The Feminine Mystique, By Betty Friedan

Marriage and the Sexual Revolution Historically women have faced a lot of pressure to get married and have children at a young age due to both economic necessity and societal expectations. However, because of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s gender roles were being challenged for the first time in American history. The feminist movement led to female empowerment and a shift in marriage trends. Women began to consider their individual personhood apart from being a mother, wife, and homemaker. The median age one got marriage began to rise and writers began to question the societal expectations of women. During this time period films were a tool that was used to discussed ideas of gender and sexuality (“The
Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique, wrote that women should seek fulfillment through motherhood and wifehood (Anthony). She argued that this ideology kept women from realizing their full potential. Women were “taught that the best possible life for them was to be married with a house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, maybe a dog or a cat, and a home to keep them busy all day” (Anthony). Friedan discovered that many women were unhappy with suburban lifestyle. American women didn’t know what to do with themselves and wanted more autonomy (Anthony). This dissatisfaction wasn’t widely discussed before the 1960s. Friedan had the gumption to say what countless women
One prominent film from the 1960s is Carnal Knowledge. In the film women are given little freedom. Susan has some sexual freedoms at the start of the film. However, she is quickly married and isn’t an important character for the remainder of the film. Another prominent female character in the film, Bobbie, is only loved for her voluptuous physique. Her partner, Jonathan, constantly berates her for lying around all day in the apartment yet doesn’t want her to work. In the 1960s there were a lot of fixed ideas about women and their role in society and within relationships. The women in this film are objects of male sexual conquest. Bobbie doesn’t exist outside of her relationship with Jonathan. “Carnal Knowledge never finds its male characters at fault, and the movie isn’t concerned with fixing blame…at the end, we’re left with people who have experiences as much suffering as they’ve caused through their inability to accept women as fellow human beings” (Ebert). Women are the lesser sex throughout the film. The men in the film fail to find sexual or individual happiness because they can’t stop treating women like objects