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The rhetoric of androgyny asrevealed in the feminine mystiqueSally J. Perkins aa Ph.D. candidate in the Department of CommunicationStudies , University of Kansas , Lawrence, KansasPublished online: 22 May 2009.

To cite this article: Sally J. Perkins (1989) The rhetoric of androgyny as revealed in thefeminine mystique , Communication Studies, 40:2, 69-80, DOI: 10.1080/10510978909368258

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COMMUNICATION STUDIESSummer 1989,40/2, Pgs. 69-80

The Rhetoric of Androgyny as Revealed inThe Feminine Mystique

SALLY J. PERKINS

Since the publication of The Feminine Mystique in 1963, Betty Friedan has hadremarkable influence as a leader of the contemporary feminist movement. In

1964 a young Washington female lawyer said to Friedan, '"Betty, you have to startan NAACP for women. You are the only one free enough to do it.'"1 At the timeFriedan did not envision herself as a political leader, since, as she claimed, "I wasn'tan organization woman. I never even belonged to the League of Women Voters"2

However, by 1966 she found herself organizing and serving as the first president ofthe National Organization of Women (NOW). In that role she has testified beforejudges, guided advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment, and delivered lectures at"southern finishing schools" and commencement addresses at Yale, UCLA, andHarvard to finance the organization of NOW chapters. A standing ovation after atwo hour address to the 1970 NOW convention underscores the respect she hasearned as a leader.3

Friedan's exposure and influence extend well beyond NOW. "I've been asked tohelp organize groups in Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Sweden, France, Israel,Japan, India, and even in Czechoslovakia and other Socialist countries."4 In thebuilding which houses the minister for women's rights in France, she found a"larger-than-life portrait" of herself,5 and while recently fulfilling her assignment asa Harvard fellow, she was asked to meet with women law and medical students andinterns, and with women's groups at the divinity and architecture schools.6 Sheoperated a weekend commune for adults whose marriages had failed, and she hasmaintained her popularity as an author with her more recent works It Changed MyLife and The Second Stage? Friedan's endless activity reflects the respect andinfluence she holds in the modern women's movement. As Barbara Seaman, authorof Free and Female, suggests, "Betty Friedan is to women what Martin Luther Kingwas to blacks."8

It would be unfair to credit only Friedan for the initial growth of the newfeminist movement when one considers the influence of other women, includingMarlene Dixon, Kathy Sarachild (Amatriek), Jo Freeman (Joreen), Ti GraceAtkinson, Gloria Steinem.9 However, one safely can regard Friedan as representa-tive of these leaders to the extent that the genesis of the National Organization ofWomen which she brought to fruition more or less represented the broad spectrumof political, social, and personal ideals of mainstream feminism. "NOW representsthe spectrum of characteristics found, in different proportions, within the other

SALLY J. PERKINS is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University ofKansas, Lawrence, Kansas.

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groups, and reveals developmental trends which are less easily identifiable in theshorter-lived groups."10 In light of the significance of Friedan's contributions to thefeminist movement, her rhetoric merits scholarly attention.

Clearly, The Feminine Mystique was critical in establishing Friedan's credibil-ity as a leader since immediately following its first publication, she was asked toorganize what became NOW. Moreover, the book remains an instrumental, consis-tently relevant document for mainstream feminists and, therefore, is what KennethBurke would label a "representative anecdote" for understanding Friedan's rhetoric."Two editions followed the text's initial publication, and several popular women'smagazines reprinted excerpts.12 Furthermore, after nearly three decades manywomen continue to speak of The Feminine Mystique as a book which changed theirlives in the 1960s. Anne Summers, editor of My., remembers:

I was in my early twenties and newly married when I first read The Feminine Mystique and Iwill never forget its tremendous impact on me. It tore away any illusions I had that suburbanlife and full-time domesticity would satisfy me.13

Friedan claimed that "by [1973] hundreds—thousands, I guess—of women havesaid to me, 'It changed my whole life.' "14 In 1983, she wrote, "It is twenty years nowsince The Feminine Mystique was published. I am still awed by the revolution thatbook helped spark."15 Other feminist authors also acknowledge Friedan's impact.

