The Feminine Mystic manifests Friedan's thoughts on the compromise of women's roles after World War II and how this led to the detriment of feminism, the exposure of unexpressed frustrations and nameless shared by a consensus of women, the deficient system of gender-based functionalism and its failures. All the strong condemnations and criticisms on these various aspects led to the gradual change in the way women viewed their roles and identities. Friedan frustratingly explains how women's choice to return to domestic roles after World War II compromised women's independence and identity. Friedan uses this frustration to revive modern feminism and extinguish the prison in which gender roles had imprisoned women. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan illustrates how women fell into the common depiction of a housewife only fifteen years after the war and how “millions of women lived their lives in the image of those beautiful photos of suburban American housewives, waving goodbye to their husbands at the window, they deposit their wagons full of children at school... their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers..." (Friedan 61) and another description that fits the occupation of "housewife”.