Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique - Research Paper Example

The socio-political environment prevailing in the United States of America was systematically making the women feel contented with their household duties, thereby giving way to an unnoticed and unrecognized sense of discontent, apathy and unhappiness. Thereby, Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique is indeed credited with bringing to fore this unrecognized marginalization of women (Horowitz 36). Hence, The Feminine Mystique indeed happened to be a work that revitalized the Women’s Liberation Movement.

The book, The Feminine Mystique was the outcome of the conclusions drawn by Betty Friedan, when she attended her college’s fifteen year reunion. In a survey conducted by Betty Friedan in this reunion, she realized that a majority of her classmates were abjectly dismayed and unsatisfied with the role of an idealized American housewife, heaped on them by the dominant social, cultural and gender expectations. Actually it was this survey that made Betty Friedan recognizes the fact that a post War social environment was positively nudging women to adapt to the roles of mothers and housewives.

Motivated by this conclusion, the subsequent research conducted by Betty Friedan confirmed her worst fears regarding the state of women in the post War America. Immediately after its publication, The Feminine Mystique turned out to be a number one bestseller, as it happened to be an ideological work that tried to recognize, unravel and define an array of issues faced by the women in the post War world, which hitherto remained ignored, sidelined and neglected (Scanlon 94). This book brought to fore the fact that confining women to the roles of mothers and housewives not only made them lead an unsatisfied and frustrated life, but this trend also had larger implications for the American society.

In that context, The Feminine Mystique was a groundbreaking work in the sense