One powerful weapon in this struggle [for women] was a book, Betty Friedan's The FeminineMystique . . . . [which] became a best-seller. It uncovered large numbers of women eager toimplement Mrs. Friedan's blueprint for "a whole new life plan."16

Moreover, feminist leaders emerging after Friedan have grounded their ownrhetoric in the principles set forth in The Feminine Mystique. For example, in a1972 address to the U. S. Naval Academy, Gloria Steinem alluded to Friedan's titlewhen attacking a corollary "masculine mystique."17 These testimonies clearlyisolate The Feminine Mystique as representative of Friedan's rhetoric and, moreimportantly, as a crucial document for mainstream feminists in the new movement.Therefore, the book will serve as the "representative anecdote" by which Friedan'srhetoric can be assessed. More importantly, The Feminine Mystique exemplifieswhat I am calling the "rhetoric of androgyny," a rhetorical style with apparent valueto the feminist movement which, thus, demands the attention of critics.

As a first step in exploring the rhetoric and its style, Edwin Black's concept ofthe "second persona" will be used to explain the import of the audience whichFriedan creates in The Feminine Mystique. She creates an audience which believesin the "ideal" of androgyny, a rhetorical style which involves two dominant andrelated personas, one embodying a "female" voice and other a "male" voice. Secondand third, then, the essay provides a theoretical basis for the differences betweenthose voices as rhetorical styles and demonstrates Friedan's use of each. Finally,conclusions will be drawn regarding the strengths and limitations of the "rhetoric ofandrogyny" both for Friedan and for the feminist movement in general.

THE CREATED AUDIENCE

The rhetorical force behind The Feminine Mystique can be understood best notin regard to the "literal" audience which only could be speculated, but the audience"created" or implied by the text. Edwin Black writes that the author who "speaks"

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in a given discourse is often not a person, but an artificial creation, a persona.Moreover, Black claims there is a "second persona" implied by a discourse; that is,the implied audience or auditor. As critics "we are able . . . to observe the sort ofaudience that would be appropriate to" the discourse.18 More important, Black addsthat this created audience can be characterized by its ideology.

Ideology in the sense that Marx used the term: the network of interconnected convictions thatfunctions in a man epistemically and that shapes his identity by determining how he views theworld . . . . [R]hetorical discourses, either singly or cumulatively in a persuasive movement,will imply an auditor, and . . . in most cases the implication will be sufficiently suggestive as toenable the critic to link this implied auditor to an ideology."

Black argues that the best evidence of an audience's created identity is "thesubstantive claims that are made"; however, the "most likely evidence available willbe in the form of stylistic tokens."20 Both claims and style are important in Friedan'srhetoric.

Friedan's substantive claim in The Feminine Mystique is that an ideal feminineimage (the feminine mystique) controls millions of housewives, ultimately leavingthem depressed, bored, and immature; that in order to escape the subjugation of thismystique and find autonomy, a woman must define herself through paid work which"she can take seriously as part of a life plan, work in which she can grow as part ofsociety." This claim does not imply that women cannot be mothers or wives whilemaintaining careers, since as Friedan states

Ironically, the only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, toachieve identity in society is a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is thekind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique... (348, emphasis added).

Thus, her substantive claim creates an audience embodying a mainstreamideology which takes the androgynous position that all humans can fulfill tradition-ally prescribed gender-specific roles. Friedan even goes so far as to identify competi-tion in the public sphere as a human rather than (as commonly assumed) a maletrait, claiming that a woman "must learn to compete then, not as a woman, but as ahuman being"(374). Where radical ideology often emphasizes gender differences,22

mainstream ideology, such as Friedan posits, features the similarities which, in turn,suggests androgyny.23 Clearly, therefore, the substantive claims in The FeminineMystique indicate an audience characterized by an ideology in support of androg-yny.

In addition to the role of claims in audience creation, Black's theory of thesecond persona suggests that the created audience's ideology also may be recognizedby the style of the discourse. He concludes, "The expectation that a verbal token ofideology can be taken as implying an auditor who shares that ideology is somethingmore than a hypothesis about a relationship."24 In such cases, the auditors seek cuestelling them how they are to view the world "even beyond the expressed concerns,the overt propositional sense, of the discourse."25 Thus, in order to demonstrate howFriedan's style creates an audience which favors androgyny, the following discussionconcerns the dominant styles of The Feminine Mystique. These styles reflect"reporter" and "scholar" personas which, respectively, speak through typically (andtheoretically) "female" and "male" voices. Intermingling the styles, Friedan speaksto her readers both "as a woman" and "as a man."

