A Strange Stirring
The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A brilliant examination of how Betty Friedan’s revolutionary book The Feminine Mystique liberated women in the 1960s—and what it means to women today.
“An illuminating analysis of the book that helped launch the movement that freed women to participate more fully in American society.” —Wall Street Journal
In 1963, Betty Friedan unleashed a storm of controversy with her bestselling book, The Feminine Mystique. In A Strange Stirring, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz takes us back to the early 1960s—when women who wanted more out of life than housekeeping were labeled deviant, sexual hypocrisy and economic discrimination were rampant, and husbands controlled almost every aspect of family life.
Using extensive research and moving, personal interviews to examine what Friedan’s book meant to the women and men who read it then, Coontz shows how Friedan stirred thousands of women to realize that their depression and self-doubt reflected not a personal weakness but a political injustice. She also explores what is and is not relevant about Friedan’s message today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Social historian Coontz analyzes the impact of Betty Friedan's groundbreaking 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, on the generation of white, middle-class women electrified by Friedan's argument that beneath the surface contentment, most housewives harbored a deep well of insecurity, self-doubt, and unhappiness. The Feminine Mystique didn't call for women to bash men, pursue careers, or fight for legal and political rights, says Coontz; it simply urged women to pursue an education and prepare for a meaningful life after their children left home. Coontz contends that Friedan's great achievement was lifting so many women out of despair even if her book ignored the problems of working women, especially blacks, and tapped into concerns people were already mulling over. Friedan synthesized and made accessible scholarly research and personalized it with the stories of individual housewives. Friedan's self-representation as an apolitical suburban housewife, says Coontz, glossed over her 1930s and '40s leftist political activism so as not to be blacklisted or discredited because of prior associations. This perceptive, engrossing, albeit specialized book provides welcome context and background to a still controversial bestseller that changed how women viewed themselves.
