The Undying Connection

Out of the four readings due for class, I was espescially struck by Betty Friedan's excerpt from the "The Feminine Mystique". I found her excerpt to be not only interesting, but also informative of women's societal roles and occupations. I found it particulary interesting that women had fought to go to college, but after a few years had started going to college to meet their husbands instead of focus on an education. The movie, The Mona Lisa Smile, stars Julia Roberts as a professor in the 1950's working at Wellesley, the college for girls. This film deals with the same issue Friedan addresses by having Roberts get into a conflict with her most promising student when she tells the professor she is dropping out of school to get married. This movie shows a good example of not only the lifestyle women had in the 50's but also of the issues women were faced with in regards to education. What was interesting with Friedan's discussion of women's education was that it seemed to show a regression of feminine power. Women had fought for the right to attend college, but once they had recieved it, starting slipping into a societal norm of the housewife image.
Friedan continued on to talk about how women started to drop out of school, and many fulfilled the "dream" of being the perfect housewife. I consider this a regression because instead of women pursuing their own desires, they became caught in this web of social expectations. Friedan writes, "their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands" (p.273). Yet, even this did not come without problems. Many women became severly depressed with living a housewife lifestyle, most wished for something more. Friedan describes how women had jobs not to make a career for themselves, but to help the family out. Women no longer focused on themselves, but only focused on how to better the lives of their husbands or family. It became known as the "American housewife problem". What surprised me about this however, was that this problem seemed to manifest itself so quickly. I was confused as to why all of a sudden women decided to leave school and this obsession with home life began. I was also confused as to why if the problem was so vast, it was not even talked about.
Reading Friedan I found that she gave a lot of information about the problem and the events leading up to it; but I noticed how she never gave an answer to why the problem existed. She discussed women's desire to please their husbands, but she never really dove into the relationship between men and women. However, I think that Simone de Beauvoir addressed part of the reason for this problem when she discussed women's bond to men. Simone de Beauvoir spent a longer time focusing on the relationship between women and men. She writes about how women consider themselves to be a relative of man and not an "autonomous being" (p.255). Therefore, she is saying that women think they are related to men, but not inherently equal to them. She also goes on to say that "man can think of himself without women. She cannot think of herself without man" (p. 255). Beauvoir points out that women, for whatever reason, cannot picture life without men, and therefore have some dependence on them. I then think that is why women have this problem with sexism and the "American housewife problem". It is because women are somehow programmed to see men in their life no matter what. Genetically we need men to carry on the human race. In the past when a woman was pregnant, she would need someone to help her prepare dinner or obtain food, which would usually rely on her partner, most times the man. Even now, people dread the idea of never being able to find "Mr. Right". Women are scared to grow old without having a male companion. I think that this fear inhibits women to speak out against sexism and fight for their individuality. Beauvoir also makes an interesting point that "woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppresors is not comporable to any other" (p.258). In the past other forms of oppression have been between two groups of people that do not naturally rely on eachother to exist. The Jews did not rely on Hitler in order to reproduce or carry on living, the slaves had independent lives before coloniazsers took over; yet women have always needed men to live. Women and men have always lived together and have always had relations with each other. Therefore, I think that this dependence women have towards men causes them to be less likely to fight this oppression and also makes fighting this "problem" and the problems we all face in our modern lives a lot more difficult because of the natural connection between the sexes.