"It's Good to Blow Your Top": Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945-1965

Eva Moskowitz

Journal of Women's History, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 1996, pp. 66-98 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2010.0458

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"Irs Good to Blow Your Top":

Women's Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent,

1945-1965
Eva Moskowitz

Americans of the Cold War years are often remembered for their zealous commitment to domesticity. One prominent source identified with this cult of domesticity is women's magazines. As such, they became targets of feminist criticism. Beginning with The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan condemned women's magazines for their "happy housewife" images. She accused them of representing women as "gaily

women experienced pain, dissatisfaction, and self-loathing.1 Building

upon these complaints, radical feminists took direct action against the magazines. In the 1970s, for example, feminists occupied the offices of the
Ladies Home Journal.2

content in a world of bedroom, kitchen, sex, babies, and home," while

To this day, women's magazines of the Cold War era remain symbols of antifeminism.3 Scholarly and popular accounts portray them as containing grossly distorted images of womanhood. They criticize them for "depict[ing] happiness where there was frustration," portraying the "home" as a "haven," and "promulgating a happy-housewife syndrome," in the service of what popular writer Marcia Cohen described as the "all was peach nectar heaven" editorial standard.4 Whether women's magazines relentlessly filled their pages with images of happy women is an important question, not only because these images can tell us much about a powerful ideology directed primarily at white middle-class American women during the Cold War era, but also because they can shed light on the context out of which recent feminism emerged. In accounts of this emergence, Cold War women's magazines occupy a critical place. According to feminist historiography, women's magazines misrepresented women as fulfilled, thereby keeping them in the private world of home and bedroom, in contrast to feminists who presented women with the truth about their condition, encouraging them to free themselves from the bondage of domesticity. Students of women's history emphasize the role of Betty Friedan and feminists in the Civil Rights movement and the New Left in exposing the myth that domesticity fulfills. One historian describes these women as among those "finally willing to proverbial child who points out that the emperor had no clothes" first

say that the emperor had no clothes";5 another as those who "like the
1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. 3 (Fall)

realized "the discrepancy between myth and reality."6

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Tltis article reexamines the myths about womanhood that feminists sought to deconstruct and that Cold War era women's magazines promoted, by looking at the three with the largest circulation of the period 1945 to 1965: Ladies Home Journal, McCaIIs, and Cosmopolitan.7 My research suggests that these magazines did not merely promote "the happy housewife" image. Indeed, far from imagining the home as a haven, the women's magazines often rendered it as a deadly battlefield on which women lost their happiness, if not their minds. Images of unhappy, angry, and depressed women figure prominently in these magazines, and this is found to be particularly evident in marital relations. In monthly columns such as "Can This Marriage Be Saved?," "Making Marriage Work," and "Why Marriages Fail," the magazines
document women's discontent.

limitations of, 1960s and 1970s feminist rhetoric.

This discourse of discontent requires that we rethink the dichotomy between women's magazines as mythmakers and feminists as unveilers. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to theorize the distinctive contribution of recent feminist rhetoric, I would like to suggest that the conceptualization of feminism as a "eureka" moment against a background of the magazines' silence about women's unhappiness is inadequate. Instead, I propose that we recognize women's magazines' discursive contribution to this problem. I also suggest that the rhetorical continuities between women's magazines and recent feminism are worth examining, because the shared use of psychological discourse can help us understand not only the historical context for, but also some of the political

The Unhappy Housewife Month after month women's magazines reported the difficulties women encountered in realizing the satisfaction that marriage and motherhood supposedly guaranteed. Women, it turned out, did not effortlessly nor easily achieve the domestic ideal. Indeed, many found it exceedingly difficult to attain the happiness domesticity potentially afforded. Women's magazines not only documented this problem, but also sought to help women overcome it. They assumed this could be done by raising their readers' consciousness about the psychological satisfaction to be found in domesticity and inculcating therapeutic principles of psychological change.8 Even Marynia Farnham, coauthor of the infamous The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, explored women's difficulties achieving the domestic ideal. In the article, for example, "Women and Wives," she discussed the challenges domesticity posed for women, finding that women sometimes

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possessed strong negative feelings. Many suffered from "envy of her husband's supposedly exciting and stimulating life by contrast with her quiet, less apparently stimulating vivid existence."9 Others suffered from resentment. Women felt angry because they experienced "drudgery and the monotony of dirty dishes, difficult children and household routines while [their husbands] enjoy[ed] a glamorous life."10 Farnham found that women's dissatisfaction was a serious problem, and one that often stemmed from their inability to accept the gendered effects of the domestic ideal. Farnham thus promoted domesticity while she described the difficulties women had in fulfilling its prescriptions. She issued warnings about any departures from domesticity in the same breath as she warned society of the consequences of failing to deal with women's dissatisfactions with domesticity. Dorothy Thompson, another writer with a well-deserved antif eminist reputation, also grappled with the problems of domesticity. She found that women had deep reservations about their roles as wives and mothers. In "Occupation: Housewife," for example, Thompson focused on women's negative feelings about their occupation. She found that many women felt that "when I write it, I realize that here I am, a middle-aged woman with a university education and I've never made anything out of my life. I'm just a housewife."11 Women, she explained to her readers, often suffered from "an inferiority complex."12 According to Thompson, such a sense of
underachievement stemmed from women's failure to understand the

importance of housewifery and the psychological satisfaction it provided. She also maintained that the "real solution to this problem lies in your mental attitude."13 But as Thompson herself acknowledged, a
women to obtain.

good mental attitude toward domesticity appeared difficult for many

Drawing upon the work of pollsters and social scientists, the magazines provided statistical as well as qualitative pictures of the precarious psychological situation of the American housewife. As one magazine announced, it had made "a scientific study of the problem within recent years" and was in the process of "uncovering the hard, cold facts of what

woman's state of mind indicated that women were more unhappy than men. Their unhappiness apparently stemmed from their dissatisfaction
with their domestic roles:

causes happiness and unhappiness... ."u Investigations of the American

The explanation seems to be bound up with the responsibility of marriage and rearing a family. Women are inclined to think an of women think they lead a harder life than men; and they think their happiest years end sooner. Perhaps too, they think a housewife's life

undue share of these responsibilities falls on the wives; the majority

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EvaMoskowttz

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is duller; an earlier Journal survey found that the group of workers least likely to enjoy their jobs washousewives!15

Women's magazines also found that marriage contributed greatly to women's dissatisfaction. As one article reported, "from the testimony of more than a thousand married couples" and the "replies from the one hundred unhappiest wives," surveyors concluded that unhappy wives were dissatisfied with their marriages and, given the chance, would not views, the magazines kept readers up-to-date on the housewife's dissatisfactions.17

marry their husband again.16 Drawing upon surveys and in-depth interArticles on selected topics also indicate that women's magazines gave considerable attention to women's unhappiness. In articles such as "How

