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Feminine Mystique Summary

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In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan discusses the “problem that has no name.” For years, there was a “strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States” (Friedan, 11). This feeling felt by so many was the result of an idealized image of the suburban housewife. An image presented to women, especially in the middle class, as their only real option. Friedan examines this “problem that has no name” through the first-person narratives of several women who experienced it. Their recollections of feeling desperate and dissatisfied, not knowing who they were, being tired all the time, etc. are important because they illustrate the widespread depression

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