The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxime Sexe, 1949) is one of the best known works of the French existentialist

Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major feminist work. In it she argues that women throughout history have been defined as the "other" sex, an aberration from the "normal" male sex.[1] Beauvoir wrote the book after attempting to write about herself. The first thing she wrote was that she was a woman, but she realized that she needed to define what a woman was, which became the intent of the book. Judith Butler says that de Beauvoir's formulation that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman",[2] distinguishes the terms 'sex' and 'gender'. Butler says that the book suggests that 'gender' is an aspect of identity which is "gradually acquired". Butler sees The Second Sex as potentially providing a radical understanding of gender.[3] Toril Moi points out that the current English translations of The Second Sex are poor.[4] The publication rights to the book are owned by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc and according to Moi although the publishers are aware of the problems with the English text they insist that there really is no need for a new translation.[4]

Contents
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1 Content of The Second Sex 2 References 3 See also 4 External links

Content of The Second Sex

The following is a detailed summary of the full text ( two volumes) of the original edition of Le Deuxime Sexe, with some added linking, explanatory comments in square brackets and italics. Section titles and chapter titles are given in both French and English; Parshley's English translation changes some of the numbering and adds some titles where there were none in the original French. I. Les faits et les mythes (Bk 1. Facts and Myths) Introduction [Many of Beauvoirs main philosophical positions on the question of women are already set out in her Introduction. She first argues that there is no specific feminine nature, but that women are placed by men in the relative, subordinate category of Other. She then explains briefly why, in general, women have not contested this categorisation, as well as how men have justified it and benefited from it. Finally, saying that she wishes to elucidate womens situation and what the future holds, she describes the existentialist perspective on these matters, emphasising that women should be free to transcend themselves as subjects, rather than confined to immanence as the Other, and indicating the structure of the book as a whole.] The current state of the debate about women and feminism is unsatisfactory, and there is a need for clarification of its basic terms. The biological and social sciences have discredited the idea of fixed essences like femininity. Yet the concept of woman, as opposed to man, is obviously not an empty one, for women exist and have their own specific situation in the world. This situation, however, is

defined and judged in relation to that of men. Man is that which is absolute or positive: woman that which is relative or negative. Man is the centre of things, the Subject: woman the Other. Anthropological evidence shows that alterity is a basic category of human thought. The human subject can assert itself only in opposition to something else that is characterised as object, as inessential, as other. But a reciprocal assertion on the part of the other usually has to be acknowledged. Women must, therefore, have failed to contest mens sovereignty, must have submitted to it. Yet women are not in a minority. Nor is their dependence the result of an historical event or process, since they have never constituted a coherent group. Although matters are now improving, womens economic and social status is still markedly inferior to mens, but the temptation to allow men to continue shouldering responsibility for everything is great. In short, women have not asserted themselves because the means of doing so have been denied them; because they have not tried to exploit mens dependence upon them; and because they have often been content to play a secondary role. Yet this does not explain how men gained the ascendancy in the first place. The justifications that men have adduced in different historical periods are all suspect. But although extreme antifeminist positions are no longer typical, men cannot be expected simply to give up their privileges. Mostly, they are half-sincere in their views, having no first-hand experience of what the discrimination against women amounts to. Equally, however, polemical arguments by feminists are often beside the point: the whole question of whether women are superior or inferior to men should be dropped. Because many of the feminist battles have already been won, certain women who have gained from this are probably now in the best position to elucidate the situation of women in an objective way. Le Deuxime Sexe is intended as a contribution towards this process of understanding the present and what the future holds. It is necessarily based upon the authors own values and these can be openly acknowledged. Neither the general good nor the happiness of the individual will be taken as the decisive criterion when the book is judging institutions. The perspective will be that of existentialist morality, which holds that the only justification of existence is an individuals striving for transcendence through freely-chosen projects; the constant reaching-out towards an open future, towards other free human beings. Freedom and existence are degraded whenever transcendence dissolves into immanence; that is, when the future closes in on the individual and possibilities of development and extension are reduced. Imposed from without, such immanence constitutes oppression, but any individual consenting to immanence is morally at fault. Womens situation is distinguished by the fact that, in spite of their fundamental nature as subjects seeking transcendence, they are actually encouraged and pressed to consider themselves as the Other, as objects condemned to immanence by the transcendent male. The book will ask how women can develop as independent beings in these circumstances, and what chances they have of realising their freedom. These questions can only be asked on the assumption that women are not pre-destined or pre-determined physiologically, psychologically, or by economic factors. The first task, therefore, is to examine the biological, psychoanalytical and Marxist views of women. [As she herself explains, Beauvoir first needs to establish, negatively, that women have no pre-determined destiny, whether it be physiological, psychological or economic (Part I: Destin). Then, in her history section (II: Histoire), she can show how, in fact, womens position evolved to its present state across the centuries, before going on in the following section (III: Mythes) to examine what lies behind this history, by looking at mens images of women and some of the consequences of the discrepancy between those images and reality. We do well to remember that, however critical Beauvoir may be of mens myth-making in relation to women and her criticism is particularly evident in the studies of particular male authors - volume I, Part