Down?," "I Can't Stand It Anymore," "Why Do Women Cry?," "How to Recognize Suicidal Depression," "Blues and How to Chase Them," and "How to Get Over Feeling Low," women's magazines normalized their common affliction among women. "Crying as Catharsis," for example, reminded readers that they were not alone in feeling frustrated and unhappy. As the author explained, "tears are a natural and universal release for many minor emotions. They siphon off the small frustrations that confront all of us every hour of every day. They are a way of protesting the things we can't do anything about." The article recommended crying as "a natural safety valve to dissolve away many of our tensions."19

Do You Beat the Blues?," "What Do You Do When Worries Get You

readers' feelings of discontent.18 They reported that unhappiness was a

Indeed, women's magazines featured a steady stream of articles about overwrought and depressed women. "How Emotions Cause Unnecessary Surgery," for example, told the gruesome story of a woman who had twenty-nine needless operations. It warned about "women whose husbands are too busy to notice them" who "may, in desperation use the operating table to regain their love"20 (Fig. 1). "Autoconditioning Can Make You a Happy Person" also took for granted a high level of dissatisfaction and depression among its readers. It recommended reading about autoconditioning "if, like most people you are searching for a way to live your daily life free from worry and depression."21 The article encouraged women to acknowledge their discontent by assuring them that it was quite sinking into discouragement, or feeling resentful, or lying awake at night in an agony of worry, fear, and perhaps self-disgust"22 (Figs. 2-3). Citing recent examples of how autoconditioning helped people with various
common and normal to feel bad: "Before we realize it, we find ourselves

Recognition of acute emotional tension was not uncommon for women's magazines.

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Figure 1. Danger Signal: When daily demands make you want to scream,
Breaking Point?" Cosmopolitan January, 1957.

"How much more can I take?" From "Have You Reached Your Emotional

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Eva Moskowttz

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forms of depression, including those with suicidal impulses, the article encouraged women to try this new method of feeling better. As proof of this technique's effectiveness, the article offered the following testimony: "High marks on the mood meter were achieved by those suffering from a variety of emotional problems." Some even achieved moods ranging from

no mere theory, but a proven, demonstrable technique. Try it and see how
1956.

Figure 2. The first truly scientific answer to unhappiness, autoconditioning is

quickly you can learn to face your problems with joy and courage. From "Autoconditioning Can Make You a Happy Person." Cosmopolitan January,

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Journal of Women's History

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"purposeful" to "joyful." To help housewives determine how they felt about their lives, the article included a special mood-reader scale (Fig. 4). Women's magazines, in fact, promoted a whole new genre of articles that involved housewives in interpreting their own states of mind. Every month the magazines administered inini-tests to help women evaluate how they felt about their Uves. All that was needed was a pencil (Figs. 5-7).

Figure 3. If, like most people, you are searching for a way to live your daily life free from worry and depression, this exclusive report on autoconditioning is the most important article you will ever read. From "Autoconditioning Can Make You a Happy Person." Cosmopolitan January, 1956.

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In "Ask Yourself: Is Your Life Satisfying?," for example, women could rate their level of satisfaction by answering a few simple questions such as, "Are you usually happy and contented?," "Does the future have real purpose (meaning) for you?," and "Do you look forward to each new
MOOD-METER

13 14 12

ECSTATIC TRIUMPHANT ELATED

13 JUBILANT

zero space on the Mood-Meter put a

1 1 DELIGHTED
IO JOYFUL 9 8 T 6 S GAY LIGHTHEAHTED HAPPY PLEASED ENCOURAGED

1. Coing both up and down from the check murk oppose each word winch describe the way you feel no. Check all the happy word; and all the unhappy
be of no value to you.

INSTItICTIONS

ones which are correct for your present

mood. Alv.av; be sincere when you check the list: otherwise, this instrument will
2. Now note the number which ap-

4 CHEERFUL 3 ALERT 2 PURPOSEFUL 1 DETERMINED

- 1

WORRIED

-2 ANXIOUS -3 LONELY -4 UPSET -3 -6 -T -9 FRUSTRATED DOWNCAST GLOOMY DOWNHEARTED

:j- Do the same for the number of the word farthest below O which you have checked, entering this number opposite the words "Lowest Minu- Number.'" If you checked no word below O, enter O bers. If both the word; have positive
here. 4. Now find the sum of these I o num-

enter O here.

that number in the space opposite the words "Top Plus Number" at the bottom of the Mood-Meter. If the highest word which you checked has a minus number,

above O which you have checked. Enter

pears at the left of the highen word

-8 DISILLUSIONED
-IO DISCOURAGED -11 -13 DISGUSTED DEPRESSED

numbers, the total will be positive. If both have negative numbers, the total will be negative. If one number is positive and llie other negative, the smaller number must be subtracted from the

-12 DESPAIRING -14 DESPERATE -13 MISERABLE TOP PLUS NURIBER LOWEST MINUS NO.

of that score.

larger one. and the difference mast take the sign of the larger. The answer is your mood-score. Put a circle (O) at the level

SUM - SCORE

Figure 4. From "Autoconditioning Can Make You a Happy Person." Cosmopolitan January, 1956.

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Journal of Women's History

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Ask Yourself: Is Your Life Satisfying? Health and temperament, job, friends and marriage all play a part in a full life. These questions will help you assess your achievement this past year. Omit the last five questions if you are single.
1. Are you usually happy and contented? 2. Do^> the future have real purpose (meaning) for yoti? 3. I your life free from any serious frustration ? 4. Do >ou loot forward to each new day? 5. Are you iu good physical health? 1. Do you plan ahead for greater work efficiency? 2. Are you more skilled at your job than la.it year? 3. Do you find increasing pleasure in your work? i. Are you proud of your job? S. Does its income cover your essential needs? 1. Are your social activities satisfying and rewarding? 2. Do you have more friends today than a year 3. Have you improved at least one social skill? t. Do you have someone in whom to confide? 5. Is your program of recreation balanced and
complete? a(to?

1. 2. 3. I. 5.

appointment?

Do you and your husband love each other? Arc you two free from financial strains? Has your husband been a good companion? Do you and he talk things over freely? Is your marriage free from any serious dis-

Ideally all questions should be answered "Yes." A score of less than t in any group suggests a real handicap in that area. Your "No'' answers can show you where to
seek improvement in 1950.

Journal June, 1954.

Figure 5. Psychological Mini Test: "Is Your Life Satisfying?" Ladies Home

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Eva Moskowttz

75

Are You a Restless Wife? wives feel frustrated by restrictions and a lack

After the ^rst few years of marriage, some

of challenge. Is this your attitude? Be absolutely honest in answering these questions yes
or no.

. tic ou:

2. IJored by \our household routine?

L. Restless, anil dissatisfied with life?

3. Lmions of the freedom men have?

4. Very fond of livel> exciting parties? 5. L iieertain of your love for your husband? 6. Thinking moreuhout tomorrow than today ?
T. Reluctant or hesitant about making
decisions?

Do you often feel that: 8. You are lonely and misunderstood?

