Frosty Book Review: Fascinating Womanhood

Book Review: Fascinating Womanhood

Author: Helen B. Andelin

Date: 1963

Publisher: Pacific Press (how could you?!)

ISBN: none

Length: 343 pages

Quote: “This Book...will teach you...How to obtain those things in life which mean so much—things...for which you are dependent upon your husband.”

Often this web site presents a book with enough reservations to offend the writers we're trying to encourage. I regret this, but the truth is, when a bookseller posts an honest review that says something like "This book should appeal to very few people: these are the ones," the writer may think the review should have said "This book is great and should be required reading for everybody," but the cautious, tepid review is likely to cause the copy of the book I own to sell within two weeks. Once in a while, however, I read a book that makes me glad the writer has gone beyond discouragement. If ever this web site praised a book with faint damns, or marketed it to a limited audience by disparaging it, this is the book. I would not have wanted to encourage this writer while she was alive.

It is possible to read Fascinating Womanhood as a joke. Almost every page contains a line guaranteed to make adult readers say “Hah!”

“You will welcome the most tedious monologue as giving you an opportunity to observe the man’s character and to seek out the admirable qualities.”

“She wants a strong arm to lean on, but the man backs away from his position...She should reason that someone must lead and that he is more qualified than she.”

“What happens when the...man comes in contact with an obviously able, intellectual and competent woman...? He simply doesn’t feel like a man any longer.”

(Competent women wish! If only it were so simple—if, say, a girl who made Phi Beta Kappa at McGill could just count on not being asked for a date until she met a fellow who made Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford. No such luck. Though far from being either the cutest or the brightest young thing who ever made the Dean’s List at Berea, I remember that for at least twenty-five years the line of creatures that were obviously never going to become men, in the sense that my close relatives and the men I took seriously were men, but they all wanted to show me that at least they had male body parts, seemed to have no end. Well over fifty, dressed like a nun, with my grey hair chopped off short and visible sweat on my unadorned face, I met one of them during the typing of this post. We as a society really need to work harder on training little boys to understand that Real Manhood begins with the appearance of an aversion to making unwanted babies.)

The sad thing is that, in 1963, real couples were trying to take this kind of idiocy seriously. The world might not come to an end if older women had pink-collar jobs, after they couldn’t possibly have any more babies, but if they earned fair wages for those jobs, men would just fall apart at the seams! Nobody could live happily ever after if women admitted that most of us can balance checkbooks! Marriage wouldn’t work for anybody if some women persisted in living alone, travelling alone,doing jobs...if any bride was ever prepared to survive as a widow!

Some women really tried to crawl back into the nursery, to become “childlike” and “helpless,” to believe that no woman could possibly be worth half as much as a man on any job. I remember some of them. They tried to recruit my mother into their belief system, to convince her (and themselves) that her and her mother’s and sister’s medical problems were proof that God didn’t want women to be competent wage earners and also devoted wives and mothers. (To be fair, little was known about the celiac gene.) In the 1970s, when her mental function was obviously being impaired by her physical condition, Mother tried buying into that bill of goods. It did not serve her well.

The immediate result in our family was a drastic increase in domestic unpleasantness for all of us. Andelin falsely claimed that, if her audience noticed increased unpleasantness, it was a temporary effect of a transition process, rather than the beginning of a long-term effect of a dysfunctional family dynamic. Dad didn’t leave, or try to pressure Mother into going back to work—she was ill—but he could hardly help noticing that her effort to stuff herself back into the cradle did not make her more lovable, or happier, or anything of the kind. Indulging her hypothyroid sluggishness was the worst thing any of us could possibly do for Mother. I grew up thinking of being a housewife as a sort of Nightmare Life-in-Death, having seen Mother’s every step away from “careerism” and toward domesticity coincide with a visible loss of ground to her illness. My natural sister grew up hating all things “feminine,” then reliving a dysfunctional model of marriage because that was what had been preached to her, then losing the overgrown little boy she’d married anyway and turning against men.

