I get goosebumps just flipping through this book. I read it several years ago and was planning to hold on to it for the rest of my life; since joining bookcrossing, however, I've decided that such a monumental work should not sit on the shelf. I will therefore start a bookray with it, if there is enough interest.

Although this book was first published in 1963, it is still relevant. When a woman gets a jail sentence for not risking her life to save her boyfriend's toddler, when the government passes a bill making it a federal crime for a woman to accidentally harm a foetus that she doesn't know she is carrying, when the New York Times runs poorly-researched front page articles falsely declaring that "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood," or that "Many Young Women Now Say They'd Pick Family Over Career," the "mystique of feminine fulfillment" is alive and well (See Katha Pollitt, "Desperate Housewives of the Ivy League", The Nation, October 17, 2005 ).

I feel strongly that any working woman who fantasizes about being a housewife should read this book. As career-obsessed as I am, I also sometimes wish I didn't have to work. Men also fantasize about not working, but they're discouraged from attaching much importance to such thoughts.

This book reveals just how bad the "good old days" of the 1950's were, when women were expected to find personal fulfillment in vacuuming. Women who wanted more out of life were advised to seek professional help to cure their "penis envy." Full-time mothers, unfulfilled in their own lives, tried to live vicariously through their children and ended up being so overprotective that their children became neurotic. Rates of depression among women soared.

In today's socio-political climate, where many women feel the need to start every sentence with the phrase "I'm not a feminist but ...," it's nearly impossible to talk about the dangers of housewifery without being attacked. Housewives insist that since society is less sexist than it was in the 1950s, housewifery is now a healthy choice. I'm not going to tell anyone what to do with his or her life, but reading this book has convinced me that not pursuing a career is not a good choice. Humans need to challenge themselves in order to feel happy and fulfilled. Friedan says it best:

Women, as well as men, can only find their identity in work that uses their full capacities. A woman cannot find her identity through others -- her husband, her children. She cannot find it in the dull routine of housework. [...] A woman today who has no goal, no purpose, no ambition patterning her days into the future, making her stretch and grow beyond that small score of years in which her body can fill its biological function, is committing a kind of suicide.

And finally, here is a quote from the book that I find particularly inspiring:

But every girl who manages to stick it out through law school or medical school, who finishes her M.A. or Ph.D. and goes on to use it, helps others move on. Every woman who fights the remaining barriers to full equality which are masked by the feminine mystique makes it easier for the next woman.

International Bookray:

1. jubby (Sydney, Australia -- ship int.)
2. martinburo (Norfolk, UK -- ship int.)
3. literarylover (Florida, USA -- ship U.S. only)
4. thegoaliegirl (Ohio, USA -- U.S. preferred)
5. lolamarie (California, USA -- U.S./Canada preferred)
6. epazotl (Washington, USA)

Bookray instructions:
1. To sign up for this bookray, send me a private message (PM). The order of participants will be juggled according to geography, date of request and shipping preferences.
2. When it's your turn to read the book, you will receive a PM from the person before you on the list. Reply with your mailing address.
3. When you receive the book, make a journal entry to let everyone know that it has arrived safely. Since this is a big book, feel free to keep it up to two months if you need to.
4. When you finish reading, make another journal entry to record what you thought of the book.
5. Check the bookray order, and send a PM to the person after you on the list to request their postal address. Mail the book using the cheapest method available. (If the person doesn't respond within two weeks, PM me.)
6. If, when you're done with the book, you are the last person on the list, you may release the book into the wild, or start a new bookray or bookring with it.

The book is now on its way to jubby.

Received in the post today.

Thank you very much.

Firstly, let me apologise for the duration of my possession. This was not a light read!

Secondly, I have to apologise because I couldn't finish it - I just didn't possess the mental strength to follow Freidon on her literary journy.

So, sorry.

Having said that I am most appreciative of having this book loaned to me. I did find it a little difficult to read, and didn't always follow or agree with the author, but did come away with some interesting thoughts.

I particularly liked the chapters on Margaret Mead (wish she had put in about some of her frisky adventures!), Sigmund Freud and the female education.

I had never before heard anyone criticise Freud before.

And the education chapter demonstrates exactly what it was the prompted the push for 'girls education' in most Western Countries in the 1970s.

I really enjoyed those chapters.

I didn't really like the chapters about the 'problem with no name', etc. I felt that at best the societal issues was a product of simple economics. It is simply much cheaper to have an underclass of hard working and underpaid child carers, home makers and community workers. Otherwise known as the 'stay-at-home-Mum'.

But, it is good to have ones thoughts challenged and to (finally) read the works of famous thinkers.

Thank you Betty Freidan and Neriman.

The only really other time I had heard or read any reference to Freidon had been in Ercia Jong, and one can't base all their opinions on what you pick up in her writing!

RELEASE NOTES:

Posted off to martinburo.

Thanks jubby and neriman.
Certainly very interesting, even a well thought out book, but I also found it dated in a way that for instance books by Virginia Woolf are not. I think it's both a strength and a weakness of this book that it's so applicable to middle class white women in the early 60s, and I think I very directly owe a lot to BF: that there is a very direct relationship between this book and a general practitioner telling my mother a few years later that to overcome some ill defined complaints she needed to start doing something in addition to raising four children and housekeeping.

received this in the mail today... have one more book to read before this one. Thanks for sending it my way! Looking foward to reading it!

Sadly, I just couldn't get into this book. I just started a new job and come home exhausted, which could be a large factor in this. In the future, I'd like to try reading it again, when I have lots of time and see if my view changes.

To keep things moving, this went off to lolamarie yesterday. Hope you're able to get into it more than I did!

Received today. I will start this next.

I got about half way through this book. I enjoyed what I read. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to finish it right now. I would like to pick it up again sometime in the future.

On its way to epazotl...