9. Your husband is too settled?
IU. You have more men friends? than women

11. Most marriages are not very happy? 12. You may have married too soon? l.'J. Life is passing >ou by?

14. You may have married the wrong man?

With four or fewer "yes" answers, you seem no more restless than the aserage wife. The higher your "yes" score, the more serious your you are neither very happy in your marriage nor in most of your close relationships. Though your husband may be partly responsible, your

maladjustment. If your score is the or more,

can take a greater interest in your marriage and in your husband, you should seek professional help. To delay action is to court disaster.

trouble is probably within yourself. Unless you

Figure 6. Psychological Mini Test: "Are You a Restless Housewife?" Ladies Home Journal August, 1954.

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Journal of Women's History

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than from circumstances alone. Your happines depend- far more on yourself than on others
Answer these "iuestions \es or no in terms of wha

tude with which we face our environment rathe,

Do You Enjoy Life? Contentment comes from the spirit and atti

you think is true most of the time.

Do Yoit:

2. Often feel downcast and unuanted?

1. Sometimes fear that people don't like you? Think that you are unattractive? Feel uneasy with new acquaintances? Dread going to bedand getting up? Dislike your present living arrangements?

3. 4. 5. 6.

T. ^ orry excessively over small matters? 8. Usually wonder if jour clothes become you? 9. Find >our work dull and uninteresting? 10. Let others take advantage of \ou? 11. Have periods of feeling lonely and neglected?
12. Doubt that the future will be
brighter? times, Ii. At think that nohodv

13. Get upset and easilv discouraged? you?

loves

If your ''No" answers total ten or more, \ou happiness rating is as good as or better tfu that of the average woman between 20 and U If seven or fewer questions are answered "Nu you are not getting the most out of life. Ma riage will not solve vour problem until >ou lu\ changed vour attitude if you are single, nor u
divorce if vou are married.

Figure 7. Psychological Mini Test: "Do You Enjoy Life?" Ladies Home Journal April, 1953.

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day?"23 Women having more than a specified number of "no" answers on these "happiness tests" were urged to seek professional help. Such tests help of experts, within the confines of domesticity. The tension in women's magazines between their encouragement of readers to consider and express their unhappiness and their subscription to the ideals of domesticity is best illustrated in "It's Good to Blow Your Top" published in McCaWs in January, 1950. The article compared the situation of the American housewife to pressure-cooking: "When things are going smoothly, the steam is under controland the meat gets done to a turn. But when problems begin to pick up, the pressure rises to a dangerous level. Unless it is released in some unusual manner, the cooker may explode." The article called upon women not to "suffer in silence." It advised readers to deal with such pressures by expressing their tension, frustration, and anger. As with the mini-tests, this article urged women to acknowledge and express their discontent, but assumed it could be contained. The article explained that there were a variety of ways for women to discharge their discontent. Throwing old plates against the wall was one possibility: "When you are on the verge of a blow up, let fly" (Fig. 8). For the woman who found herself brooding about her husband and having such thoughts about him as what a "beast, ogre, bum he is," the unmaidenly language. Say every horrible thing you've ever wanted to say." Sports or cleaning could also help release tension and anger. "You can even beat the daylights out of your rugs or superpolish every table in
article recommended that she "write it downall of it. Go into detail. Use

assumed that whatever discontent was found could be contained, with the

These images of the American housewife as unhappy, frustrated, and angry presented in this and other articles reveal that women's magazines did not avoid the question of how women felt about their lives; rather they devoted considerable attention to the subject by focusing on the psychological tensions experienced by the housewife and her difficulties conforming to the domestic ideal. Applying the new standard of psychological happiness, the magazines found evidence of women's dissatisfaction. Of course, their purpose was to persuade women to overcome it. They assumed that women needed to be educated about the value of domesticity and helped with adjusting to its gendered effects. Women's magazines informed readers that their feelings of frustration, anger, and niques to help women achieve moods of joy and purposefulness. As feminists, however, have been quick to point out, the magazines did not promote feminist solutions to the problem of discontent. Indeed, some have argued that the magazines' solutions were antifeminist. Women's

your house," explained the article.24

sadness were normal.25 They also promoted a variety of therapeutic tech-

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Journal of Women's History

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Figure 8. From "If s Good To Blow Your Top." McCaWs January, 1950.

magazines of the postwar era have been read in most accounts as having ing or crying instead of protesting.26

functioned to depolitidze discontent; they have been condemned for suggesting that women deal with their dissatisfaction by autoconditionThere is, however, another way to understand this chapter in women's cultural history. By focusing public attention on the plight of the American housewife, turning her into a national social problem, these magazines contributed to a discourse of discontent. They documented on an unprecedented scale the difficulty women had in finding satisfaction in
that has no name." More radical feminists, a few years later, would name
combat it.

their homes and personal lives. In an admittedly oblique way, they pointed to a problem that Betty Friedan would later name, "the problem
this problem sexism and develop a comprehensive set of strategies to

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Marriage, Discontent, and Self-Fulfillment in Women's Magazines directly through their discussion of marriage. Both feature articles and marriage counseling columns focused on the tension women experienced in their personal lives. In such columns as "Can This Marriage Be Saved?," "Why Marriages Fail?," and "Making Marriage Work" readers learned in devastating detail the psychological effects of bad marriages. They also promoted a new set of expectations about marriage. Preaching the ideals of self-fulfillment and self-realization, they instructed readers to measure their marriages against psychological standards. While the magazines insisted that women had a right to be happy, they also insisted that women could adjust to the gendered effects of marriage. Women's magazines did not simply glorify marriage but instead created a complex and contradictory discourse that focused on discontent and self-fulfillment, celebrating the possibilities of adjustment to the domestic ideal. One important context in which the topic emerged were articles that sought to de-romanticize marriage by emphasizing that happiness within marriage was neither easily nor effortlessly attained. As one article warned, "we've all been sadly misled by fairy tales that ended 'and so they were married and lived happily ever after/ It simply is not true."28 The magazines often took the position that their readers glorified marriage and had to be told the truth about it. As this article explained, readers had to accept that "reality is the only basis for love" and that reality included "the anxieties, weaknesses, and miseries of life."29 Another bluntly proclaimed, presumed that women needed to possess a realistic understanding of the difficulties of achieving marital success. Warning against falling prey to superlatives, they sought to disabuse readers of their overly optimistic conceptions of marriage. Readers' expectations were deflated in a variety of ways. Sometimes statistics were invoked. One article reported, for example, that after extensive research scientists found that the chances of a happy marriage were "roughly one
Women's magazines articulated a discourse of discontent most

about women's narrow escapes from marital dissolution.27 They described

Marriage guarantees nothing except experience."30 Indeed, the magazines

"marriage does not guarantee security, being cared for, or being loved.

in twenty."31 At other times the magazines simply repeated their mantra best women could hope for was "a perfect state of give and take."32 It
seems that even this state of "give and take" was achieved with difficulty. For many women, it appeared, the "give and take" of marriage became a situation in which men did all the taking. about marriage: "there is just no such thing" as perfection in marriage; the

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Journal of Women's History

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Figure 9. From "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" Ladies Home Journal October,
1953.