I did eventually embrace the idea of marriage, monogamy, even submissiveness...but not because society-as-a-whole was denying women’s competence; because I’d found a man who respected my competence, whose competence I respected, and we’d become Partners for Life. When people become a synergistic team, it’s because they have complementary talents; each has something to learn from the other. My husband had a gift for making money. I was glad he had that gift. I respected his talents, asked no questions, was the kind of “childlike follower” Andelin advised all wives to be as far as his money was concerned...and that’s the one thing I’ve regretted most.

Andelin and her fans overlooked a few essential biological facts: Women tend to outlive men their own age; yet women also tend to grow up faster than men and, for that reason, marry men who are older than they are. Nobody wants to be a widow a minute before it’s necessary but, realistically, most wives who don’t become divorcees eventually become widows. It is irresponsible for women to become wives without being prepared to survive as widows.

And what about the men? Does their happiness really depend on everyone’s working, throughout their lives, to help them continue to believe a story more palpably false than the Tooth Fairy? Men may be wired to want to compete and prove that they can do things “better” than other people do them; since most individuals can do at least a few things “better” than most other individuals, men probably can outscore their wives in some kind of competition or other. And the sensible wife will cheer when they find out what kind of competition that is, because about the only group advantage men have over women is upper body strength—a talent for taking out the garbage—and most of them don’t keep that for very long. (I'd agree with Andelin, and with better authors, that the sensible wife ought to be the head cheerleader for whatever individual advantages, talents, achievements, etc., her individual husband has.)

And it may be true that extroverts are incapable of working in synergistic teams or of feeling True Love, so that Andelin’s way of thinking did may have done its worst damage to only about forty percent of the population...Women brought up to confuse femininity with “childlike dependency,” and men brought up to confuse masculinity with delusions of superiority, are very unlikely to be able to find and marry Partners for Life. Rushing into premature marriages based on money and/or physical feelings, people grow up to lead parallel lives for the sake of their (too many) children (born too soon; emotionally scarred by having immature parents and too many siblings). If they don’t blame the children and each other for their lonely, frustrated lives, they’re saints. That wives who had been carefully prevented from learning how to earn a living really might have starved, if their husbands walked out, may have kept some husbands at home; it also motivated several murders. If your wife is nothing but a sort of house pet who can’t survive on her own and can’t be adopted by some other family, and you’re no longer doing what you acquired her for the purpose of doing, isn’t the humane solution to have her put down?

Nor should we overlook the damage the Fascinating Womanhood model of marriage did to Christianity. People claimed this dysfunctional model of marriage was based on the Bible. It’s not. It’s based on the French Socialist philosophies of Comte and Rousseau, which were developed with a specific intention of displacing Christianity as a dominant influence on French culture.

What the Bible actually says about marriage reflects a radically different culture from ours. Far from upholding an ideal of housewifery, the Bible comes from a culture in which people did not necessarily want to maintain houses. (Abraham was living in a house, probably a two-story brick house with a gravity-fed fountain of running water tinkling in the courtyard, when he was called to leave the city and live in a tent.) Most marriages were contracted by parents; romantic love was nice if it happened after marriage, but not necessary. The Bible mentions two young men daring to choose their own brides—by way of explanation of why both were despised and cheated by their in-laws. In practice most house-dwellers, in Bible days, probably lived under one roof, but tent-dwellers lived in individual tents; Isaac’s mother’s tent was not his father’s nor his own, although he was the heir who had the right to give it to his bride after his mother's death.

The Bible includes stories of six couples, plus what may or may not be meant as a single coherent story in the Song of Songs, that are told in enough detail to be considered romantic: Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah, Boaz and Ruth, David and Abigail, Ahasuerus and Esther. Five of these couples, plus the couple in the Songs, meet “at work,” and the women are considered attractive because they’re doing heavy physical work (just like a man, and better than some). Moses specifically defends Zipporah and her sisters against male bullies. Abigail’s act of virtue includes leading a crew of male employees in defiance of the orders of her husband, “The Fool”; she expects him to die in a fit of bad temper any day, and he does. The Songs specifically mention the girl being sunburnt “black” from working in the field and meeting her lover while herding sheep.

