gress remains largely a male bastion. Betty Friedan sees changes taking place in American society in the period after World War II. The expectations placed on women by society were nothing new--women were expected to conform to a certain view of what was feminine and to subordinate themselves to their fathers, husbands, and children. Friedan sees a malaise developing in the female population in the late 1940s that would remain only that--a feeling, a sense of loss, a sense of denial--until the 1960s when it would be identified and given a name--the "feminine mystique," the feminine image placed on women by society. This image is confining and prevents women from seeking personal fulfillment in any endeavor not part of the feminine mystique. The role changes for women after World War II developed gradually and seemingly unnoticed for a long time. Betty Friedan notes how many women were expressing discontent without knowing the source, beginning in the late 1940s. These women felt that something was missing in their lives without knowing what it was, and many of them sought psychiatric help to discover the source of their problem. Women were then given advice by an army of marriage and child-guidance counselors, psychotherapists, and armchair psychologists, all trying to show women how to adjust to their role as housewives. Friedan writes:
It is no longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women. This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say (Friedan 26).
Friedan indicates that the experts were seeking an answer in the traditional role of women by focusing on one aspect or another of that role, as if women were discontented because some particular element in their traditional role had changed or was no longer being satisfied as once it had been. Friedan rejects this as an answer to the question, of course, and finds instead that the problem was simply that...