More recently, Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons, by Lynn Peril, cited Fascinating Womanhood as part of a body of literature that seeks to promote "an idealized version of womanhood". Clarke of Wilfrid Laurier University wrote that the movement used Kanter's Model of Commitment Mechanisms to analyze the techniques used to gain women's allegiance.
Rogers wrote an article ("Fascinating Womanhood as a Regression in the Emotional Maturation of Women") positing the argument that women who follow the book's teachings were doing so out of a fear of being self-actualized individuals. Academic attention įascinating Womanhood has gained the attention of feminist writers, who largely regard the book as detrimental to women in various ways.
The classes continue in Namibia, the Philippines, Japan, and Malaysia, and in the United States in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Utah, and Virginia. The now-deceased Andelin maintained a website that received over a quarter of a million visits. Unlike other antifeminism movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the Fascinating Womanhood movement continues today.
#Book fascinating womanhood series#
By 1975, according to Time magazine, the movement included 11,000 teachers, and over 300,000 women had taken the series of Fascinating Womanhood classes. More sources come from classic literature: Amelia (the original domestic goddess) of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Agnes and Dora from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, and Deruchette from Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea.Īlthough the book was published in the early 1960s when second wave feminism became part of the American mainstream, Fascinating Womanhood 's traditional explication of happy marriage resonated in the minds and hearts of millions of women. One of the "real life" women, Mumtaz Mahal of Taj Mahal fame, is cited as one of the ideal women who possessed both an angelic and a human side. The book takes many of its sources from historical women and from examples provided in classic literature. The book serves as a touchstone for those of the anti-feminist persuasion. It has been translated into seven languages. The book's self-published edition sold over 400,000 copies, and since being published by Random House, the book has sold more than 2 million copies. According to Time magazine, Andelin wrote Fascinating Womanhood when "she felt her own marriage wasn't the romantic love affair she had dreamed of." Winner of the Mormon History Association's Best Biography Award.Derived from a set of booklets published in the 1920s and 1930s by the Psychological Press, the book seeks to help traditionally-minded women to make their marriages "a lifelong love affair". This study provides an evenhanded and important look at a crucial, but often overlooked cross section of American women as they navigated their way through the turbulent decades following the post-war calm of the 1950s. Undeterred, she became a national celebrity, who was interviewed extensively and appeared in sold-out speaking engagements.Īndelin’s message calling for the return to traditional roles appealed to many in a time of uncertainty and radical social change. As Andelin’s notoriety grew, so did the backlash from her critics. A woman’s true happiness, taught Andelin, could only be realized if she admired, cared for, and obeyed her husband. The book, which borrowed heavily from those 1920s advice booklets, the Bible, and classical literature, eventually sold over three million copies and launched a nationwide organization of classes and seminars led by thousands of volunteer teachers.Ĭountering second-wave feminists in the 1960s, Andelin preached family values and urged women not to have careers, but to become good wives, mothers, and homemakers instead. In 1963, at the urging of her followers, Andelin wrote and self-published Fascinating Womanhood. She began leading small discussion groups for women at her church. Andelin took her new-found happiness as a sign that it was her religious duty to share these principles with other women. He bought her gifts and hurried home from work to be with her. She applied the principles from the booklets and found that her disinterested husband became loving and attentive. As she studied a set of women’s advice booklets from the 1920s, Andelin had an epiphany that not only changed her life but also affected the lives of millions of American women. A religious woman, she fasted and prayed for help. In 1961, Helen Andelin, housewife and mother of eight, languished in a lackluster, twenty-year-old marriage.
0 kommentar(er)
