Murray and Friedan on women's social inequality and unfulfilled potential

1 Murray’s “Equality of the Sexes” and Friedan’s Feminine Mystique Murray’s “Equality of the Sexes” was published in 1790 whereas Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963, but both can be considered as important pieces of feminist literature. Murray lamented that women were not being taught to strive for greatness in the world in the same way men were taught to do. Friedan lamented that women were given an unrealistic image of fulfillment by television sitcoms and social expectations. This paper will compare the two writings and show how each essentially makes the same claims and arguments in an effort to show that women deserve more credit than they are given. Murray lays the problem of inequality at the feet of society by pointing to a boy and girl, two children of the same house: “one is taught to aspire, and the other is early confined and limited” (Murray). The problem as Murray sees it is that men and women are taught different ideals instead of the same ones. Men are taught to make something of themselves in the world, while women in the 18th century were taught to be content with trivial issues like fashion and sewing. Murray’s problem with this is that women also have ambitions and they should be taught to embrace them rather than chase after shallow goals such as how to learn “the mechanism of a pudding, or the sewing the seams of a garment” (Murray). Cooking and cleaning were what society expected of women in the 18th century—and in the 20th as well. That is Friedan’s point in The Feminine Mystique. Friedan opens by describing the state of dissatisfied women all across the nation—women who are unhappy for some reason but cannot tell why they are unhappy. She tells of women who feel like they are empty inside or have no life. She tells of women who have blisters and who feel rage toward their children. She tells of women who do not know what is wrong with themselves but feel that something is terribly off. She quotes psychiatrist at the Margaret Sanger marriage counseling clinic: “We have made woman a sex creature…She has no identity except as a wife and mother. She does not know who she is herself. She waits all day for her husband to come home at night to make her feel alive. And now it is the husband who is not interested. It is terrible for the women, to lie there, night after night, waiting for her husband to make her feel alive” (Friedan 29). Friedan goes on to point out that this sex creature image of womanhood is propagated by the images on TV—the women who are played by characters like Mary Tyler Moore, a sex kitten in the kitchen, a doll there to be the foil of her bumbling but amusing husband, who goes to work, earns the money, pays the bills, keeps the roof over their heads and makes the jokes that the sex kitten wife has to laugh at. Friedan’s point was that women are not fulfilled the Mary Tyler Moore ideal because, after all, it is an unrealistic image. The sitcom wife is always smartly dressed, wearing heels as she makes the dinner; the children are always well-behaved and never throw tantrums. The dinner always comes out great. The neighbors are always friendly and life is never so challenging that the problems can’t be solved in under thirty minutes or less with commercial interruptions to boot. Friedan argued that it should be no surprise that women are not happy: they have nothing going for them, no image of womanhood that is real or inspiring, no notion of identity beyond being a wife and mother—a vocation that once they enter into seems less appealing than it did before. How are they meant to survive in this world when they are told by society that they should all be Mary Tyler Moores? This is basically the same question that Murray asked in her essay on equality between the sexes. Why were men given greater ideals and incentive to excel in the world, motivation to succeed and be happy with themselves than women? Murray felt that women deserved more credit. She believed they could do more than just learn to cook, clean and sew. She wanted them to be taught to do the kinds of things that men were taught to do. She wanted them to be respected for their intelligence. She wanted them to be admired for their characters, their strength, and their ability to make a difference in the world. Murray noted that there had been women throughout history who had made contributions to the world that ranked right up there alongside those made by men. One could point to women like Joan of Arc, for instance, or one could point to Queen Isabella. There were many women who received an education and who understand the importance of applying their intellects to the problems of the day and making sure that they answered the call that was theirs. Friedan’s argument is that women in 1960s were not hearing the call. All they were hearing was the call to be pretty and to be the sexy house kitten for their husbands like the television shows of the 1950s and 1960s wanted them to be. Friedan felt that women needed to be liberated from the mindset that was keeping them enslaved to this image. Murray felt that society needed to be made more aware of the contributions that women could make to society. Murray wanted women to receive the same type of education and same level of regard as was given men. Friedan wanted women to be freed from the social enslavement of the unreal image which put them in chains. Friedan described the problem of the unreal image as a “trap” that confined the “suburban housewife” and placed her in “chains” (31). She stated, however, that even if society wanted women to strive to be a certain televised way, these “chains that bind her in her trap are chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and misinterpreted facts, of incomplete truths and unreal choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off” (Friedan 31). Friedan wanted women to assert themselves, to listen to the voice that was inside herself, to be frank with themselves and admit honestly that the unreal image was a lie. Murray wanted society to hear her voice, to see that women everywhere had a voice and that those voices should not only be heard but that they should also be allowed to train and be educated alongside men in the same manner and style that they might also produce quality works and make respectable contributions to the world—contributions beyond making jams and play clothes for the children. In this way, both women in their literary works aimed to show that women deserved more credit—from society and from themselves. Murray was directing her work to society at large. Friedan was directing her work to women in an attempt to shake them out their stupor. Murray knew that women had more to offer. But a century and half later, Friedan was worried that the majority of women no longer believed in themselves, believed that they had anything more to give than their good looks, and their legs in heels, their bodies always in tip top shape and clothed in the immaculate styles of the television goddesses. Murray wanted women’s minds to be respected. Friedan wanted women to wake up and listen to the voices inside themselves that they might once more learn to respect themselves. For Murray, equality was the issue. For Friedan, equality had to first start with the women—for they were the ones submitting to the unreal images set out for them by a society that wanted an unreality. Works Cited Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. NY: W. W. Norton, 1963. Murray, Judith Sargent. “On the Equality of the Sexes,” 1790. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/murray/equality/equality.html