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THE "FEMALE VOICE"

In part, Friedan plays the role of a reporter. This is most evident in the firstthree chapters as she attempts to describe "the problem with no name," a phrasesuggesting some sort of mystery. Throughout this section, her language echoes thatof the reporter: "after a while I began to recognize the telltale signs of this otherproblem. I saw the same signs . . ."(20); "I think, in fact, that this is the first clue tothe mystery"(27); "This is the real mystery: why did so many American women . . .go back home again; to look for 'something more' in housework and rearingchildren?"(67); "I went as a reporter from suburb to suburb, searching for a womanof ability and education who was fulfilled as a housewife"(233). What gives this"reporter" persona unusual appeal is the "female voice" embedded within it. Recentgender communication research identifies concrete "uniquenesses" in women'scommunication styles, be they typical or stereotypical. Jamieson argues, for exam-ple, that gender-associated differences remain in contemporary rhetoric, though sheadmits uncertainty as to whether the disposition to different styles is natural orcultural.' The question of these differences has received scholarly attention.

Scholars generally agree, first, that women more than men verbalize personalexperiences and feelings in effort to help sort the complexities of their lives. Maltzand Borker found that "women share experiences, offer reassurances and givenatural support."27 According to Penelope and Wolfe, many women also write in astyle "which has been termed 'confessional,' using it for describing our own lives inprivate."2' Moreover, the narratives through which women share their experiencescontain precise description, concrete nouns, and verbs of specific action.29 The"reporter" persona reflects these differences.

The Feminine Mystique contains an abundance of personal experiences partic-ularly in the first three chapters as Friedan describes "the problem with no name."She quotes a Nebraska housewife:

A film made of any typical morning in my house would look like an old Marx Brothers'comedy. I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard tocultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting,help the youngest child build a blockhouse By noon I'm ready for a padded cell. Very littleof what I've done has been really necessary or important(28).

Clearly this passage exemplifies not only self-disclosure, but also the use of precisedescription through concrete nouns (dishes, chrysanthemums, blockhouse) andverbs of specific action (wash, rush, dash). Although Friedan discloses little ofherself, she still embodies a "female voice" through the personal stories of otherwomen. Her "reporter" persona appropriately exhibits these features of personaldisclosure and concrete description insofar as the reporter's task is to tell stories"objectively" rather than to give directions or develop explicit arguments (factorscharacteristic of the "male voice" to be discussed later).

Not only is women's speech frequently personal and concrete, it, secondly, isoften emotionally laden. Jamieson explains that "women reveal themselves inservice of expressive or affiliative needs where men tend to disclose about goalsrelated to instrumental needs."30 Furthermore, Kramarae contrasts women's andmen's speech as predominately socio-emotional and task-oriented respectively,31

while Denmark purports that men are perceived as more active and goal-orientedand women as more "expressive" of emotion.32 Although Friedan ultimately advo-

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cates a stronger task-orientation among women (344), her concern lies primarilywith women's affiliative needs which she aligns with the mystique.

I began to see new dimensions to old problems that have long been taken for granted amongwomen: menstrual difficulties, sexual frigidity, promiscuity, pregnancy fears, childbirthdepression, the high incidence of emotional breakdown and suicide among women in theirtwenties and thirties . . . (32).

In the many personal stories which she "reports" one hears the feminine voiceattending to the affiliate.

Because women are inclined to disclose personally and to attend to emotionalneeds, or perhaps one reason women are likely to do so, is because for centuries theyhave shared their thoughts, feelings, and stories in letters and diaries or orally overlunch or during quilting bees. "Denied access to the public sphere," claims Jamie-son, "women developed facility in such private forms of communication as conversa-tion and storytelling."33 Cooper adds, "Beyond catharsis many women have useddiary writing to explore new possibilities, new ways of living, or coping with pain."34

Quilt historians agree that quilting bees were for women a primary source ofinformation and a place for the exchange and development of ideas and feelings aswell as recipes. Bacon asserts that:

With few newspapers to circulate current events, here [the bee] was the chance to learn thelatest bits of news. Ideas, too, were exchanged, and it can be safely said that the quiltings werethe forerunners of today's women's clubs.35

Moreover, quilts themselves often served as vehicles for public articulation.36

Through quilts, "disenfranchised women celebrated political triumphs, criticizednational policy, commemorated relationships, and reformed society.