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ate in working for the success of their marriage, the American Institute of Family Rela-

"When a couple want to co-oper-

tions is able to show them how

to do this satisfactorily in more

than 80 per cent of the cases;

and, indeed, is often able to

straighten out the difficulties of the marriage by seeing only one partner. Over the past 23 years, since the founding of
Dr. Paul Popenoe

happily adjusted marriage. We strongly advocate premarital counseling as the basis for insuring happy
this case was Dr. Fenna B. Simms."

able to help 20,000 people to

this institute, we have been

marriage without crises later on. The institute staff now includes 37 counselors; the one responsible for
Paul Popenoe, Director

Figure 10. Paul Popenoe, Director of the Institute of Family Relations and

Author of "Can This Marriage Be Saved?".

The marriage counseling sections of women's magazines provided the most detailed glimpse of women's dissatisfactions with marriage. Through such columns as "Can this Marriage Be Saved?," "Making Marriage Work," and "Why Marriages Fail?," women's magazines investigated the friction of domestic life. Indeed, they represented, sometimes in gruesome detail, the explosive strife men and women experienced in their daily interactions. Far from obscuring women's tortuous relationship to domesticity and denying their right to achieve satisfaction, women's magazines and the experts who wrote for them brought the issue of women's marital unhappiness into sharp focus. Marriage counseling columns of the postwar period normalized marital conflict by writing about it as an almost universal social problem. Marriage counselor Clifford R. Adams in his column, "Making Marriage Work," for example, explained that "Alice Rand is an unhappy woman

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Journal of Women's History

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and she and her husband have a thoroughly unhappy marriage." But he assured readers, "Alice is not unique."33 Marriage counselor David Mace went further: after recounting an example of what he called "a spiralingdown marriage interaction pattern," he informed his readers that "similar conversations go on day after day in thousands of homes."34 Others explained that marital difficulties were the "daily dilemma of millions of married couples in the modern world."35 These difficulties were generally related to domesticity and its conexample, Mace told the story of Thelma who was very unhappy and harbored strong feelings of resentment against her husband Joe. But she felt that anyone looking at her situation would not understand: "As the world sees him, he's a steady, hard-working, up-and-coming young executive in a safe job with good prospects. . . . [but to me] he's just a big disappointment. I feel thwarted. I get mad at Joe. Not a fighting madjust a dull, growing anger. Yet its hard to justify this. As I said, he doesn't beat me up or run around or come home drunk." Even her friends could not understand Thelma's feelings of desperation: "My girl friends say I should feel fortunate to have such a husbandso steady and dependable, so hard-working. When they say that, I get even madder still. I say to myself, 'If only you could know how I feel inside!' " Thelma went on to explain that " 'if s a shut-in kind of feeling.... I feel trapped, and somehow Joe is to blame/ " Thelma described herself as plagued by vague feelings of dissatisfaction, frustration, and anger. She remained unable to name feelings that Betty Friedan would call "the problem that has no name" about 5 years later.36 Though the marriage counselor sought to solve Thelma's and Joe's problem by promoting communication and understanding, most of which must be done by Thelma, he did not avoid the question of the source of Thelma's trouble. His exploration of her feelings led to the discovery that her marriage entailed sacrifice. Apparently, her resentment and unhappiness stemmed from her having to give up activities that gave her an independent sense of identity and accomplishment. As Thelma explained, "I had a lot of dreams before I got married___I was in college. I was keen was my music.... Getting married squelched all that. I didn't even graduate. I quit college to marry Joe."37 Although Mace documented Thelma's dissatisfaction with an impressive attention to detail, drawing out the myriad manifestations of her unhappiness, he cursorily summed up the solution to the problem: "understanding." Once Thelma recognized that all Joe did was actually for her, the counselor had solved the problem.
on literature. I wanted to write. I even started a novel. And, of course, there comitant strict division of sex roles. In "Is My Marriage a Mistake?," for

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Figure 11. From "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" Ladies Home Journal January,
1953.

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Journal of Women's History

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Marriage problems analyzed by women's magazines frequently stemmed from women's dissatisfaction with the gendered effects of the

Applauded? Or is He a Rival to Be Beaten?," for example, the case involved the marriage of a woman named Marcia who was always competing with her husband Phil. Although the counselor granted that there was nothing wrong with Marcia's desire to excel, the problem occurred when Marcia tried to excel in those areas that Phil and the marriage
counselor considered Phil's own area of achievement:

domestic ideal. In "Is Your Husband a Partner to Be Encouraged and

which every human being needs. . . . But Marcia tries to beat her
own... .

Granted, there's nothing unwholesome in Marcia's seeking to excel at some things, for recognized skills help to win the social approval

husband at his own game, while neglecting to develop skills of her

Marcia's behavior, the counselor informed his readers, stemmed from her

unhappiness. She felt a "deep sense of inferiority." He went on to explain that "secretly, she feels inadequate; in trying to outdo Phil, she is unconsciously seeking proof of her own worth." While Marcia's unhappiness leads her to challenge one of the central tenets of domestic ideology, the strict division of sex roles, and brings her marriage to the brink of disaster, the counselor recommended that Marcia "cultivate self-respect, not by competing with Phil but by pursuing her own talents and skills independently. Perfecting her needlework, becoming an expert gardenerthese Thus, while marriage counseling columns publicized the psychological tensions experienced by women living under the domestic ideal, they did so with the aim of persuading women to conform to its standards. Successfully imposing domestic ideology on their female clients was clearly one of their main goals. But it would be incorrect to see this as the only goal of the marriage counseling columns. In addition to promoting domesticity, marriage counselors also promoted self-fulfillment as a woman's right.40 As counselor Reuben Hill explained, "Any woman has a right to feel unsatisfied if she isn't getting what she really needs from her marriage." Clifford Adams insisted that the "first step toward a welladjusted personality [and, therefore, marriage] is to face their needs, then make an honest effort to satisfy them."41 Marriage counselors claimed that "an essential ingredient of every truly satisfying human relationship" is "the development and realization of the individual's potentialities for explained some of the basic tenets of human potential psychology to their female readers. Adams, for example, listed the five essential needs for

are just a few of her opportunities to demonstrate her worth."39

growth, achievement, and well-being."42 Indeed, marriage counselors

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mental health and contentment: social approval, belongingness, mastery,

importance to you," and "then list the ways you are satisfying them." "If something is lacking," he explained, "see what you can do to correct the
situation."43

need for love and affection, and sexual satisfaction. He even recommended exercises for readers, who were instructed to list the needs "of