And that’s the cultural background behind Proverbs 31, “The Alphabet of the Perfect Wife.” The perfect wife is a diligent worker, a shrewd investor, and a clever scholar. She teaches. Far from being “childlike,” she’s a good manager. She starts small, selling surplus fabric she’s woven after “all of her household are clothed in double garments,” and continues working and saving until she goes into real estate: “She considers a field, and buys it; she plants a vineyard by the strength of her hands.”

In ancient Semitic culture fat women seem generally to have been considered prettier than thin ones, and pale, veiled ones prettier than dark, sunburnt ones. A woman following the Proverbs 31 model of femininity would not have had much time to sit around growing fat and pale. Perhaps that’s why the observer noted, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,” rather than commenting on how pretty the ideal wife is; the Bible writers weren’t shy about mentioning the physical beauty of men or women. In practice, hardworking women tend to be healthy as well as trim-figured, and, unlike some lazy “beauties” who sat around sewing cushions to loll on all day, the Proverbs 31 Lady lives to be an active grandmother. The husband’s reaction is that he “can safely trust in her,” and with her as a partner he will be “known among the elders.”

For me, reaching a marriageable age (in my case, thirty) included identifying and resolving the genetic condition that handicapped my mother, aunt, grandmother, great-grandmother, and other relatives on that side. It included establishing that I knew what I wanted to have and where I wanted to be, could get a reasonable amount of what I wanted for myself and enjoy it by myself, and honestly preferred being with my husband in “our” house to being alone in “my” house. (“My” house was in Virginia; “his” house was in Maryland; “our” house was near our business in Washington.)

And it also included observing what became of those women who preached “childlike dependency” for all women. The advocates of domesticity who could be said to finish strong in life, Dale Evans, Phyllis Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye, never had spouted idiocy about women being incompetent; they merely defended full-time mothering and home health care-giving as legitimate “jobs” that can’t be paid in cash because there’s not enough money on Earth to pay for them. The ones who really tried to stifle their talents and become full-time parasites did not age well at all. Most were divorced, some hospitalized, and a few had committed suicide, before I was old enough to choose a Christian marriage.

In my mid-twenties I even spent some time “crazy-sitting” a divorcee whose selfishness had erupted after years of suppression, leading to a midlife spree of disorderly conduct and a quick tour of various state institutions most people prefer not to see from the inside. Did that woman ever ruin her life! She’s still living so I have no right to tell her story, but yes, she has well and truly ruined her life. Let’s just say that her children, who never asked her to “sacrifice her life” for them, are unlikely ever to “rise up and call her blessed.”

And that’s the relatively intelligent, sober specimen of the “helpless, dependent, childlike” school of femininity, the one who’s unvisited by her unmarried adult offspring in a state nursing home today. Others, who sought pharmaceutical help to maintain that Stepford Wives manner, died twitching and gibbering on urban back streets or locked hospital wards, long ago.

Thank God I grew up with more role models of older women who were their self-employed husbands’ Partners for Life, in small farms and small businesses, and who eventually became grief-stricken but otherwise reasonably well-off widows. For them being full-time mothers, while their children were young enough to need such, was no handicap. Far from it. Mothering skills are basically management skills. But the woman who hid her own light under a bushel to maintain her husband’s ego in a state of unhealthy artificial inflation, agitated for other women to be underpaid or unemployed to inflate the egos of incompetent men generally, refused to learn to take care of herself in her own home, might as well have added physical suicide to her list.

Before selling a copy of Fascinating Womanhood I feel obligated to say that of course I think women should go ahead and do anything they can do, just like a man and better than some. It won’t cause all the inferior men to declutter themselves out of your life, but it will thin the herd a bit, and every little bit helps. (We do have to live with our hormones while waiting to find Partners for Life; the fewer warty toads we’re tempted to handle, the better.) The man you really want to marry, younger sister, shares your passions to some extent; he probably is stronger than you are (for now) and undoubtedly does some things better than you do, even beyond taking out the garbage, and you don’t need to be told to admire his talents. And he probably thinks your ability to do your thing, your way, even if your thing is being a soldier or a mechanic, is cute.