III involves looking at women through mens eyes.] Premire Partie: Destin (Pt I: Destiny) Ch.I. Les Donnes de la biologie (Ch.1. The Data of Biology) [Beauvoir divides her opening chapter into a brief introduction and three substantive sections, all clearly demarcated in the text.] As applied to women, the term female is given pejorative connotations by men. But what do women represent in relation to the animal kingdom. and what particular kind of female is woman? Where a species is divided into two separate sexes, the division is a contingent one. Its significance in the case of the human species is defined by the activity of individuals, who assume or take over sexual differentiation. It can only be understood as a concrete reality: no ontological, a priori or empirical justification of it can be given. The human concepts of female and biological functions have to be understood in terms of human projects, of transcendence. It is the human organism as a whole that needs to be studied rather than specific biological features. In mammals generally, whereas the female organism is wholly adapted to maternity, the male enjoys a large measure of autonomy and independence. While mens reproductive function in no way interferes with their private lives, women - more in thrall to the species and reproduction than any other female mammals - are particularly fragile. Their early biological development, pregnancy and the menopause all involve severe physical disruption and vulnerability, as well as producing instability. These biological facts are an essential element in womens situation, but they neither constitute a fixed destiny nor establish a hierarchy of the sexes which would condemn women to a subordinate role. Physiological differences do not correlate with differences in mental capacity. Womens comparative muscular weakness does mean that their lives are physically more limited then mens, but this fact has significance only in relation to what humans set out to do. Moreover, the individuals possibilities depend upon economic and social conditions. Biological facts have to be assumed by individuals in a specific social context. They cannot in themselves explain why woman is the Other: we need to know what humanity has made of the human female. Ch.II. Le Point de vue psychanalytique (Ch.2. The Psychoanalytic Point of View) [After a preamble, Beauvoir discusses and criticises the views of Freud and Adler on women, before evaluating psychoanalytical theory in general, and finally giving her own account of womens psychology.] Great progress was made by psychoanalysis in its recognition that mental life is the realm of significance and does not correspond to biology or physiology. But the vagueness and confusions in the whole system of psychoanalysis make criticism of it necessary and difficult. Freud superimposed his account of women upon his account of men, seeing the development of womens libido as being more complex than that of mens, since it involved one extra genital stage. Women were therefore regarded as more prone to neuroses. The Electra complex was seen more complicated than the Oedipus complex, but was a derivative of it. However, penis envy cannot be explained on Freudian terms, but only by the prevalence of value-judgements that give priority to virility. And the Electra complex is an inadequate account of womens sexuality, failing to acknowledge that women have to relate to a sex that has sovereignty in society. Adler saw sexuality as just one aspect of the personality as a whole, which was dominated by a struggle between a desire for power and an inferiority complex. He saw womens inferiority complex as arising out of their recognition of male dominance in society, making their attitude to their femininity a complex and tortured one. Freud, Adler and all psychoanalysts believe in mental causality, in determinism. Women are said to undergo their destiny passively: they either strain against their femininity and become neurotic, or they submit to their role as wives and mothers and live happily. Yet empirical evidence does not obviously support this theory, so that psychoanalysts are obliged to complicate and modify it endlessly. Refusing the concepts of choice and value,