Marriage counselors also advised women constantly "to take stock of your marriage." Counselors advised readers not only to look for the flaws in their domestic relations but also to evaluate whether their marriage "had stopped growing."44 Mature women, they warned, did not shirk from such a responsibility. They confronted the marital relation head on, recognizing it for exactly what it was. With the help of marriage counselors and "constant attention to the quality of your marriage," readers were assured that happiness and success in marriage could be achieved.45 Thus, marriage counselors writing for women's magazines during the postwar period created a peculiar version of domestic discourse out of two, sometimes competing, goals: the promotion of conformity to domesticity and the ideal of self-fulfillment. The resulting discourse contained contradictions: it emphasized both the necessity and virtue of domesticity but revealed women's unhappiness under this regime; and it encouraged women to submit to the requirements of domesticity and yet to scrutinize their domestic relations and expect happiness and self-fulfillment. That the profession might not be able to contain these contradictions does not appear to have been recognized by the marriage counselors. They maintained a strong faith that the expression of women's discontent and better communication between couples would lead to submission by all women to the domestic ideal. They also believed that as marriage counselors they would receive the credit for being the architects of a new social order, free from the conflict between the sexes. Of course, they were wrong on both counts. Drawing upon the rhetoric of discontent, Betty Friedan and later, more radical feminists exhorted women to recognize that the cult of domesticity itself led to psychological unhappiness, denied women a separate identity, and categorized as pathological women who sought to escape the private realm. In doing so, feminists blamed the experts for being the architects of an oppressive social order. Naming the Problem Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is considered the first shot across the bow of domestic discourse of the Cold War period. As one scholar put it, she was the first to proclaim that "housework was intrinsically boring," that the home had become "a comfortable concentration

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Journal of Women's History

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Figure 12. From "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" Ladies Home Journal December,
1953.

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camp." Another explains that she "articulated heretofore unarticulated grievances." A third views the publication of Friedan's book as a sign that "someone was finally willing to say that the emperor had no clothes." These views mirror Friedan's own sense of the place of her work in the culture of her times. According to Friedan, although women were consumed by "a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning" that would not go away, "in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books, articles by experts, there was no word of this yearning."46 Friedan's investigation of women's lives and her conclusions about domesticity were clearly innovative. Injecting an unprecedented drama into the public discussion of women's roles, Friedan turned womanhood and domesticity into matters of intense public controversy. She identified a pathological tendency in American culture to deny women a sense of identity, offering a profound indictment of domestic ideology. Friedan urged women to reject "the ferninine mystique" which she believed prevented women from gratifying "their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings." She also insisted that only an entirely new understanding of themselves and their roles as women would enable women to develop "a new sense of identity" and to live with "the enjoyment, the sense of purpose that is characteristic of true human health." Thus, Friedan put her critique of domesticity directly in the service of women, ultimately leading to important changes in the political, cultural, intellectual, and economic landscape of America.47 But while Friedan's view of domesticity was innovative, her discussion of women's psychological condition was not as unprecedented as she or subsequent historians believed. Her view that "in the millions of words" written about women there was "no word" of the yearning and dissatisfaction women experienced was incorrect.48 In fact, like Friedan, the women's magazines used personal testimony from women across the country to document unhappiness. Similarly, her discovery of "a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we are trying to conform" was one women's magazines had been making for years. They, too, found that despite domesticity's promise of fulfillment, "the group of workers least likely to enjoy their jobs was housewives."49 Though Friedan claimed that this problem of dissatisfaction "lay buried, unspoken of" and that each woman "struggled with it women's magazines about such problems as "spiraling-down marriage interaction patterns" and depression. Indeed, there exists more discursive continuity between the women's magazines and Betty Friedan than has
alone," month after month millions of readers learned from their trusted

been acknowledged.

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One other indication of discursive continuity comes, surprisingly, from contemporary readers of women's magazines, who reacted strongly to a Betty Friedan article published in 1963 by McCaWs magazine. "Fraud of Fernininity" summarizes the arguments against domesticity found in her book published that same year. Feminist scholars today see it as one of the earliest departures from the "peach nectar heaven" editorial standard, in which attention is called to the false promises of domesticity in light of the reality of women's lives. McCaWs received hundreds of letters in response. It is interesting to note that many respondents reacted negatively.50 But far more important, and unexpected, given our concern with the sources for recent feminists' ideological commitments, is that they claim to be already familiar with Friedan's message, indeed of being tired

of hearing her message.51

ing a "negativistic attitude" toward domesticity in general and women's

Women readers accused Friedan and women's magazines of promot-

roles as housewives in particular.52 As one housewife and devoted women's magazine reader explained, I am "a proud and fulfilled wife, mother, daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, and friend; trying to live up to my purpose of being here on this earth; no small nor ignominious task, I can assure you. And I am sick, sick, sick of reading just this type of article,
tration."54

objected to the portrait of women as "empty, wasted, or filled with frus-

as I am sure many other happily married women are."53 Respondents

They saw the publication of Friedan's article as confirmation of a tendency of women's magazines to put down the housewife and domesticity. In the face of an emerging consensus, one housewife from Pennsylvania, expressed her intention to maintain an independent view: "I will not be a sheep following the rest of the herd because I have certain ideals and ideas. And although I was married at 19 and left college after 1 and a 1/2 years, no statistic can convince me that my life is empty and that my work is not 'serious' and important to society."55 Women wrote of being "sick and tired" or "so mad they could scream at" all the articles suggesting that women find their lives depressing or meaningless.56 They complained that they "have been reading articles similar to Mrs. Friedan's for

years and boil with rage" every time another appears.57 Another com-

plained that Friedan's article is "only one of many similar articles that are

little housewife who is trapped, frustrated, guilty, wasting her life, unappreciated, dependent, passive and whatever else she is called," readers insisted that they did not want experts to define their lives as a national problem.59 "The public barrage of vapid articles" that many saw as "designed to trigger a few insecurities in neurotic women and cause the

making me more and more disgusted."58 "Tired of hearing about the poor

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rest of us to doubt our own eyes" enraged many of them.60 They were "fed up with being studied and analyzed, praised and damned"61 and wished
Ironically, while Friedan saw herself in opposition to the experts who promoted the "feminine mystique," many housewives perceived her as yet another expert analyzing and complaining about the state of women's lives.63 They wanted Friedan and the magazines to "stop knocking the happy, contented, but obviously without knowing it, trapped housewife," some even insisted that they would cancel their subscriptions, if the magazines did not stop publishing "Friedan-type articles."65 Readers did not appear to make a distinction between Friedan's critique of domesticity and that of the magazines; instead, they found continuity. While readers overlooked some very real and substantial differences, they were not completely off the mark. Betty Friedan, like many of the antifeminist and afeminist writers for women's magazines that came before her, viewed women as unhappy, frustrated, and stifled. Both focused on the psychological effects of domesticity and emphasized the importance of self-fulfillment. But whereas women's magazines and the experts who wrote for them sought to help women be happy within the confines of domesticity, Friedan categorically rejected both. She did so, I suggest, not by uncovering "what lay buried and unspoken of," but by speaking in new ways about what had already been identified as a problem and taking what was a constant concern of women's magazines and putting it to new political uses. Friedan described domesticity and the effects of experts in pathological terms. She insisted that the psychological effects of domesticity were so damaging that only a wholesale rejection of it would save women from obliterating their sense of self. While Friedan firmly rejected the adjustment strategies promoted by women's magazines, her critique of domesticity and political demands relied heavily upon a psychological discourse that itself emphasized unhappiness and That psychological discourse was an essential aspect of Friedan's politics should not be surprising, given her educational background and the general enthusiasm for psychological and therapeutic thinking during the post-World War period. Friedan majored in psychology as an undergraduate at Smith College, spent summers studying with Kurt Lewin at the University of Iowa, studied as a graduate student with Erik Erikson at the University of California at Berkeley, underwent psychoanalysis in New York City where she explains "she began to focus on her rage," and worked for a while at the Westchester mental health facility. Friedan also
self-fulfillment.

