. By describing Friedan’s life during these years post-graduation, he shines a new light on Friedan’s writing the book.

Horowitz wants the reader to understand that Friedan’s connection to feminism did not begin while she was living in suburbia, but that her life prior to writing The Feminine Mystique involved her time working as a journalist and covering various stories that involved discrimination against women. Shortly after becoming pregnant with her second child, Friedan, according to Horowitz, made efforts to start a protest, saying of this time that it was “the first personal stirring of my own feminism” (p. 6). Horowitz also explains how her time at Smith College may have instilled within her an idea that she could do it all, even as a woman (p.12). Horowitz continues to explain a side of Friedan that portrays her as an activist who wrote about women’s issues years before The Feminine Mystique was published. According to Horowitz, “she paid special attention to stories about protecting the jobs and improving the situation of working women, including married ones with children” (p.12).

Horowitz also uncovers a new way of looking at the second way of feminism. Friedan has been credited with starting the second wave of feminism with her book The Feminine Mystique. The second wave has been described by scholars as beginning in the 1960s. Horowitz describes the origins of the second wave as beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, both times when feminism and feminist activism were thought to be rather silent. He describes Friedan’s role as a radical in college, as well as her job as a labor journalist working with unions as a starting point to the second wave. His claims are rather groundbreaking as well, because the second wave when tied to the 1960s has been criticized as lacking diversity and focusing mostly on white, middle class women. Horowitz’s claim that the second wave began sooner would provide a new, more inclusive history for the second wave.

Horowitz’s “Rethinking Betty Friedman […]” illuminates a time in Betty Friedman’s life that has been looked over by many historians. By bringing to light her past in reference to her 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” he has created new life around the origins of the second wave, created a new reading of the book, and also a new way of looking at Friedman, who has been viewed as lacking an understanding of working class women and women of color.

Questions:

Why do you think Betty Friedman left out so much of her past when writing The Feminist Mystique?

How do you feel about the way Horowitz portrayed Friedman?

Why do think other scholars have stayed away from portraying Friedman in the same light that Horowitz has in this paper?

-Pamela Kelly