Betty Friedan

Melissa Dearey (Lincoln University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 4 Feb 1921
Died 4 Feb 2006
Activity 1963-2006

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Feminist

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Novelist
Revolutionary, Activist

Resources

Friedan's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Born on 4 February, 1941 in Peoria Illinois, Bettye Naomi Goldstein (the then briefly fashionable affectation of the extra ‘e’ being later dropped), Betty was the first of three children (including sister Amy and lastly brother Harry Junior) of mother Miriam (nee Horwitz) and father Harry. As she details in her memoir

Life So Far: A Memoir

(2000), her parents were both Jews of eastern European extraction, her mother the daughter of a one time rabbinical student who had emigrated to the United States from Hungary to escape the pogroms, later becoming an army doctor. Miriam was the second wife of the widowed Harry, a much older businessman who was himself an immigrant to the United States, having also left Hungary to escape the pogroms of eastern Europe. In her account of her childhood,…

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3493 words

Citation: Dearey, Melissa. "Betty Friedan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 November 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11685, accessed 03 December 2024.]