F. Carolyn Graglia: Domestic Tranquility

A Brief Against Feminism

Spence Publishing Company, 1998     Amazon.com

Book Description:

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.”

Reviews:

“…powerful, noble…honest, passionate…This is a revolutionary book.”  National Review

“A useful primer on a movement that doesn’t know when to slink off in embarrassment.”  World

“If there is a book our culture has been needing for the last thirty years, Domestic Tranquility is it.”  Phyllis Schlafy

About the Author:

F. Carolyn Graglia, a lawyer by training and a housewife by choice, is superbly qualified to analyze the varied roles of women in our society. She received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University (1951) and her law degree from Columbia University (1954), where she was an editor of the law review. After working in the Justice Department, she clerked on the D.C. Court of Appeals for Warren E. Burger, the future Chief Justice, and later worked for the Washington firm of Covington & Burlington. Mrs. Graglia left this successful career to care for her husband and three children. A frequent lecturer at universities, she lives in Austin with her husband of forty-three years, Professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas Law School.