were microbes in a test tube."62

"educated people would quit analyzing and studying us as though we

homemaker."64 Signing their letters with closures such as "from a very

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Fall

came of age at a time when American society placed special emphasis on personal problems and the psychological goal of fulfillment. During the postwar era, large-scale national organizations including the federal government, corporations, and institutions of mass culture gave unprecedented attention to the problems of psychological adjustment and discontent. This new focus on personal problems and psychological happiness, I suggest, profoundly affected both the domestic rhetoric promoted by women's magazines and the feminist rhetoric of the women's
movement.66

Friedan defined "the problem that has no name" in largely psychological terms. She identified the injustice done to women as the myth of the fulfilled woman and blamed popular culture and experts for these distortions.67 Friedan was outraged that while women "suffer from a feeling of desperation," "a strange stirring sense of dissatisfaction," a feeling that "there's nothing to look forward to," the image of women that pervaded American popular culture and the social scientific literature was that of the "happy housewife." Friedan argued that these misrepresentations denied women the capacity to address their unhappiness and seek
fulfillment outside the domestic realm. It also denied women a "firm core

of self." In response to this injustice, Friedan advocated that women shun those definitions of themselves that "do not demand or permit realization of women's full abilities." She urged women to "unequivocally say no" to constructions of womanhood "that do not provide adequate self-esteem,

much less pave the way to a higher level of self-realization."68

For Friedan, the injustice facing American women consisted not of the denial of economic and political sources of power, but rather, the obstruction of women's achievement of personhood. She asked "Why, with the removal of all the legal, political, economic, and educational barriers that once kept woman from being man's equal, a person in her own right, an individual free to develop her own potential, should she accept this new

image which insists she is not a person ... ?"69 American culture's denial
Friedan's political commentary.

to women of an appropriate self-image formed the centerpiece of

Friedan found no conceptual tradition that women could draw upon to challenge this denial. In fact, she urged women to acknowledge that the problem facing women "cannot be understood in the generally accepted terms by which scientists have studied women, doctors have treated them,
counselors have advised them, and writers have written about them." She rejected expertise in favor of personal experience. By ignoring expert

advice and listening to "that voice inside herself," Friedan believed women could eliminate the obstacles to their self-development. Friedan

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made women's own understanding of their lives her political starting point.70 Beginning with Friedan and continuing with more radical feminists, feminism sought to construct a new kind of politics in which personal experience provided the basis for political interpretation and social change. Feminists also assigned the so-called "woman's world" a radically new meaning. In their domestic discourse the home became neither a separate nor a sacred world but a "comfortable concentration camp," an institution that denied women their full humanity. Feminists saw themselves as once and for all ending the era and ideology of the "home as haven" and creating a politics in which the personal and the political However, while feminists often imagined themselves as beginning completely anew, rejecting the categories of thought foisted upon them by experts and the mass media, and creating a politics purely out of their immediate experiences and personal feelings, their political discourse was connected to the popular culture and expertise of their era. A survey of women's magazines during the postwar period suggests that there was, indeed, a popular context and a history to the ideological work they performed. Recent feminism took as its starting point the cult of domesticity and its psychological effects upon women. Women's magazines and the experts who wrote for them, however, had already focused mass attention on the psychological difficulties women had in adjusting to domesticity. They publicized the problems women experienced in conforming to domesticity and their difficulty securing happiness. They also simultaneously emphasized the virtues of domesticity and the value of psychological happiness. While they clearly did not advocate feminist solutions or have feminist intentions, they contributed to a discourse of discontent and a new standard of psychological happiness. In addition, it can be argued that this legacy of revealed discontent and unresolved contradictions was a source of a new political discourse fashioned by Betty
could no longer be separated.

Friedan and subsequent feminists.

Notes

The author thanks the Mary Lizzie Saunders Clapp Fund Fellowship of The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on The History of Women in America, Radcliffe College for its financial support. Thanks to Ron Walters and Louis Galambos for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Special thanks are also extended to Walter Michaels whose critical insights enormously improved the essay. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous readers for their comments and
suggestions.

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1963), 30.

Journal of Women's History

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1 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 2 Incident described in Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood: The Inside Story of the

Women's Movement and the Leaders Who Made It Happen (New York: Fawcett Columbine: 1989), 185. A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958," Meyerowitz examines "test[ing] generalizations about postwar mass culture." Meyerowitz takes issue

3 The one scholar who has recently sought to reevaluate women's magazines is Joanne Meyerowitz. In her study entitled "Beyond the Feminine Mystique:

issues of eight popular magazines (several o- which were geared specifically toward a black audience), including three women's magazines, for the purpose of primarily with the view that Cold War popular magazines were uniformly critical of women's roles outside of the home and never presented positive images of politically active women. She thus rebuts the claim that popular magazines portrayed women's activities outside the home seldom and negatively. In this article I do not reevaluate this aspect of the women's magazines. Rather, I take up an even
more prominent aspect of the traditional view of Cold War popular culture, and

one that has yet to be critically reexaminedthe claim that women's magazines always portrayed women as blissfully happy.

4 Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 213; GIenna

Matthews, "Just A Housewife": The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1987), 212; William L. CNeil, Feminism in America: A

in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Winifred Wandersee, On the Move: American Women in the 1970s (Boston: Twayne, 1988); Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Woman's Rights Movement, 1945 to the

History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2nd ed.,1989), 308; Cohen, The Sisterhood, 196. See also, Elaine May, Homeward Bound: American Families

1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Cynthia Harrison, On Account of
Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945-1968 (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1988); Peter G. Filene, HimlHer Self. Sex Roles in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); Susan M. Hartmann, T7ie Homefront and

Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1982); Annegret Ogden, The Great American Housewife: From Helpmate to Wage Earner, 1776-1986 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986); and Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: chusetts Press, 1984). 5 May, Homeward Bound, 209.
6 Evans, Personal Politics, 212.

