Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me:“I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do—hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are. . . . I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?”The underlined words and phrases in the excerpt most contribute to a tone of
The phrases “server of food,” “putter-on of pants,” and “somebody who can be called on” reduce the speaker’s identity to chores and service. Her question, “But who am I?” shows distress about losing a sense of self, creating a tone of desperation rather than contentment or neutrality.
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