These informal female gatherings parallel the consciousness raising groups ofthe 1960s and 1970s from which emerged, according to Campbell, a feministrhetorical "genre," a woman's rhetorical style, so to speak. She, too, features thesharing of personal experiences, but adds a third dimension to the characteristicspreviously discussed. According to Campbell, there exists "no leader, rhetor, orexpert" since leader-centered rhetoric merely reinforces submissiveness and passiv-ity on the behalf of the followers which, in turn, would defeat feminist goals.38

Kramarae explains that because women resent being the objects upon which thepatriarchal power structure has stood, they are concerned that "working for morepower for women will just alter the names of the people who have power but will notalter the hierarchies themselves." Hence, feminists seek to diffuse power by rotatingleadership and pursuing alternatives to traditional power structures.39

Although Friedan ultimately assumes a "leadership" position, she initiallyattempts to speak as equal rather than expert. By simply "reporting" what she hasobserved, Friedan maintains her status as "sister," and simultaneously appears moreobjective. At one point she even claims, "Sometimes I sensed the problem, not as areporter, but as a suburban housewife. . . ." (20). Here she enacts that whichCampbell finds characteristic of the consciousness raising "genre": the absence of aleader and the creation of "sisterhood."40 Moreover, Friedan's rhetoric echoes the"voices" women shared in formal and informal consciousness raising groups. Forexample, she describes an informal gathering among housewives:

I heard a mother of four . . . say in a tone of quiet desperation, "the problem." And the othersknew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her

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children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problemthat has no name. They began, hesitantly, to talk about it. Later, after they had picked uptheir children at nursery school and taken them home to nap, two of the women cried, in sheerrelief, just to know they were not alone. (19-20).

By filling over a hundred pages with descriptions of monotonous duties,examples, and testimonies, Friedan places her reader in an imaginary woman-to-woman conversation. Furthermore, because her rhetoric takes a written form, muchof the text resembles journal entries. By enumerating personal experiences of womenall over the United States who feel suffocated by the feminine mystique, the bookfunctions as its own consciousness raising session and also dramatizes the extent ofthe problem.

A final characteristic of women's expression is suggested by feminist literarytheorists who often distinguish between a female and male voice. Penelope andWolfe posit that "female expressive modes reflect an epistemology that perceives theworld in terms of ambiguities, pluralities, process, continuities and complexrelationships."41 In part, Friedan's thesis deals with an ambiguity - the "femininemystique." She also speaks of "complex relationships" in her description of childrenwhose mothers live the mystique. She explains, for example, that boys, girls, andeven Korean War soldiers were "unable to cope with a new and primitive situation;""passive, dependent, infantile, purposeless," passionless, bored and "incapable ofhandling such freedom" because their mothers, living in the "glory of motherhood,"were intensely preoccupied with their children (284-287). Consequently, the rela-tionship was a "symbiosis," the process by which . . . two organisms live as one"(288-290). Moreover, Friedan sees this process of "progressive dehumanization" asperpetual. She claims, "I think it will not end, as long as the feminine mystiquemasks the emptiness of the housewife role, encouraging girls to evade their owngrowth by vicarious living, by non-commitment" (304).

Although she advocates the termination of that process, Friedan maintains a"female voice" in her proposed solution, acknowledging pluralities, processes andambiguities involved in women's escape of the mystique.

It would be quite wrong for me to offer any woman easy how-to answers to this problem.There are no easy answers, in America today; it is difficult, painful, and takes perhaps a longtime for each woman to find her own answer (342).

In her "female voice," Friedan addresses the multiplicity of possible processes bywhich women can become autonomous human beings.

The foregoing list of qualities typical of the "female voice" is neither exhaustivenor exclusive. Of course it would be misleading to imply that these characteristicsare absent in men's speech. For example, Lewis, among others, attributes RonaldReagan's success to his storytelling which "is fundamental to the relationshipbetween Reagan and his audience. . . . Reagan's message is a story."43 Jamiesonargues that "by employing a self-disclosive, narrative, personal, 'womanly' style,Ronald Reagan . . . pioneered a revolution . . . in televised communication. . . . "44

The aforementioned characteristics are not exclusive to women, but they simply aremore typical.45 Furthermore, it is difficult to determine whether this "voice" istypically female or stereotypically female. On this point many feminist scholarsdisagree. Nevertheless, an overwhelming number agree that gender speech differ-ences do exist and that women are more inclined to disclose personally via concrete

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description and narratives, display an emotional-orientation, avoid speaking asleader or expert, and reflect a perception of the world as ambiguous, plural,processional, continuous, and relationally complex. What is interesting, however, isthat although Friedan projects this voice, she also projects that which scholarscharacterize as male.

