Critiquing an introduction

I sat down this morning and attempted to construct a reaction paper to the introduction to Betty Friedan's seminal liberal feminist book, The Feminine Mystique. But how can you critique/analyze an introduction to a larger work if you haven't read the larger work?

Friedan discusses how the mania over obtaining a husband and becoming a housewife so occupied women of the 50s and early 60s that they stopped going to college, obsessed over their weight (by consuming a chalk product called Metrecal) and appearance, pretended, at age 10, to have "bosoms", and generally subsumed any sense of individuality into their prescribed role.

This sounded interesting to me, because if you swap out the reason for this (i.e. getting a husband) for getting a lover (i.e. having sex), you still see the same end result behaviour today.

Plus ca change....?? Should that be my theme?