Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism

Mrs. Graglia traces the origins of modern feminism to the post-war exaltation of marketplace achievement, which bred dissatisfaction with women's domestic roles. In a masterly analysis of seminal feminist texts, she reveals a conscious campaign of ostracism of the housewife as a childish "parasite". Turning to the feminist understanding of sexuality, now pervasive in our culture, she shows how it has distorted and impoverished sex by stripping it of its true significance. Finally, after exposing feminism's totalitarian impulse and its contribution to the "tangle of pathologies" that have left marriage and family life in tatters, she argues for a renewed appreciation of the transforming experience of motherhood and the value of the domestic vocation. The Wall Street Journal extols Domestic Tranquility as "a thinking woman's argument for putting family first." William Kristol calls the book "a stunningly bold and deep assault on the most powerful movement of our time-feminism. A genuinely thought-provoking book." Danielle Crittenden of The Women's Quarterly praises it as "a stunning indictment of the women's movement and its radical vision of female equality. Carolyn Graglia is a courageous thinker."