Both of these readings entail the same idea: women work hard, and for who? Definitely not themselves.
In Giard's essay, she mentions how when you have friends over, you need to quickly prepare something for your guests. It's all an important matter of memory. When the husband describes his wife's process of making soup which seems like what would be a minute task turned into a two day process, we see the severity of how much a woman actually does. Although Giard is in love with cooking, she describes it almost as an act that women repeat every day. Is Giard making it seem as though these social expectations for women are engrained in us?
As for Friedan's essay, it is much more blatant than Giard's. Women are constantly seeking femininity, only because society puts it on women. And for what? They're making other people happy again. If there is something wrong in the marriage, they blame themselves. If there is something wrong with how they are feeling, they blame themselves. Women are oftentimes put on a pedestal by men as fragile, insignificant begins that cannot fend for themselves because they are delicate and inferior. I think the saddest quote of this essay was "Or her children tell her a joke, and she doesn't laugh because she doesn't hear it."
I agree with how you say women do gets overlooked. The mundane tasks that women are seen doing are often looked as not important. But when looked at deeper they do have meaning and supply health and life in a greater way then they get credit for. Do you think these mundane tasks like cooking and cleaning could translate into the "real world" jobs that men have in this reading. Does creativity in the kitchen transfer over?
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