Feminine Mystique

To my elders,

My favourite time period of literature is the post war era. 1945-1965. ish. I don’t claim that the actual stories or writing is better than other time periods, and really, it probabaly very definitely isn’t better, but its more interesting. Because the post-war era was Weird. Completely so.

The 1950s is the standard by which our society judges normalcy. But I have no idea why. It had the youngest average age of marriage in the entire century (18 years old). It had the lowest divorce rates (I don’t know the percentage, and I could make something up, but I’m just going to stick with ‘lowest’ and you can just take my word for it). There was no longer a peasantry in North America. People, regular, average people, owned property and had a decent standard of living. It was the Rise of the Middle Class. Everything went Right for close to two decades. Well, ‘Right’ might be a bit too far.

When I say the post war, 1950s era was Weird, I didn’t just mean it was statistically aberrant (because things like divorce rates are surprisingly stable over the centuries, a little bit higher, a little bit lower, but the 1950s was like, The Lowest). It was a strange time, socially. I’m not entirely sure if Conformity was every really a concern for the people who lived before the wars, and I’m not so sure on whether anyone nowadays cares about conformity before then either. But the 1950s had extreme conformity, and now that’s mostly what people care about. And that is exactly why I like 1950s literature. Because it reflected something very different than Leave It to Beaver.

I do mean the obvious, On The Road, Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, Catch-22, Howl, literature, but I also mean Peyton Place (scandalous at the time for featuring an inter-racial couple and an abortion, and somehow this overshadowed the incest and child abuse?) and The Feminine Mystique. And about a million others. But The Feminine Mystique is actually how this post related to E’s. I imagine a lot of people have heard of it and not many have read (or finished reading) it. It is not a novel. It is (loosely) a sociological study.

Betty Friedman was a depressed 1950s housewife. A cliche today, but simply not talked about at the time. So she interviewed people. Women. A found out that most of them were unhappy. The Unnamed. The Unnamed cause of unhappiness.

The problem was, of course, that women were, basically, bored. Why though? Because they were supposed to be happy with vacuuming and laundry and making Wonderbread sandwiches. And they weren’t. Not being allowed to be interested in things, not being allowed to have interests and passions and ambition, well, is depressing. Imagine being in university (to “get you MRS” as my mom jokes, aka find a husband) and being smart and good at things and passionate about things, and knowing, knowing, that it can’t go anywhere. That there is no point. Because you will get married and make sandwiches for the rest of your life and that is all you’re allowed to be. It would be horrible.

So E is right. Love things. Love people and friendships and stuff and things that interst you and excite you and that you are passionate about. Even if it seems silly. Its not.

-K

ps sorry for posting late. I was at Hillside. Next post.