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 “abduction and rape, sometimes followed by brutality and murder,” as well as “vicious dogs, snakes, a high precipice, a deep canyon, or other dangers of nature,” and even “unreal dangers” such as “strange noises, spiders, mice and even dark shadows.” 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 “love is more important to a woman and admiration is more important to a man.” 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 “it's better to surrender your point of view to a man than to win an argument.” Instead, men must be manipulated.
FASCINATING WOMANHOOD DOCUMENTARY 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 “the only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman is permitted is the pursuit of a man.” Meanwhile, Helen Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood urges women to embrace that primary passion, because it leads to ultimate fulfillment and complete happiness. Call it a feminist coincidence: Two books published in 1963 examine gender, sex, and marriage, but arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions.
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