I knew one couple of Partners for Life where the wife was bigger, stronger, and older, at first, and also she was the one who became disabled first. And he was the home care-giver—when both of them were well past eighty.

More often the husband becomes disabled first, and dies first. That’s when the advantages of the competent wife over the “childlike, dependent” kind really come into play. Little Miss Makes-Big-Boy-Look-Good falls apart long before Ms. Competent would say the real trials begin. I knew a “childlike, dependent” wife who at least cleared herself out of her husband’s and children’s way, while her husband was still able to walk, just because she’d been told he had multiple sclerosis. Hah. He is still walking. I wonder whether she still paces around the hospital? 

So, is all the advice in Fascinating Womanhood altogether bad? (I did once review a book with an allusion to one of Dorothy Parker’s deadliest reviews, “I suppose ‘a’ and ‘the’ are all well enough...”) No...Andelin was a Christian, albeit a very confused one, and some of what she had to say about marriage was valid for relationships generally.

Page 45: “[S]uggestions and pressures do not change men [or women]...But in a miraculous way men [or women, or children] are apt to improve when they are fully accepted.”

We can test this with female friends too. Consider the dorm mate who seems “interesting, but perhaps lonely,” who overtly rejects any effort the old prep school crowd may undertake to make her over in the image of their little look-alike clique. She has developed her own style for her own reasons; the list of people she may want to please does not include them. Barging up to her with a mental attitude of “Oh you poor dear, your mother didn’t bring you up right at all, let me take over that job,” is a good way to get your face slapped—literally slapped, if you happen not to be older than her mother! If the prep school crowd are ever going to claim her as a friend, the friendship will begin when some of them find ways to show appreciation of something she does.

Page 208: “It is always easier...to stay at arm’s length from someone else’s problem, rather than to defend what is just and right...No one likes to get involved, but if wrong can be brought to light and justice rendered, then we should not hesitate to take action.”

Most women seldom disagree with their husbands on major moral issues, and when they do, “wrong needs to be brought to light” is likely to be an understatement; this one, too, is easy to test in same-sex friendships. Sometimes it’s peer pressure that needs to be defied by “direct action.” Sometimes an effective way to defy oppression and punish evil happens to involve acting like a gracious, mature lady: rejecting the products of the unethical corporation, or ignoring the nasty gossip about the friend who’s not interested in fitting into the clique...

Page 321: “[N]ever doubt a man’s ability to solve a problem...do not give him the impression that you expect it will be easy.” Unfortunately Andelin ruins this idea, which Shaunti Feldhahn has explained much better, by suggesting that women ever can or should confuse our children’s fathers with our own fathers, which I find obscene.

But try thinking of it in terms of human competence and liberation. Which is more important: reaching Point B on my own schedule, or going out with a friend in the friend’s car? If the former, it’s up to me to get myself there. If the latter, common courtesy tells me to sit back and enjoy the ride. Or, what do we want our husbands to do when our needlework is tangled up—barge in and start slicing off the tangled threads with no idea what we intended to do with any of it? Carelessly say “Oh, that’s no problem, you’re always doing that kind of thing anyway, you can always do it all over”? This is a valid bit of insight into any personal relationship, even if Andelin did step on it.

Even so, I say, nobody should read Fascinating Womanhood for these tidbits of good advice. The good advice in this book can be found, usually better expressed, in better books. One should read Fascinating Womanhood for the insights it offers into why women ever thought that abandoning the whole idea of marriage might be liberating, or maybe becoming political lesbians would be. During the fight for fair wages and hiring practices, why did some women seem to bring so much anger to a position that could easily be supported by simple facts? This is why. This book is a museum piece but it needs to be preserved as evidence.

To buy it here, send $10 per first edition, or $5 for an easier to find "updated" edition, plus $5 per package and $1 per online payment, as discussed at the Payment Information Page. Depending on whether we find the hardcover or one of the paperback printings for a better price, you can add three, seven, or maybe more books to the same $5 package.