, Research Paper
Fighting for survival and status within the world
has been in affect since the Stone Age. It starts
with man against beast battling for survival. As
time goes on, so does the type of battle, from beast
to man against man. When conquerors from Europe
come over to North America they push the Indians
west because they, the Indians, do not fit into the
society the white man creates and there are
differences that are noticeable. Later on there
becomes discrimination against blacks with the Jim
Crow Laws and the silencing of women. Throughout
history there are more examples where people do not
fit into the “norm” of society. Betty Friedan and
Richard Wright in their novels The Feminine Mystique
and Black Boy both experience different forms of
oppression. As Betty Friedan discusses a problem
that has no name, but mainly how a woman is enslaved
in a man’s society, while Richard Wright tries to
overcome the Jim Crow south by attacking racial
identity.
“But forbidden to join man in the world, can
women be people” (Friedan 50)? Friedan illustrates
this point throughout her book. The fore-sisters of
Friedan fought for the passage of the nineteenth
amendment which was passed in August of 1920. The
passage of this amendment was largely due to the
women’s contribution to the war effort, the goal was
declared about seventy-two years before, during the
Seneca Falls convention in 1848. Throughout this
time, women became immersed in their education and
their own self-worth. Searching for jobs and not
husbands is the focus. During this period the
national birth rate declines since the women are not
home at the man’s beck and call.
As the times change so does the written word
about the female place in the world. According to
Friedan, experts are telling the women that the only
way to seek fulfillment in their lives is as a wife
and mother. Which in one word is femininity. Now,
the dream is of an American woman behind the stove,
not behind a desk. The women stuck at home “all
shared the same problem, the problem that has no
name” (Friedan 19). Friedan gives these women a
vocabulary for their dissatisfaction, the feminine
mystique. There is no other way for a woman to be a
woman of admirable exploits unless she is a
housewife. Friedan paints the feminine woman of
this time as having feelings of emptiness,
non-existence and nothingness. She illustrates
these problems that women face by telling the reader
that the experts blame their feelings on the higher
education they have received before becoming a
housewife. All women are searching for is a human
identity, a place where they belong without feeling
empty. But the women before this generation fought
for all the rights they have in the present, but
they are not using them. But how can one change
this dehumanizing aspect of the culture?
Friedan portrays the idea of helping women
with the feminine mystique that has gone on for more
than twenty years. This is not a small problem, but
a national one that has effected the majority of the
women in the United States. Friedan’s ideas range
from helping women get back into college and
re-educate themselves, getting out into the
workforce. Therefore freeing themselves from the
feminine mystique. But this can only be
accomplished if the rest of the nation is also
allowing of this change to happen. As the women
want to alter their lifestyles, universities do not
allow women to enter their university by not
admitting anyone who wants to further their
education (graduate study) and part-time students.
These rules
knowledge.
But the time is at hand when the voices
of the feminine mystique can no longer
drown out the inner voice that is
driving women on to become complete
(Friedan 378).
The women now are taking their life into their own
hands and not listening to the experts, their
husbands, or the culture.
Just as Friedan discusses the feminine
mystique holding women back, Richard Wright attacks
racial identity and the oppression he himself faces
as an African American man living in the United
States. Friedan points out the myths that arise
from society are similar to Wright’s dialogue in his
novel that:
The image of the feminists as inhuman,
fiery man-eaters, whether expressed as an
offense against God or in the modern
terms of sexual perversion, is not unlike
the stereotype of the Negro as a
primitive animal (Friedan 87).
This illustrates that the views people hold toward
others are stereotypical because the outcasts are
not the “white man” that dominates the world.
Being different makes the world interesting, if
everyone looked and dressed the same the world
would be boring. Yet no one can get beyond the
color difference or the gender difference.
Like the women feeling a void in their lives
by being a housewife, African American men, like
Wright feel an emptiness. This emptiness, like the
women Friedan describes, is the lack of self-worth
in the world. African Americans lack education,
but Richard Wright who had a man delivering coal to
teach him the numbers and later on the alphabet
then Wright begins to fill “ a new hunger,” the
hunger for reading and gaining knowledge.
Since education is power, white men do not
want the African Americans to gain that power to
have them achieve something in the “real world.”
But:
whites were as miserable as their
black victims… [i]f this country
can’t find its way to a human
path…then all of us, black as well
as white, are going down the same
drain (Wright 383).
Wright brings forth a good point that by holding
one race back it may be holding back the whole
world. For once, an African American male or
female may have been put on this world to make a
purpose in our lives, and by not fulfilling their
minds with knowledge to help them achieve that goal
we are set behind. Just as Friedan points out that
“America’s greatest source of unused brainpower was
women” (Friedan 17).
But it was not the culture of the society that
holds people back, it is also yourself if you as a
person can not fight back and educate yourself
against what society thinks is right, you fail
yourself. Knowledge is power and those who do not
have the spirit to gain that knowledge will fall
deep within the cracks and will not be able to
survive. But Richard Wright fights to fulfill his
hunger of education that is denied to him. The
roles of the African Americans are mapped out for
them, making them follow to the set aspirations
society has for them. Just as society does for the
women in Friedan’s novel were to aspire to be a
housewife.
Overall, Friedan and Wright though coming from two
different times and places both focus on oppression of the
mind. The oppression that brings this world against one
another is destroying each person. With education being
told as being for the “white man” only and our roles
outlined by society, we try not to go against them. But we
should not let our culture hold us back if we feel a void by
not achieving what we as a person and equal in this world
want.