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[[File:Making_of_the_feminie_mystique.jpg|thumbnail|300px|[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558491686/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1558491686&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=5d543e73214aafe431e8649994d6d853 Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique]]]
Biographical approaches to historical study often exhibit great popularity among the broader public, however, their utility as a lens into history sparks debate among scholars. Useful in placing individuals in historical context or exploring intellectual ferment, biography often fails to more fully illuminate broader issues, while simultaneously reifying the “great man” or “great woman” approach to history.
Daniel Horowitz’s [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558491686/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1558491686&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=5d543e73214aafe431e8649994d6d853 Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique ] attempts to reevaluate the intellectual and political underpinnings of Friedan’s feminist thought and more specifically, the experiences and ideas that shaped her classic 1963 work The Feminine Mystique. Freidan’s construction of how she came to author her 1963 work differs greatly with Horowitz’s research. Often cryptic about her work experience for various union publications such as the United Electrical and Machine Workers (UE) and Federated Press, Friedan obscured such experiences explaining her awakening as “cathartic” but unconnected to her time as a labor journalist. Moreover, despite her own written contributions to women’s magazines of the period, Friedan argued that such media created the feminine mystique in which she found herself trapped. Thus, Friedan’s “awakening” appears non-political, non-radical, and self driven.
Pushing back against this formulation, Horowitz suggests that Friedan’s years at Smith College, experiences at the Highlander Folk School and work as a labor journalist/activist reshaped her world view while also raising her own gender consciousness. For example, Horowitz connects several critical ideas of The Feminine Mystique to Friedan’s Smith professors such as Dorothy Wolf Douglass but also to early female writers from her union days, especially those espousing Popular Front beliefs. Friedan’s work at the UE and the Federated Press illustrated a commitment to the working class and minorities that many have criticized The Feminine Mystique for lacking. However, Horowitz repeatedly illustrates that Friedan wrestled with such issues for decades in various professional capacities and even personal life, excluding them from the final draft of Feminine Mystique for fear of publication rejection. According to Horowitz, Friedan’s experiences with McCarthyism, anti-semitism, and disillusionment with the labor movement itself led her to downplay race and class issues. Red baiting along with the associations of the time that conflated Jews with political radicals imbued a theoretical and narrative caution in Friedan’s work. Comparing Mystique’s initial draft with that of its published version, Horowitz carefully examines the shift in focus. If Friedan’s early draft exhibited a focus on class and race issues paralleling the problem of the “woman question”, her final work jettisoned such arguments for a white middle class perspective. In addition to publication concerns, Horowitz suggests Friedan’s academic background in psychology along with her own experiences involving therapy contributed to changes in Mystique’s published edition.