THE "MALE VOICE"

In addition to her role of "reporter," Friedan also portrays a "scholar." Shecouches some of her argument in the language of a scientific experiment, providingan hypothesis and at one point even comparing herself to a geologist (32-37).Primarily, this role appears in the chapters on Freud, Mead, and the "Sexual Sell"(advertisers) as well as the final chapter in which she guides her readers to action.Ironically, embedded in this persona is what especially at that time might have beenconsidered an appealing stereotypical male voice. Just as research reveals character-istics unique to women's discourse, it also reveals qualities found (or perhapsperceived) more often in men.

First, in contrast to the "female voice," men's discourse, particularly indiscussion with other men, is generally impersonal and unemotional. Jourard andLasakow report that men typically reveal less personal information about them-selves to others than do women.46 This characteristic is exhibited by Friedan to theextent that, while she echoes the female voice by telling personal narratives, rarelydo those stories reveal her experience. Also, according to Jamieson, where womenfocus on feelings in conversation, men focus on "facts and information" which, inturn, makes them "more comfortable than women in a combative 'debate' style."47

The chapters in The Feminine Mystique which describe the theories of Freud,functionalism, and Margaret Mead, for example, remain highly impersonal andunemotional, providing "facts" which explain the growth and perpetuation of thefeminine mystique among psychologists and sociologists. Chapter five, "The SexualSolipsism of Sigmund Freud," for example, is factual and impersonal with a lexiconcontaining such words as "neurosis," "rubies," "opprobrium," "functionalism,""sanctimonious," "aberration," "puritanical," and "tragicomic" (103-125).

Secondly, assuming men's discourse is more fact-oriented than women's, itfollows that the male voice is perceived as "logical," characterized by appeals to"reason" and reliance on evidence. Montgomery and Norton conclude that maleshave more concern for accuracy, documentation, and proof in both informative andargumentative discourse.48 One would be hard pressed to call The Feminine Mys-tique illogical or factually ill-grounded, for although Friedan reports "personalstories," en masse those narratives provide overwhelming evidence for her claims.Furthermore, Friedan relies heavily on statistics, informing her reader, for example:

Of the top ten per cent of graduates of Indiana high schools in 1955, only fifteen per cent ofthe boys did not continue their education: thirty-six per cent of the girls did not go o n . . . . Inthe fifties, women also dropped out of college at a faster rate than the men: only thirty-sevenper cent of the women graduated, in contrast to fifty-five per cent of the men (162-163).

Her analysis of manipulation by advertisers, of sex-directed education, and offunctional sociology are all highly logical and thoroughly supported.

For example, in chapter six, "The Functional Freeze, The Feminine Protest,and Margaret Mead," Friedan leads her reader inductively through the work of

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Mead to illuminate biases and overgeneralizations in her conclusions. Friedanrecognizes the potential in Mead's discoveries to liberate women, but argues thatbecause her studies were limited to primitive cultures (where primary needs arebiological), Mead highlighted biological functions of the sexes and ignored culturaldifferences-differences which Friedan believes change the level of primary needs.Consequently, argues Friedan, the "feminine mystique" used Mead to justify theglorification of the female sexual function (motherhood). Certainly this logic echoesthe typically or stereotypically "male" logic.

Third, where Penelope and Wolfe characterize women's expression as represen-tative of ambiguities, pluralities, processes and continuities, they find "patriarchal"expression reflective of "an epistemology that perceives the world in terms ofcategories, dichotomies, roles, stasis and causation."49 Friedan speaks extensively ofthe causes of depression, discontentment, neurosis, and infantilism among house-wives. She also frequently categorizes the proponents of the feminine mystique,referring to such "groups" as, for example, "popularizers," "inadvertent distorters,""orthodox Freudian converts," "bandwagon faddists," psychoanalysts, functional-ists, educators, and advertisers (See, respectively, 122-125, 150-181, 206-232).Moreover, she broadly categorizes and polarizes women as either educated and thushappy or uneducated and unhappy, without regard to additional social-psychologi-cal factors. As if all women were eligible for and desiring of higher education,Friedan argues

The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary andeven dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continueto save, American women (357).

