Women In The 1950's: Article Analysis

Despite women in the early 1900’s taking a stand for their rights and fighting to be separated from men, women of the fifties seem to have taken a step back into a ,once again, planned out map of how their life should be . While the older generation of women thought painfully back to having to give up their dreams and aspirations, women of the younger generation did not even think of having any, simply going with the flow of society (476). In an excerpt from the book “The Feminine Mystique”, Betty Friedan defines “the problem that has no name” as the unhappiness of women in the 1950’s. The “problem that has no name” is identified as the dissatisfaction that upper class married women have with their lives as well as the longing for something more grand than their household duties. Friedan blames the media of that time for this growing …show more content…
During the 1950’s, if a women was employed it was only so she could pass the time until she found a man to marry, then her real role in society started. The image of being the beautiful, multitasking housewife became the social norm and women drove themselves insane with trying to accomplish the luxury life style. But women could not ignore the feeling that even though they were living the “perfect” lifestyle defined by society they still were missing something in life, and more so many other married women had the same feeling.
Friedan ultimately concludes that it is not too much education, loss of femininity or the demands of the domestic housewife that is causing “the problem that has no name”, but more the uprising of millions of women who are tired of pretending to be happy with a life that is more or less forced upon them by a society that sees them as no more than a pair of hands to be used to ensure the happiness of everyone around them but