The Feminine Mystique

Further praise for The Feminine
Mystique
“Written with a passionate drive…it will leave you with some haunting facts as well as a few hair-raising stories. That The
Feminine Mystique is at the same time a scholarly work, appropriate for serious study, only adds to its usefulness.”
—Lillian Smith, Saturday Review
“A highly readable, provocative book.”
—Lucy Freeman, New York Times Book Review
“The most important book of the twentieth century is The Feminine
Mystique. Betty Friedan is to women what Martin Luther King, Jr.,
was to blacks.”
—Barbara Seaman, author of Free and Female
“The Feminine Mystique stated the trouble with women so clearly that every woman could recognize herself in the diagnosis. Things are different between men and women because we now have words for the trouble. Betty gave them to us.”
—Caroline Bird, author of Lives of Our Own

The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan

The Feminine Mystique
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
New York London

Copyright © 1997, 1991, 1974, 1963 by Betty Friedan
Introduction by Anna Quindlen copyright © 2001 by Anna Quindlen
First published as a Norton paperback All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, WW. Norton & Company, Inc, 500 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Friedan, Betty.
The feminine mystique/by Betty Friedan with anew introduction.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-393-33932-1 1. Feminism—United States. 2. Women—United States—Social conditions. 3.
Women—Psychology. I. Title.
HQ1426.F844 1997 DC 97–8877
CIP
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WT 3QT

For all the new women,
and the new men

Contents
Introduction by Anna Quindlen
Metamorphosis: Two Generations Later
Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary
Edition
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 The Problem That Has No Name The Happy Housewife Heroine The Crisis in Woman’s Identity The Passionate Journey The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud The Functional Freeze, the Feminine
Protest, and Margaret Mead The Sex-Directed Educators The Mistaken Choice The Sexual Sell Housewifery Expands to Fill the Time

Available The Sex-Seekers
12 Progressive Dehumanization The
Comfortable Concentration Camp The Forfeited Self A New Life Plan for Women
Epilogue
Notes
Reading Group Guide