Thus, typical/stereotypical male discourse is heard in Friedan's causal explanations,categorizations, and dichotomizations.

As a fourth "male" characteristic, Kramarae argues that those who have thepower to name the world are in a position to influence reality, and that traditionallythis power has belonged to men. "Naming is a power used to tame and domesticatewomen and nature; naming separates men from nature and women."50 Conse-quently, many female experiences lack a name. Since it is the male voice whichtraditionally names, Friedan again speaks "as a man" by labeling "the problem withno name" the "feminine mystique." Friedan created a phrase which verbalized thesymptoms that so many 1960s housewives experienced and knew abstractly butcould not verbalize concretely or, therefore, control.

Finally, where women "give mutual support" and "offer reassurances" whentrying to solve problems, men, according to Maltz and Borker, "hear problems asrequests for solutions and respond by giving direction and advice; act as experts, orlecture their audience."51 Thus, a man's rhetoric is often "directive," as he, theassumed leader and expert, moves his audience "toward inducing acceptance of aspecific program or a commitment to group action" rather than allowing audiencemembers to draw individual conclusions.52 As mentioned above, Friedan acknowl-edges the multiplicity of possible solutions for women, recognizing the absence ofeasy "how-to" answers. On the other hand, in the final chapter she advises women totake two particular steps: 1) "to see housework for what it is—not a career, butsomething that must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible," and 2) "to seemarriage as it really is, brushing aside the veil of over-glorification imposed by thefeminine mystique" (342). Moreover, on a national level, Friedan advocates a

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specific program and commitment which urges educators to "see to it that womenmake a lifetime commitment... to a field of thought, to work of serious importanceto society" (366). Abandoning personal narratives in her conclusion, she ultimatelyoffers specific suggestions for how this can be accomplished: a national educationalprogram, similar to the G.I. bill, for women wishing to resume or continue theireducation (370-378).

Furthermore, Friedan speaks as typically male expert/leaders who presumablythemselves would examine the history of their subjects (as Friedan does in describ-ing the "passionate journey" of the early feminists, and the emergence of Freudianthought, functionalism and sex-directed educators), the current problems (whichshe describes as the "mistaken choice" that women are making between careers andfamily-life), and the consequences thereof (which she demonstrates as unreasonablesex-seeking, progressive dehumanization of children, and loss of individuality). In sodoing, Friedan's "scholar" speaks as "male."

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Just as its grossly unfair to suggest that men never personally disclose or revealemotion or that they always speak logically with "factual" evidence and arguments,it is equally inaccurate to imply that most women never construct logical arguments.A reading of any speech by Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony wouldprove otherwise as they build soundly reasoned arguments.53 Nevertheless, researchindicates that certain features consistently appear dominant in each sex. Thus, it isparticularly striking to hear so much of both voices in The Feminine Mystique.

It appears that by using a style which embodies both "female" and "male"voice types and/or stereotypes, Friedan essentially rejects separation of the two asmutually exclusive, binary opposites, positing instead that there exists an androgy-nous voice, belonging to all persons. Hence, she overcomes the feminine-masculinedichotomy by incorporating both sexes in a transcendent human voice which can belabeled "androgynous rhetoric." Strategically, moreover, this voice softens thethreat that women who wish to escape the mystique must yield all their femininity.In essence, Friedan enacts the ability of a woman to be that which is naturally,rather than commercially, feminine and competent. Ultimately, therefore, not onlythrough her substantive claims but also by employing the rhetoric of androgyny,Friedan creates an audience whose ideology supports androgyny and, in Black'swords, "cues the readers to view their world" as androgynous—a world whichtranscends oppressive gender dichotomies.

The success of The Feminine Mystique, then, was its creation of an idealisti-cally androgynous audience through its stylistic use of the "rhetoric of androgyny"which ultimately transcends oppressive gender roles. From this analysis, one candraw several conclusions regarding both The Feminine Mystique and the implica-tions of androgynous rhetoric.

