The decades 1945–1965 have appeared to mark an intermission in the unfolding history of US feminisms – a period of stasis or even retrogression following the gains of the New Women of a half century earlier, and the Rosie the Riveters of the previous decade. By the twentieth century's end, earlier feminisms appeared classist, racist, and overly universalizing in their conception of the category of “woman,” so that the period between World War I and Vietnam might be seen to epitomize the prevalence of consensus culture within feminism itself. This chapter aims to counter this periodization of US feminisms through a re-examination of mid-century women's literature, focusing on three pivotal texts: Mary McCarthy's The Group (1962), Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963 UK, 1971 USA); and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). Published between the first wave of liberal feminism (dating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), which largely focused on legal and political equality, and second wave feminism (dating to the 1960s and 1970s), these texts recapitulate some of the signal concerns of early twentieth-century feminism: the concern with the milieu of higher education; the depiction of the diminished options for women in the workplace; and the celebration of potential freedoms gained through sexual expression. Yet they also articulate the shared sense that women at mid-century had failed to progress sufficiently, and thus begin to point forward to many of the concerns of feminism's second wave, especially its attention to the psychological implications of sexist stereotypes; the failed promise of sexual liberation for women's liberation; and the repressive character of institutions such as psychiatry.