Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

“But much of what Betty Friedan characterized as ‘the problem that has no name’ haunting American women in the postwar era describes my mother and her life: the sense of dissatisfaction and of yearning for something beyond the era’s ideals of domestic bliss, the distorting and destructive effects of living one’s life through one’s children, the dangers of what Friedan called ‘the forfeited self.’”

In this passage, Faust describes her mother’s lifetime of discontent and the issues facing middle- and upper-class women in post-war America. Despite her class privileges, Catharine was given no option besides fulfilling the role of wife and mother. Therefore, she could never develop her sense of self or live her own life, but lived only for her husband and children. This introduces the theme of The Intersection of Class, Race, Gender, and Privilege.

“We were on a collision course from as early as I can remember. I needed to learn to be a lady, with the assumptions of decorousness, docility, and social position that destiny prescribed. I was not meant to become a woman, for that category carried dangerously sexual and sensual implications. It was a term that seemed almost impolite in its emphasis on the physical aspects of female identity rather than the acquired graces by which a lady was defined. Black people were women; I must be a lady.”

Faust describes her early conflicts with her mother and rebellion against the era’s gendered expectations. Her distinction between becoming a “lady” and a “woman” highlights the performative aspect of class and gender. Faust was expected to learn to play a role that would disguise or hide the elements of femininity that society deemed dangerous or inappropriate.

“Education has been so important in enabling me to examine my own life and alter its contours and possibilities; I cannot help but think that my mother’s lack of education and of capacity for systematic self-reflection did much to imprison her within a set of expectations that she could neither change nor realize.”

Here, Faust addresses The Important Role of Education in developing her sense of self and argues that her mother’s inability to do so can be traced back to the older woman’s lack of education. Without education, one cannot learn to recognize the systems and constructions of society, so they become bound to these expectations.