Read the excerpt from The Feminine Mystique.But on an April morning in 1959, I heard a mother of four, having coffee with four other mothers in a suburban development fifteen miles from New York, say in a tone of quiet desperation, “the problem.” And the others knew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problem that has no name. Which best describes the connotation of the word “desperation”?
Read the following excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.The suburban housewife—she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife—freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. The underlined key terms most relate to what issue?
Read the excerpt from Trifles, by Susan Glaspell.COUNTY ATTORNEY. I guess before we’re through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about. HALE. Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. (The two women move a little closer together.) COUNTY ATTORNEY (with the gallantry of a young politician). And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (The women do not unbend. He goes to the sink, takes a dipperful of water from the pail and, pouring it into a basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel, turns it for a cleaner place.) Dirty towels! (Kicks his foot against the pans under the sink.) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?Which theme of early feminist drama is reflected in the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. But the actual unhappiness of the American housewife was suddenly being reported—from The New York Times and Newsweek to Good Housekeeping and CBS television (“The Trapped Housewife”), although almost everybody who talked about it found some superficial reason to dismiss it.Which best describes the connotation of the word “superficial” in the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from The Feminine Mystique.Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. Which keywords from the excerpt most relate to the issue of domesticity?
Read the excerpt from Trifles, by Susan Glaspell. COUNTY ATTORNEY. No—it’s not cheerful. I shouldn’t say she had the homemaking instinct.MRS. HALE. Well, I don’t know as Wright had, either. COUNTY ATTORNEY. You mean that they didn’t get on very well? MRS. HALE. No, I don’t mean anything. But I don’t think a place’d be any cheerfuller for John Wright’s being in it.Which feminist theme is most supported by the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity.Which words best emphasize society’s view of the “experts” who claimed to understand women’s needs?
Read the excerpt from the play Trifles, by Susan Glaspell.COUNTY ATTORNEY (with the gallantry of a young politician). And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (The women do not unbend. He goes to the sink, takes a dipperful of water from the pail and, pouring it into a basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel, turns it for a cleaner place.) Dirty towels! (Kicks his foot against the pans under the sink.) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies? The excerpt contributes most to which feminist theme?
Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.I heard echoes of the problem in college dormitories and semiprivate maternity wards, at PTA meetings and luncheons of the League of Women Voters, at suburban cocktail parties, in station wagons waiting for trains, and in snatches of conversation overheard at Schrafft’s. The groping words I heard from other women, on quiet afternoons when children were at school or on quiet evenings when husbands worked late, I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological implications.Based on the underlined words and phrases, what is Friedan most likely trying to express?
Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. So the door of all those pretty suburban houses opened a crack to permit a glimpse of uncounted thousands of American housewives who suffered alone from a problem that suddenly everyone was talking about, and beginning to take for granted, as one of those unreal problems in American life that can never be solved—like the hydrogen bomb. By 1962 the plight of the trapped American housewife had become a national parlor game.Which key terms from the excerpt most support the theme that women can feel suffocated by societal expectations?
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