The Feminine Mystique and the Fifties

Stride Toward Freedom was a 'page turner,' and I easily finished it. But I decided that Chrétien de Troyes and Henri Troyat were heavy going, or at least not cheerful enough for my purpose. So both of those books are in the shelf again. Instead I am reading the prefatory notes — given my feelings about the philosopher (a poseur and a bore), I expect these notes to be more agreeable than the novel itself — to La Nouvelle Héloïse, Vol. I.

Besides Rousseau, I am launched on a heady look into the early days of Second Wave feminism, in the first years of the 1960s, through Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique. I somewhat wish that the relations between men and women as men, as women and as persons, were analyzed in another frame than that of ladies' magazine articles; Betty Friedan seems to have ransacked these with great dedication in order to amass sociological data. Secondly, much as she protests, I think class barriers are not overleapt in the way she handles feminism in her book. Also, in setting up women as victims with a generous sweepingness, I think she ignores the lived reality in households where people honestly didn't care to strictly observe gender roles, and cases where intellectual laziness rather than conscious oppression seems to me to be the main culprit.

It may be the reflection of my introverted character, however, that I deny the necessity of a few of her problems and of her solutions. If I think that a practice or a fashionable approach to human relationships is nonsense, I mostly don't do it. It makes me fit in less; but then I have control over what I do and think. It prevents the situation where many people do a thing that, as it turns out, none of them really liked or found helpful. Translated into the world in the Feminine Mystique: If women don't want to wear make-up, they shouldn't; if they don't need a boyfriend, they shouldn't have to pretend that they do; if they have 'masculine' interests rather than 'feminine' ones, or both, they shouldn't feel ashamed to indulge them. Also, anyone who encourages a young woman to leave college to marry unless this is a mature and spontaneous decision, should be roundly scolded and then ignored.

[Needless to say, a passive-resistance approach to societal developments stood me in good stead in school: one fashion after another passed me by, and with each one I had more interests in common with everybody else, which did wonders for my social life. I recommend this approach for practicality and its gregarious dividends.]

Irony aside — What I find undoubtedly convincing is Friedan's portrait of a changing American society after World War II. Women who had been in the labour force while men were scarce, have been returned home to make way for the men again. (It was also a British phenomenon. While I was researching the 1950s, I watched the beginning of a film with Sarah Churchill — related to that Churchill — where a newspaperwoman relinquishes her job for the journalist who has returned from the wars, in a seaside town/village in Britain.)

I wonder if the experiences of being forced apart for many years during World War II — men abroad or at a distance within the United States, women staying behind — gave rise to a feeling that more 'togetherness' within families was a deeply needed change. What Friedan does is to fear that breastfeeding, mothers raising their own children and staying at home to do so, etc., will create problems for their 'over-tended' children — as well as breeding the deleterious effect on the mothers.

Last spring I did an experiment where I 'lived in the 1950s' [minus the colonialism, the Klan, the Cold War, etc.] for a week. I remember it quite fondly now, because doing housework kept me fairly fit*, making a point of visiting grocery shops and the Turkish street market nearby made me interact more with people, going to libraries made me explore public places I'd rarely visited before, the food was ample and good, I missed the internet less than expected, practicing the piano and listening to records was barely a departure from my usual routine, the radio was less boring than I remembered, mending socks rather than throwing them out and replacing them was ethically sound, watching television was as fun as ever, and all sorts of interesting books were written, scientific facts explored, and ideas thought during or before the 50s. (Thomas Mann's Mario und der Zauberer was an ordeal, but anyway . . .) Besides, in October or November I did an experiment, scheduled around my working hours, based on daily life in Britain in the 1940s — mostly, really, on rationing — and that was appalling. The 1950s came off very well by contrast.

But, in spite of the housework, I did 'live in the 1950s' ambivalently as far as gender was concerned. I hardly know whether women were always expected to have time to play the piano and inform themselves, and were always free from competing claims on their time like child care.

It's a bit fatuous for me to insert myself into the question like this, though. Life in a few essential ways was not the same in the 1950s as it is now, and I can't properly claim any experience or knowledge of it.

I had more Thoughts, of course, but for now I want to close off this blog post!

*As well as making my feet sore and desiccating my hands.