For my reading today of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), I read “The Forfeited Self.” On the basis of studies, Ms. Friedan argues in this chapter that confident women enjoy greater sexual fulfillment than women who are passive, and also that college-educated women have a lower rate of divorce and a higher rate of marital adjustment than non-college-educated women.
One question I’ve had while reading Ms. Friedan’s book is if this whole issue of the self-fulfillment of women is a modern Western phenomenon. In (say) Bible times, were women concerned about whether or not they were fulfilling their potential and finding avenues for their intellect and creativity? How about in non-Western parts of the world today? In these cultural environments, only the elite can fulfill itself intellectually, for only a limited number of people can read or write, plus many are stuck in a menial role, with little hope for advancement. (On the reading and writing issue, there are scholars who maintain that literacy was widespread in biblical and rabbinic days, and also scholars who disagree.) Ms. Friedan talks as if women need to be fulfilled, otherwise disaster results; but has disaster resulted in these sorts of cultural environments, where women serve their families and perform a role that feminists would consider subordinate? Or does women’s preoccupation with “self-fulfillment” only occur in the West? Ms. Friedan actually addresses this sort of point in her book, for she states that, once people no longer had to worry about where their next meal would come from, they had spare time, and they needed to fill that time and satisfy their intellectual and creative impulses. And that was true with women as it was with men.
On page 322, Ms. Friedan addresses another point that’s been swimming around in my mind: The identity crisis, which has been noted by Erik Erikson and others in recent years in the American man, seems to occur for lack of, and be cured by finding, the work, or cause, or purpose that evokes his own creativity. Some never find it, for it does not come from busy-work or punching a time clock. It does not come from just making a living, working by formula, finding a secure spot as an organization man. The very argument, by Riesman and others, that man no longer finds identity in the work defined as a paycheck job, assumes that identity for man comes through creative work of his own that contributes to the human community: the core of his self becomes aware, becomes real, and grows through work that carries forward human society.
In The Power of a Positive Woman, Phyllis Schlafly says to women who are dissatisfied as homemakers that the grass is not always greener on the other side of a fence, for a job can bring its own set of difficulties: a mean boss, menial work, etc. What I get from Mrs. Schlafly is this: A woman can be unfulfilled at work, just as she can at home, so telling women that they’ll be fulfilled by working outside of the home is not necessarily correct. But Ms. Friedan argues that being a full-time homemaker is dull, whereas women who balance a career with their families find fulfillment. Is this true of a woman who works at a factory and does the same tasks over and over again, day after day? Does working outside of the home necessarily equal personal fulfillment?
From her statement on page 322 of The Feminine Mystique, my hunch is that Ms. Friedan would say “no.” For her, it’s not a job that brings fulfillment, but work that is challenging and provides opportunities for creativity. Ms. Friedan’s point throughout her book is that women should be able to pursue their dreams, and college is a way for them to learn what they want to do and how to do it.
I enjoyed a paragraph on page 323, in which Ms. Friedan essentially argues that egalitarianism between the sexes is a traditional American idea:
Until, and even into, the last century, strong, capable women were needed to pioneer our new land; with their husbands, they ran the farms and plantations and Western homesteads. These women were respected and self-respecting members of a society whose pioneering purpose centered in the home. Strength and independence, responsibility and self-confidence, self-discipline and courage, freedom and equality were part of the American character for both men and women, in all the first generations. The women who came by steerage from Ireland, Italy, Russia, and Poland worked beside their husbands in the sweatshops and the laundries, learned the new language, and saved to send their sons and daughters to college. Women were never quite as “feminine,” or held in as much contempt, in America as they were in Europe. American women seemed to European travelers, long before our time, less passive, childlike, and feminine than their own wives in France or Germany or England. By an accident of history, American women shared in the work of society longer, and grew with the men. Grade- and high-school education for boys and girls alike was almost always the rule; and in the West, where women shared the pioneering work the longest, even the universities were coeducational from the beginning.
Indeed, Ms. Friedan loves to point out the relationship between America’s pioneer spirit and equality between the sexes, for she says on page 85: Feminism also went west with the wagon trains, where the frontier made women almost equal from the beginning. (Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote.) So my red-state juices should lead me to support feminism!
I want to revisit my point in my second paragraph: Maybe women in Bible-days and in the Third World actually find a sense of fulfillment, and it’s not just because they lack gobs of time in which they can contemplate how unfulfilled they are! Maybe their poverty puts them in a situation where they have to share responsibilities with the man, much like the women of the frontier and the sweatshop. That’s not to say that their poverty is a blessing, however, for they experience a lot of pain as well: death of their children, disease, etc.