The Feminine Mystique

What are the major themes of the Feminine Mystique?

I need to know the most important themes from this novel for my AP lang class.

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Hey, I have not read this book but I found, what looks like, a decent overview of themes. I'll provide the excerpt and the source link as well.

The Feminine Mystique is the title of a book written by Betty Friedan

who also founded The National Organization for Women (NOW) to help US women gain

equal rights. She describes the "feminine mystique" as the heightened awareness

of the expectations of women and how each woman has to fit a certain role as a

little girl, an uneducated and unemployed teenager, and finally as a wife and

mother who is to happily clean the kitchen and cook things all day. After World

War II, a lot of women's organizations began to appear with the goal of bringing

the issues of equal rights into the limelight.

The stereotype even came down to the color of a woman's hair. Many

women wished that they could be blonde because that was the ideal hair color.

In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan writes that "across America, three out of

every ten women dyed their hair blonde "

Source(s)

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110803142057AAt0t8Y