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Fascinating Womanhood

Fascinating Womanhood:
A Guide to a Happy Marriage
Fascinating Womanhood.jpg
Author Helen B. Andelin
Country USA
Subject Self-help, marriage, interpersonal relations
Publisher Pacific Press
Santa Barbara
(self-published)
Publication date
January 1, 1963
Media type Print (Hardcover)
ISBN
OCLC 80146122
Followed by The Fascinating Girl

Fascinating Womanhood is a book written by Helen Andelin in 1963. The book recently went into its sixth edition, published by Random House. The book has sold over 2,000,000 copies and is credited with starting a grassroots movement among women.

Derived from a set of booklets published in the 1920s and 1930s by the Psychological Press, the book seeks to help traditionally-minded women to make their marriages "a lifelong love affair". According to Time Magazine, Mrs. Andelin wrote Fascinating Womanhood when "she felt her own marriage wasn't the romantic love affair she had dreamed of. The book's self-published edition sold over 400,000 copies, and since being published by Random House, the book has sold more than 2 million-plus copies. including foreign markets. It has been translated into 7 languages. The book serves as a touchstone for those of the anti-feminist persuasion.

The book takes many of its sources from historical women and from examples provided in classic literature. As one of the "real life" women, Mumtaz Mahal of Taj Mahal fame is cited as one of the ideal women who possessed both an Angelic and a Human side. More sources come from classic literature: Amelia (the original Domestic Goddess) of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair; Agnes and Dora from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; and Deruchette from Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea.

Although the book was published in the early-1960s when second wave feminism became part of the American mainstream, Fascinating Womanhood's traditional explication of happy marriage resonated in the minds and hearts of millions of women. By 1975, according to Time magazine, the movement included 11,000 teachers and over 300,000 women had taken the series of Fascinating Womanhood classes.


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