Class, Gender and Propaganda During World War II (Amherst: University of Massa-

7 My effort to reevaluate women's magazines is part of a more general effort by scholars working in a variety of disciplines to reevaluate the Cold War era. Rejecting a reductionist portrait of the 1950s, they have portrayed the period as more complex and contradictory than previously thought, often finding within the Cold War era the seeds of its own destruction. Political scientist Michael Rogin, for example, in his provocative article, "Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood,

and Cold War Movies" in Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political

Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), finds that postwar

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popular culture simultaneously glorified and vilified motherhood. Sociologist Wird Breines, in her recent book Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the 1950s (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), argues that women's revolt "surreptitiously began in the quiet fifties." Far from being monolithic and merely constraining for women, postwar popular culture, with all its tensions and contradictions, actually provided the basis for women's construction of new identities and new means of empowerment. Historian Susan Ware in a study of League of Women Voters's local chapters entitled "American Women in the 1950s: Nonpartisan Politics and Women's Politicization" in Women, Politics, and Change, eds. Louise My and Patricia Gurin (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990), suggests that League women defied the stereotype of the unfulfilled, politically reticent Cold War woman. Challenging Friedan's characterization of women in postwar America, Ware argues that League women were "not suffering from a crisis in women's identity." I examined all of the nonaction articles dealing with women and their state of mind during the years under consideration. I did a less systematic review of other women's magazines, including Woman's Home Companion, Good Housekeepfor the prevalence of the theme of women's dissatisfaction. 8 My argument that women's magazines of the postwar era promoted a discourse of discontent is difficult to express in quantitative terms. It is certainly not the case that most of the pages in the magazines were devoted to this subject. The bulk of the magazines consists of advertisements, which portray women happily consuming products or women who are unhappy because they have neglected to consume products. The remainder was devoted to fiction, articles on cooking, cleaning, child rearing, beauty, fashion, women's psychological condition, and, as Joanne Meyerowitz has recently shown, women's roles outside the home. Articles on women's psychological condition, therefore, represent a relatively small portion of the total. However, when evaluating the significance of my evidence two things should be kept in mind. First, I found no articles on women's state of mind that reported on women's contentment in the home. The articles were always framed negatively, as the problem of women's unhappiness or poor psychological state of mind. Second, the articles dealing with women's unhappiness were given a prominent position both within the magazine and on the cover. Women's magazines sold their issues in part by daiming to deal with this problem. The marriage counseling columns, in particular, were a key part of marketing strategy. They appeared each month, were accompanied by large black and white
ing, Better Homes and Gardens, Redbook, Colliers, and Coronet. See endnotes 18 and 30

photographs, and were featured as the lead article on the covers of these magazines.

9 Marynia Farnham, "Women and Wives," McCaIVs, October 1945, 60.

10 Ibid., 60. March 1949,11.
12 Ibid.

11 Dorothy Thompson, "Occupation: Housewife," Ladies Home Journal,

Ibid., 26.

tions, "What Sends People to Reno?," Ladies Home Journal, April 1948,296.

14 Dr. James F. Bender, Director of the National Institute for Human Rela-

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Journal of Women's History

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15 Barbara Benson, "Would You Marry Your Husband Again?," Ladies Home Journal, February 1947,26.

16 "What Makes Wives Unhappy," Ladies Home Journal, January 1949,26. 17 Before presenting the results of surveys and in-depth interviews, the magazines often instructed women to measure their own responses against those of the nation's. One article, for example, recommended that "before reading the replies of other husbands and wives, you might jot down your answer to these questions. Express your honest opinions, frankly and in detail." Benson, "Would
You Marry Your Husband Again?," 31.

18 For some further examples see, "How Do You Beat the Blues?," Women's Home Companion, March 1948,153-155; "What Do You Do When Worries Get You Down?," Women's Home Companion, December 1952, 9; "How to Live With Yourself," McCaWs, March 1960,116-117; "I Can't Stand It Anymore," Good Housekeeping, March 1961,86-87; "Why Do Women Cry?," Ladies Home Journal, October 1948,
44; "How to Recognize Suicidal Depression," Ladies Home Journal, September 1964,

26; "Blues and How to Chase Them," McCaWs, August 1960,98; "How to Get Over Feeling Low," Better Homes and Garden, October 1950, 66-67; "When Don't You Need a Psychiatrist?," Coronet, March 1956, 93-97; "Lonely Wife," Women's Home Companion, June 1956, 16-18; "You Can Be Happier Than You Are," Better Homes Housekeeping, August 1957, 118-121; "Do You Need a Psychiatrist?," Coronet,
1953, 88-93.

and Gardens, February 1956, 31; "Are You Afraid You're Going Crazy?," Good

December 1954,31-34; "Emotional Upsets Are Good For You," Colliers, September

19 Karl Huber, "Crying as Catharsis," McCaWs, November 1960,46,48.

1955, 20, 24.

20 "How Emotions Cause Unnecessary Surgery," Cosmopolitan, November

21 Cosmopolitan, January 1956,18. Though there was more of an emphasis on glamour than homemaking in Cosmopolitan than in other women's magazines, the shift toward sex and the single girl did not occur until the end of the Cold War period, after 1962 when Helen Gurley Brown published a book with that title. Throughout the period from 1945 to 1965 the magazine had a readership interested in marital discontent and psychological unhappiness. See, for example, "Survey of
American Marriage," Cosmopolitan, June 1954, 8-14; "Are Marriage Counselors

Any Good?," Cosmopolitan, January 1953,104-107; "Tests That Tell You All About You," Cosmopolitan, September 1957,40-44; "When a Wife is Second Best," Cosmopolitan, January 1958, 62-65; "Where to Take Your Troubles," Cosmopolitan, April 1958, 54-61; "Psychological First-Aid Kit For You," Cosmopolitan, December 1958, 70-73; "What You Should Know About Psychiatry," Cosmopolitan, March 1955, 64-69; "Why They Fight About Money," Cosmopolitan, December 1955,70-73; "Live With Your Nerves and Like It," Cosmopolitan, February 1957,40-45; "What It Means to Find Yourself," Cosmopolitan, January 1959, 24-29; "American Wife: Symposium," Cosmopolitan, January 1958, 20-73. 22 "Autoconditioning," Cosmopolitan, 20.
1954,26.

23 Clifford R. Adams, "Making Marriage Work," Ladies Home Journal, June

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4.

24 Kate Holliday, "Ifs Good To Blow Your Top," McCaWs, January 1950, 59,

25 This normalization of discontent contrasts with the claims made by many scholars that women's magazines defined unhappy women as abnormal. Historian Glenna Matthews, for example, explains the logic she found at work in women's magazines and other forms of popular culture: "The 'normal', feminine woman would be happy staying at home. One who was unhappy was, in fact, by definition not normal." Matthews, "Just a Housewife," 211. 26 As Elaine May explains, for example, this rhetoric and its therapeutic corollary "undermined the potential for the political activism and reinforced the chilling effects of anticommunism and the cold war consensus," May, Homeward Bound, 14. For examples of works not already cited that treat women's magazines Cynthia White, Women's Magazines, 1693-1968 (London: Joseph, 1970); Janice Winship, Inside Women's Magazines (New York: Pandora, 1987); Ester R. Sineman, "What the Ladies Were Reading," (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1976); Marjorie Ferguson, "Imagery and Ideology: The Cover Photographs of Traditional Women's Magazines," in Hearth and Home, ed. Gaye Tuchman, Arlene Leman, "The Advice of a Real Friend: Codes of Intimacy and Oppression in
Women's Magazines, 1937-1955," Women's Studies International Quarterly 3 (Fall 1980); Susan M. Hartmann, "Prescriptions for Penelope: Literature on Women's Obligations to Returning World War Veterans," Women's Studies 5 (1978): 223Journal of Popular Culture 10 (1976): 352-358. Kaplan Daniels, and James Benet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Joy as obstacles to feminist protest, see Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter,