First, many feminists maintain that the "male" and "female" voices areincompatible. Many women of the 1960s employed an exclusively "male" style ofdiscourse, though they quickly discovered that its appeal to women failed. "Speechused by women in the women's liberation movement was patterned after that usedby men in the New Left," employing a militarist vocabulary. Kramer explains that"when used by women, masculine rhetoric changes meaning . . . " and is "not heardas containing the same power and political significance as when used by men." Itsimply did not help women achieve their goals. Consequently, other feminists have

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78 COMMUNICATION STUDIES SUMMER 1989

urged women to assert the "female voice" and reject the "male" altogether. Forexample, Moffat and Painter believe that "women [fiction] writers of the future willstand on the remarkably strong shoulders of women diarists who wrote to please noaudience but themselves."55 Hence, they will write increasingly in the "femalevoice". Kramer suggests that "before women assume that male speech is the bestmodel they might benefit from considering the positive qualities of female speech."56

If those who assume the two styles to be mutually incompatible are correct, then onemust conclude that Friedan's styles are simply inconsistent.

This analysis reveals, however, that Friedan's rhetoric creates an audiencewhose ideology includes the "ideal" of androgyny. Her rhetoric thus implies that todeny the presence of both "male" and "female" voices in all bodies would be to denythe oppressive nature of definitive typical and/or stereotypical gender roles-roleswhich Friedan ultimately seeks to obliterate. Because the mainstream feministstraditionally focus on gender similarities rather than differences, for Friedan toembody only one sex voice would nullify the created audience's goal to move beyondthe confines of traditionally "female" environments into the "human" society.

But hesitation to accept androgynous discourse also comes from feminists suchas Treichler and Kramarae who see a contradiction in women's language style andthe male-oriented style expected in academic settings. They assert that "the oftencontradictory demands of the two writing traditions pose a dilemma for manyfeminist academic."57 Similarly, Johnson attacks the proposed "androgynouslanguage" for its failure to provide female academicians with their own identity.

On the surface, this approach appears to expand the options and likelihood of positive resultsfor women. At a deeper level, it places women in a precarious position by fostering anambiguous self-identity. If a woman sometimes talks like a woman and sometimes talks like aman, who is she?58

Johnson's concern brings to question the fact that the male and female voices in TheFeminine Mystique generally "sing successive solos" rather than duets and are,therefore, kept "separate but equal." Apparently, Friedan herself stands caughtbetween (on one hand) her proposition that women must be acknowledged andassume roles as humans before wives and mothers, and (on the other hand) thereality that outside social roles, each gender has its own identity in such matters as,for example, styles of discourse. Therefore, one is left to consider the extent to which"androgyny" will remain merely an ideal. Moreover, as Johnson suggests, the appealof androgyny is unbalanced, at least (for instance) in academic circles, wherewomen will feel they are gaining from their embrace of the "male voice," but "menare more likely to think that they are relinquishing something by developing their"feminine" side.59

Overall, Friedan's use of androgynous rhetoric in The Feminine Mystiqueworks because it does not explicitly advocate androgyny but subtly creates anaudience which accepts this ideology. Consequently, the readers have no choice butto include the female voice, for it is in Friedan's rhetoric of androgyny that theiraudience hears its "cues as to how it is to view the world."

NOTES1 Betty Friedan, "Epilogue" to The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1983), 383. In the

analysis which follows, the original 1963 edition will be cited except when, as here, a later edition offers insight fromadded sections such as this 1983 epilogue.

2 Friedan, "Epilogue," 383.

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3 Friedan, "Eiplogue," 387-392.4 Friedan, "Epilogue," 393.5 Betty Friedan, "Twenty Years After," in The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell Publishing, 1983), xviii.6 Friedan, "Twenty," xxv.7 Friedan, "Epilogue," 393-395.8 Quoted on the cover of The Feminine Mystique, 1983.9 Maren Lockwood Carden, The New Feminist Movement (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1974), 67,

139.10 Carden, Movement, 103.11 Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 59.12 See, for example, Betty Friedan, "Fraud of Femininity: Excerpts from The Feminine Mystique," McCall's

March 1963; 81; Betty Friedan, "G.I. Bill for Women? Excerpts from The Feminine Mystique," Ladies HomeJournal. January 1963; 24.

13 Ann Summers, "Editor's Essay," Ms. December 1988; 8.14 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell Publishing, 1983), 9.15 Friedan, "Twenty," ix.16 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University

Press, 1975), ix.17 Gloria Steinem, Address in the Forrestal Lecture Series at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD

Reprinted in Modules in Speech Communication, eds. Ronald Applbaum and Roderick Hart (Chicago: ScienceResearch Associates, Inc., 1978), 46-50.

