The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“On February 19, 1963, a troublesome, imperfect, controversial woman named Betty Friedan published a troublesome, imperfect, controversial book titled The Feminine Mystique. The book didn’t solve the problem. But it did put a name to it, shining a light that helped women who felt isolated and powerless find one another, and their voices. That has been the start of every revolution.”

In the epigraph, Bostwick makes clear that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is central to the novel. Accordingly, Friedan and her book play a key role in the story as the first book that the women read in their book club; they even christen themselves the Betty Friedan book club. As Bostwick acknowledges here that the book did not offer perfect answers; instead, it began a conversation and gave many women context and language to voice their feelings. This is how Friedan’s book and the book club function in Bostwick’s novel as well, offering the women in the story a shared connection and vindication of their feelings and desires.

“Margaret liked that her daughter knew her own mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it. It was an underappreciated quality in women, one that often faded with age.”

Margaret’s acknowledgment that her daughter’s confidence is not appreciated in women is typical of the novel’s time period of 1960s America. Margaret’s appreciation for her daughter’s boldness indicates that she is already the sort of woman primed to welcome the change that is coming her way, while her admission that it “faded with age” highlights how society wears down this quality, emphasizing The Pervasive Nature of Patriarchy.