Book Review of 'A Strange Stirring' by Stephanie Coontz

Stephanie Coontz's A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Basic Books, 2011) reminds readers how important Betty Friedan's classic feminist text was and is, examining perceived flaws of The Feminine Mystique without discounting the importance of feminism.

A Strange Stirring occasionally concludes too readily that Betty Friedan erred in her particular interpretation of events. However, Stephanie Coontz states unequivocally that it does not undermine The Feminine Mystique to explain that it was part of a building wave, as opposed to a revelation out of nowhere.

Anti-feminists and those who subscribe to the backlash story about The Feminine Mystique often report that Betty Friedan ripped women out of their homes, destroying the family and all that is sacred about motherhood. Of course, none of that is true. Neither Betty Friedan nor The Feminine Mystique was anti-marriage, and the feminist classic spent many pages analyzing why prevailing social theory of the 1940s and 1950s actually blamed mothers for all of children’s “problems,” including homosexuality, juvenile delinquency and autism.

As Stephanie Coontz illustrates in A Strange Stirring, Betty Friedan struck a chord with millions of women because they were already suffering from  - and recognizing - “the problem that has no name.” Voices in society were already talking about the mystique of the feminine-happy-mother-housewife-consumer before Betty Friedan named The Feminine Mystique.

"It in no way disparages Friedan’s accomplishments to point out that The Feminine Mystique was not ahead of its time. Books don’t become best sellers because they are ahead of their time. They become best sellers when they tap into concerns that people are already mulling over, pull together ideas and data that have not yet spread beyond specialists and experts, and bring these all together in a way that is easy to understand and explain to others." – A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, p. 145

A Strange Stirring is of interest to feminist theory students or the average reader. A short book – a much faster read than The Feminine Mystique itself  – this is no Cliffs Notes, but it nicely summarizes some of Betty Friedan’s arguments. Stephanie Coontz tries not to let Betty Friedan off the hook for her too-quick dismissal of counterarguments.

Occasionally, the analysis falters. One criticism of Betty Friedan is that she portrayed herself as just a housewife who stumbled upon the “problem that has no name” by accident, but really was a writer and career woman before The Feminine Mystique. Stephanie Coontz reiterates this, supposedly dispelling the “myth.”

Betty Friedan famously surveyed Smith college classmates for their 15-year reunion, pursued the questions raised, wrote a magazine article about what the women were experiencing and eventually turned her research into The Feminine Mystique. She had worked outside the home and written for many publications, but saying she “misrepresented herself” as a housewife is too easy, because she never claimed in The Feminine Mystique that she had never worked. To divide women into a working-vs.-housewives dichotomy misses the point. Betty Friedan had a foot in both worlds and understood many things about the “Occupation: Housewife” experience. 

Stephanie Coontz makes a stronger case that Betty Friedan was wrong to complain her book was not publicized enough. A Strange Stirring includes a publisher’s letter and a publicist’s notes that reveal early enthusiasm about the potential success of The Feminine Mystique.

Stephanie Coontz interviewed many women who read The Feminine Mystique in 1963, or the next year when the paperback version came out. Some interview subjects allowed her to examine the original copies they still owned. She writes about which pages were folded and which passages were underlined years ago. This gives A Strange Stirring a vivid, fresh feel, as it truly gets to the heart of why The Feminine Mystique was important.

Stephanie Coontz notes other interesting “remembrances” of The Feminine Mystique. Chief among them is the fact that those who “remember” the book encouraging women to leave their marriages and disparage men are “remembering” things that weren’t there. Some people who at first were sure they had read the book actually had never done so, but were grouping together all they had heard about it with the idea that they surely must have read it.

Interestingly, the most negative passages of The Feminine Mystique – for example, alarm at the spread of homosexuality in the U.S. - were barely noted by those page folding readers of the 1960s. Stephanie Coontz proves that what women and men responded to was Betty Friedan’s well laid out argument that society created a false image of femininity. Media, institutions and power structure all told women they “should” stay home to fulfill their true feminine role as mother and wife. Notably, housewives were consumers who would buy lots of products for the home and lots of women’s magazines that advertised those products.

Was The Feminine Mystique relevant only to upper middle class white women who were privileged to have both college educations and husbands who supported them so they “could” stay home instead of using those educations?

While acknowledging that The Feminine Mystique did not deal with the problems of working class women and the experience of African-American women as it differed from that of white women, Stephanie Coontz points out that Betty Friedan grappled with these issues in her years as a feminist leader. Working class women’s issues and women in poverty were very much a part of the initial task forces and early work of the National Organization for Women.

Stephanie Coontz suggests that rather than being irrelevant, Betty Friedan missed an opportunity to show that women could combine work outside the home with raising a family. Plenty of non-white, non-upper-middle class women were doing so. The chapter about the experience of black women pre-1960 is one of A Strange Stirring’s most insightful.

A Relevant Goal

A Strange Stirring is a captivating look at a significant 20th century work. It makes a reader wistful because the days are numbered for women who responded to The Feminine Mystique in 1963.

Stephanie Coontz reminds readers that Betty Friedan’s stated goal was to create a world in which women and men could work, live and love together in equal, meaningful partnership. A Strange Stirring does a great service in making 1960s feminism ever more accessible.