239; Maureen Honey, "Images of Women in the Saturday Evening Post, 1931-1936,"

27 In addition to these columns, Women's Home Companion had a column entitled "Help for Love and Marriage: Case Histories." But all women's magazines addressed the marital problems. See, for example, "How to Stay Married Though Unhappy," Good Housekeeping, February 1953, 59; "Does a Blow-up Ever Help a
Marriage?," Better Homes and Gardens, August 1962, 44-45; "Where to Get a Mar-

riage Counselor When You Need One," Good Housekeeping, July 1959,113-114; "Ten Commandments for a Happy Marriage," Coronet August, 1949, 93-96; "What Breaks it Up? Analysis of a Thousand Letters," Good Housekeeping, May 1949,40-41; "How to Get Marriage Counseling?," Women's Home Companion, August 1949, 36; 12-13; "Happy Marriage Week," Good Housekeeping, July 1950, 49; "Happier Marriages," Redbook, March 1961, 42-43; "Before Love Goes Wrong," Ladies Home Journal, June 1959, 31-32; "Where to Take Your Troubles," Women's Home Companion, October 1948, 36-37; "Check Up For a Happy Marriage" Women's Home Companion, September 1952,9-10; "Unselfishness Could Spoil Your Marriage," Women's Home Companion, July 1952,4; "They Learned to Love Again," Ladies Home Journal, October 1952,171-174; "What Do You Want From Your Marriage Today?," Women's
Home Companion, April 1956, 70-73; "Are You Afraid to Quarrel?," Women's Home Companion, May 1953,4. "How to Hold on to a Happy Marriage," Better Homes and Garden, August 1950,

McCaWs, December 1945,103. 29 Ibid., 60.

28 Jacques W. Bacal and E. B. Foskett, "Divorcethe Lonesome Road,"

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Journal, March 1947, 240. 31 John E. Gibson, "Science Looks at Love," Ladies Home Journal, June 1948,
69.

30 Mary Fisher Langmuir, "Lef s Be Realistic About Divorce," Ladies Home

32 Bacal and Foskett, "Divorce," 102.

That Js Getting Out of Hand?," Ladies Home Journal, January 1948,26.

26.

33 Clifford R. Adams, "Making Marriage Work: Is it You or Your Marriage 34 Mace, "Marriage is a Private Affair," McCaWs, October 1960, 34. 35 Adams, "Making Marriage Work," Ladies Home Journal, September 1949,

36 Mace, "Marriage is a Private Affair," McCaWs, October 1957, 97. In The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan describes women as suffering from a "strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction..." Friedan, 11. She calls this the "problem that
has no name," Friedan, 28. 37 Mace, "Marriage is a Private Affair," McCaWs, October 1957, 97. 38 Adams, "Making Marriage Work," Ladies Home Journal, January 1952,14.
39 Ibid.

40 The domestic discourse promoted by marriage counselors was shaped by the particular exigencies of the profession. For a history of marriage counseling, see Eva S. Moskowitz, "Naming the Problem: How Experts and Popular Culture Paved the Way for 'Personal Politics' " (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University,
1992).

41 Adams, "Making Marriage Work" Ladies Home Journal, January 1948,26. 42 Mace, "Marriage is a Private Affair," McCaWs, April 1959,36. 43 Adams, "Making Marriage Work," Ladies Home Journal, January 1950,26.
44 Ibid. Ibid.

46 Evans, Personal Politics, 18; Kerber and de Hart Mathews, Women's America, 408; May, Homeward Bound, 209; Friedan, 77ie Feminine Mystique, 11. 47 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 69,281. Most accounts of recent feminism

emphasize its distinctiveness. This was particularly true of those accounts that came directly out of the movement. See, for example, Robin Morgan, Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); and Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light (New York Knopf, 1981). There were also contemporary accounts of the movement, including Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement and its Relation to the Policy Process (New York: Longman, 1975); and Edith Hole and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of
Feminism (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971). 48 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 11.

Journal, February 1947,26.

49 Barbara Benson, "Would You Marry Your Husband Again?," Ladies Home

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50 The Schlesinger Library houses two important collections of letters written to Betty Friedan. One group was written in response to her book, The Feminine Mystique; the other to McCall's magazine in response to "The Fraud of Femininity" published in its September 1963 issue. It is frequently assumed that Friedan received an overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic response from women. One scholar who examined the letters claims, for example, that "a perusal of a small sample of them confirms that Friedan touched a responsive chord in the minds of many women." While it is true that responses to The Feminine Mystique were by and large positive, the same cannot be said of the responses to "The Fraud of Femininity." My rough estimate indicates that about 80 percent of respondents were displeased with Friedan's argument. 51 Class appears to be a determining factor in their responses. Many respondents talk about their struggle to achieve the status of housewife. Before they became housewives they worked outside the home. Many appear completely baffled by Friedan's assumption that work outside the home is creative or psychologically uplifting. They found their clerical jobs not only boring but oppressive. Submitting to every whim of a boss did not compare to the independence and joy downright angry. They found Friedan's outlook snobbish and humiliating. They resented the interpretation given to their lives by experts. They strongly resisted the idea that being a housewife and enjoying it meant that they were living a pathological existence. Indeed some, in turn, considered experts like Friedan sick
and perverse.
Box 744.

of working for their families in the home. While many were confused, others were

52 Betty Friedan papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College (hereafter BF),

s* BF, Box 744.

s3 BF, Box 743. 55 BF, Box 744. s BF, Box 742. s7 BF, Box 742. 5S BF, Box 741. 59 BF, Box 745. > BF, Box 744. BF, Box 741. 62 BF, Box 741.

63 It is important to note that Friedan's relationship to expertise even in her book is contradictory. Rhetorically, she emphasizes experts' neglect of the "problem that has no name" and the silence of professionals on the question of women's unhappiness. But in her preface she thanks a long list of experts. She does, however, qualify her acknowledgements by adding that although "experts in a for a long time" they have often not realized it. Friedan, 77ze Feminist Mystique,
preface.

great many fields have been holding pieces of the truth under their microscopes

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64 BF, Box 741. 65 BF, Box 742.

Journal of Women's History

Fall

66 Cohen, The Sisterhood, 63.1 am currently working on a detailed history of this phenomenon entitled "The Therapeutic Gospel: Personal Problems and Public Debate in America, 1860-1990." For a preliminary account of the psychologization of American society see Moskowitz, "Naming the Problem." 67 The psychological nature of Friedan's political discourse can also be illustrated by contrasting it with the discourse of her contemporary, Martin Luther King. King invoked traditional notions of political justice, calling the plight of Blacks the "American dream unfulfilled." He demanded the birthright of freedom and equality, and located these rights in the Constitution. Though Friedan and later more radical feminists would also find the language of rights a useful one, the rights they identified were of a newer variety, rights to satisfaction and self-esteem. Similarly, it was not the injustice of the American dream unfulfilled, but the myth of the fulfilled woman that compelled Friedan to demand social change. See A Washington (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).
69 Ibid., 61. 70 Ibid., 22,26.

Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, ed. James Melvin 68 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 11-24, 293,304.