Aw, I had to step out earlier today and came back to the sad news that Robin Williams has died of an apparent suicide. He'll definitely be missed. *sniff*. I guess the genie is finally free.

(Image credit: Thomas Allen)

Before Betty Friedan could escape her marriage, she had to start a revolution.

Betty Friedan was always cold. Cooped up in a rented stone house, the onetime newspaper reporter wore gloves at her typewriter, laboring over freelance articles in the quiet moments she could catch between tending to her two grade-school boys.

Her husband, Carl, was more than unsupportive -he was abusive, a cheat who flew into a rage whenever dinner was delayed. But Friedan, who was pregnant with their third child, knew that escaping the marriage would be difficult. Cut off from Manhattan and even from the nearest library, the freelance work she attracted didn't pay well enough to make leaving an option. Mostly, she wrote for other reasons. Once a brilliant academic with a promising career, Friedan was stuck in housewife hell, bored out of her mind. She needed the escape.

In 1957, Friedan picked up an assignment from her college alumni magazine. It seemed fun. What she didn't know was that the project would not only make her a household name -it would change the fate of American women.

BORN AND RAISED in Peoria, Illinois, Bettye Goldstein was a gifted student. She skipped second grade and eventually graduated with honors from Smith College, where she was an outspoken war critic and the editor in chief of the school newspaper. From there, her academic dreams took her to the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under the renowned developmental psychologist Erik Erikson.

But even in the Bay Area's liberal atmosphere, the pressure to conform to the era's strict gender roles was palpable. Threatened by her success, Friedan's boyfriend pushed to turn down a prestigious science fellowship. As she'd later write in her autobiography, Life So Far, "I had given up any idea of a 'career,' I would be 'just a woman.'" Friedan abandoned her academic pursuits and took a newspaper job. But as her relationship with her boyfriend fizzled, Friedan's love of reporting grew. When a colleague at UE News, the labor paper she was working for, set her up with his childhood friend, theater director Carl Friedan, they fell for each other. The couple married in 1947 and settled in New York City's Greenwich Village.

It wasn't long before the marriage soured. Betty kept up with household chores. She got pregnant. But nothing she did was good enough for Carl. She managed to finagle more than a year of maternity leave from her job after giving birth, but when she became pregnant again two years later, the union refused her additional leave. Instead, she was fired on the spot.

Meanwhile, the Friedans needed more space for their expanding family. They rented a stone barn-turned-house in Rockland County, 30 miles outside Manhattan. Shortly after their move, Carl became abusive. Isolated in the suburbs, Betty continued to squeeze in time for freelance work. As tension escalated, Betty stood her ground -if she were going to free herself from her husband, she'd need to earn more money.