Betty Friedan

Melissa Dearey (Lincoln University)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

Born on 4 February, 1941 in Peoria Illinois, Bettye Naomi Goldstein (the then briefly fashionable affectation of the extra ā€˜eā€™ 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 ā€¦

3493 words

Citation: Dearey, Melissa. "Betty Friedan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 November 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11685, accessed 28 March 2024.]

11685 Betty Friedan 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.