They appear below in the order I completed them.įascinating Womanhood: How the Ideal Woman Awakens a Man’s Deepest Love and Tenderness by Helen Andelin. At first, I didn’t expect to keep writing these review series, but they became a regular weekly feature.
Fascinating womanhood by helen andelin series#
She teaches American history at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington.Inspired by Libby Anne’s breakdown of Debi Pearl’s Created to be His Help Meet at Love Joy Feminism, I wrote a chapter-by-chapter review series on Helen Andelin’s Fascinating Womanhood.
in American history from Washington State University. Julie Neuffer’s new book (from University of Utah Press) “Helen Andelin and the Fascinating Womanhood Movement” tells this intriguing story and looks at a crucial, but often overlooked cross section of American women as they navigated their way through the turbulent decades following the post-war calm of the 1950s. Controversial among feminists for its advice toward womens fulfilling traditional marriage roles, her writings are still supported and re-discovered as recently as 2016, with classes still being. Undeterred, she became a national celebrity, who was interviewed extensively and appeared in sold-out speaking engagements. Andelin's message calling for the return to traditional roles appealed to many in a time of uncertainty and radical social change. Helen Berry Andelin was the founder of the Fascinating Womanhood Movement, beginning with the womens marriage classes she taught in the early 1960s. As Andelin's fame grew, so did the backlash from her critics. A woman's true happiness, taught Andelin, could only be realized if she admired, cared for, and obeyed her husband. Helen Andelin and the movement she founded, within the larger his-torical context of women’s reform efforts (4). The book, which borrowed heavily from those 1920s advice booklets, the Bible, and classical literature, eventually sold more than three million copies and launched a nationwide organization of classes and seminars led by thousands of volunteer teachers.Ĭountering second-wave feminists in the 1960s, Andelin preached family values and urged women not to have careers, but to become good wives, mothers, and homemakers instead. n writing Helen Andelin and the Fascinating Womanhood Movement, it wasJulie Debra Neuffer’s hope that her study would provide a scholarly and evenhanded look at the philosophy and motivations of. In 1963, at the urging of her followers, Andelin wrote and self-published Fascinating Womanhood. Her husband didn’t seem interested in her anymore. A few years earlier, Andelin, a Central California housewife, had been experiencing a malaise common to 20-year marriages. She began leading small discussion groups for women at her church. Fascinating Womanhood would become the anti-feminist manifesto that galvanized a decades-long family values movement for conservative women. Young women of today who have zero idea of how very real repression was back then. He bought her gifts and hurried home from work to be with her.Īndelin took her new-found happiness as a sign that it was her religious duty to share these principles with other women. I was rummaging around in a local antiques mall this weekend, and came across a book that I was unfortunately familiar with, but hadnt thought about in many years: 'Fascinating Womanhood' by Helen Andelin, published in 1963.
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How to Make Your Marriage a Lifelong Love AffairWhat makes a.Fascinating Womanhood book. She applied the principles from the booklets and found that her disinterested husband became loving and attentive. Read 233 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. As she studied a set of women's advice booklets from the 1920s, Andelin had an epiphany that not only changed her life but also affected the lives of millions of American women. Andelin, revised and edited by Dixie Andelin Forsyth FASCINATING GIRL: VINTAGE EDITION Copyright Axicon Circle LLC, 2017 First published. A religious woman (Mormon) she fasted and prayed for help. In 1961, Helen Andelin, housewife and mother of eight, languished in a lackluster, twenty-year-old marriage.