18 Edwin Black, "The Second Persona," Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970): 112.19 Black, "Second," 112.20 Black, "Second," 112.2l Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1963), 345, since this edition is

cited often, references will appear as page numbers in parentheses.22 For a full description of different branches of feminism (i.e. radical, materialist, Marxist, etc.) see Alison M.

Jagger, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), 84.23 Early feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were considered

relatively "mainstream" in their time, and each focused on education as the key to the liberation of women. Seeexcerpts from these authors in The Feminist Papers, Alice S. Rossi, ed. (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1974).

24 Black, "Second," 113.25 Black, "Second," 113.26 Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 82.27 Quoted in Paula A. Treichler and Cheris Kramarae, "Women's Talk in the Ivory Tower," Communication

Quarterly 31 (1983): 119.28 Julia Penelope (Stanley) and Susan J. Wolfe, "Consciousness as Style: Style as Aesthetic" in Language,

Gender, and Society, eds. Barrie Thorne, Cheris Kramarae, and Nancy Henley (Rowley, MA: Newbury HousePublishers, Inc., 1983), 135.

29 For specific examples, see Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place (New York: Harper and Row, 1975),8; Penelope and Wolfe, "Consciousness," 137.

30 Jamieson, 82.31 Cheris Kramarae, "Women (and men) as Rational Speakers," in Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks

for Analysis (Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, Inc., 1981), 144-145.32 Florence Denmark, "Styles of Leadership," Psychology of Women Quarterly 2 (1977): 99-113.33 Jamieson, 82.34 Joanne E. Cooper, "Shaping Meaning: Women's Diaries, Journals, and Letters - The Old and The New,"

Women's Studies International Forum 10 (1987): 97.35 Lenice Ingram Bacon, American Patchwork Quilts (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1973),

87-88.36 Bacon, 90.37 Ricky Clark, "The Needlework of an American Lady: Social History in Quilts," in In the Heart of

Pennsylvania: Symposium Papers, ed. Jeannette Lasansky (Lewisburg, PA: Oral Traditions Project, 1986), 65.38 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, "The Rhetoric of Women's Liberation: An Oxymoron," Quarterly Journal of

Speech 59 (1973): 74-86.39 Cheris Kramarae, "Epilogue," in Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks for Analysis (Rowley, MA:

Newbury House Publishers, Inc., 1981), 157-158.40 Campbell, 78-79.41 Penelope and Wolfe, 126.

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42 Friedan describes this "symbiosis" as a four-part process of progressive dehumanization in which 1) "awoman who evades growth by clinging to the housewife role will . . . suffer severe pathology" as she wants forpersonal identity. 2) "Her motherhood will be increasingly pathological; both for her and for her children." 3)"Mothers with infantile selves will have even more infantile children, who will retreat even earlier into phantasyfrom the tests of reality" (290). 4) Though social expectations lead boys to grow toward a strong self, girls becomevictims.

43 William F. Lewis. "Telling America's Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency," QuarterlyJournal of Speech 73 (1987): 281.

44 Jamieson, 89.45 For further discussion on exclusivity of voices, see Jamieson, Eloquence, 83-84.46 S.M. Jourard and P. Lasakow, "Some Factors in Self-Disclosure," Journal of Abnormal and Social

Psychology 56 (1958): 91-98.47 Jamieson, Eloquence, 81-82.48 Barbara M. Montgomery and Robert W. Norton, "Sex Differences and Similarities in Communicator Style,"

Communication Monographs 48 (1981): 131.49 Penelope and Wolfe, 126.50 Kramarae, Cheris, Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks for Analysis (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House,

1981), 126.51 Quoted in Triechler and Kramarae, "Ivory Tower," 120.52 Campbell, 78.53 For samples of such speeches, see Patricia Kennedy and Gloria O'Shields, We Shall Be Heard (Dubuque, IA:

Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1983).54 Cheris Kramarae, "Women's and Men's Ratings of Their Own and Ideal Speech," Communication

Quarterly 26 (1978): 10.55 Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter, Revelations: Diaries of Women (New York: Vintage, 1975), 12.56 Kramarae, "Ratings," 11.57 Treichler and Kramarae, "Ivory Tower," 122.58 Fern Johnson, "Political and Pedagogical Implications of Attitudes Towards Women's Language," Commu-

nication Quarterly 31 (1983): 137.59 Johnson, 137.

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