Helen andelin fascinating womanhood how to#

Over the years, the book has grown from less than 200 pages to more than 400, with most of the additional pages featuring testimonials from women whose miserable marriages were saved once they began following the book's advice. Now in its sixth edition, Fascinating Womanhood has sold more than 2 million copies. There's вЂњabduction and rape, sometimes followed by brutality and murder,вЂќ as well as вЂњvicious dogs, snakes, a high precipice, a deep canyon, or other dangers of nature,вЂќ and even вЂњunreal dangersвЂќ such as вЂњstrange noises, spiders, mice and even dark shadows.вЂќ Women must also sympathize with their husbands' difficulties while never expecting sympathy in return, because a woman who reveals the truth about her emotional life risks injuring her husband's fragile pride by forcing him to see that he is not always an ideal mate. The means by which women manipulate men into loving, desiring, and protecting them are familiar: FW envisions women as weak, dependent, submissive, selfless, and in need of protection from a laundry list of dangers enumerated by Andelin.

They might realize that they're being manipulated, but as long as this manipulation is perpetrated by saucy, pert, childlike women, men are okay with it.

Its central thesis asserted that the most essential gender difference is that вЂњlove is more important to a woman and admiration is more important to a man.вЂќ According to Andelin, nothing motivates men more than pride, and nothing causes them more suffering than a blow to it men's need to be admired is so overriding that they cannot endure criticism or even rational conversation-which is why she informs women that вЂњit's better to surrender your point of view to a man than to win an argument.вЂќ Instead, men must be manipulated.

Helen andelin fascinating womanhood how to#

Like the bestselling how-to guides for would-be wives that followed in its wake- The Rules, The Surrendered Wife-Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood told women what they wanted, and then explained how to get it. But Fascinating Womanhood, while lesser-known than Friedan's polemic, has had its own powerful impact on notions of women and their potential. We all know how The Feminine Mystique changed the world for countless women. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan complains that вЂњthe only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman is permitted is the pursuit of a man.вЂќ Meanwhile, Helen Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood urges women to embrace that primary passion, because it leads to ultimate fulfillment and complete happiness. Winner of the Mormon History Association's Best Biography Award.Call it a feminist coincidence: Two books published in 1963 examine gender, sex, and marriage, but arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions. 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.ДЄndelinвЂ™s message calling for the return to traditional roles appealed to many in a time of uncertainty and radical social change.

As AndelinвЂ™s notoriety grew, so did the backlash from her critics. A womanвЂ™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.Д¬ountering 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 womenвЂ™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.