they are obliged to take for granted certain unexplained facts. Psychoanalysis is unable to explain the link between sexuality and morality, between individual and society. In humans, sexuality (like work, war, play, art) is an aspect of a more fundamental metaphysical search for being. The individuals choice, bringing together a variety of activities, can only be explained ontologically. In spite of its rejection of choice, psychoanalysis is fertile, because human freedom is exercised within certain constants. Thus boys commonly take the penis as an incarnation of their transcendence, while girls, who do not have the possibility of alienating themselves in one single part of their body, tend to turn their whole body into an object. But there is no determinism or destiny here: different societies use and value objects in different ways. Freud admitted that he could not explain the origins of the male supremacy that had led to phallicism. Sexual desire in women is, basically, a synthesis of attraction and repulsion. It can be understood only in relation to other fundamental ways in which humans perceive and react to objects. Furthermore, women choose freely between transcendence and alienation. Psychoanalysis can only talk in terms of relating normally to the past, but the problem for women lies in opening up possibilities for the future, for transcendence. They must choose between asserting their freedom and accepting the role of object and of Other that is assigned to them. They must choose their own values in a world with an economic and social structure already embodying values. Ch.III. Le Point de vue du matrialisme historique (Ch.3. The Point of View of Historical Materialism) [Acknowledging the economic dimension to womens situation, Beauvoir discusses the theory of Engels, touches on that of Bebel, and criticises some of the principles of historical materialism, before drawing together the threads of her argument in all three chapters of Part I.] Historical materialism has shown that humanity acquires a social and historical dimension by its collective reaction to nature. Womens self-awareness reflects the economic structure of their society, and this in turn is a function of the state of technical progress reached by humanity. Their specific biological characteristics may or may not constitute a weakness according to particular social and economic factors. According to Engels, in the Stone Age there was equivalence of function between men and women. But with the advent of metal tools, slavery and private property came into being and men acquired ascendancy. The patriarchal family was based on private property and involved the economic and social oppression of women. Engels claims that emancipation will come about only when womens take an important part in the processes of production. This is now possible and even essential. Bebel argues that womens fate has always been linked to her work capacity. Technical developments will liberate women and the proletariat at the same time, making all workers equal. But historical materialism takes for granted facts requiring explanation, giving no account of how private property came about, or of why it led to the enslavement of women. Humans are not economic abstractions: they have a basic tendency to assert themselves as autonomous subjects. Yet personal possessions came about only because of another fundamental ontological tendency: that of alienation, or the desire to identify with something outside of oneself. And private property led to the enslavement of women because of mans need for transcendence and expansion, together with the fundamental imperialism of human consciousness or the need to dominate the Other. Womens oppression does not entirely coincide with that of the proletariat: their reproductive function is unique and cannot be regulated by force. Even in a classless society, eroticism would be an individual matter. Womens distinctive situation is not an economic matter and must be recognised even when she has equal rights.

An existential infrastructure underlies both the mental dimension and the economic dimension of human life. Psychoanalysis shows the importance of personal embodiment and Marxism that of material and technical factors, but neither can explain everything, since these are both just aspects of human reality in its entirety. Biology, mental life, and economic factors lie within the context of humans grasp of life as a whole. The way in which these elements are evaluated depends upon an individuals fundamental project of transcendence. Deuxime partie: Histoire (Pt II: History) I (Ch.1. The Nomads) [In this brief section Beauvoir gives her account of how male dominance first came about, among the nomads of prehistorical times.] Only existential philosophy gives an adequate account of how the hierarchy of the sexes was established in prehistorical times. In the context of ontological conflict, womens probable inferiority in strength, and certainly the restrictions inherent in the reproductive function and motherhood, meant that men had the principal productive role. Because humans need is basically for transcendence, womens function was seen as inferior to the creative, expansive, constructive activities of men. By risking their life in dangerous expeditions, men showed that there are more important values than survival; they created other values. Women themselves recognise and approve of these values, although their biological function condemns them to repetition rather than creation: they have never established separate female values in opposition to mens. Once men had gained ascendancy over nature and women, this general position simply persisted - though it also evolved - over the centuries. II (Ch.2. Early Tillers of the Soil) [Beauvoir reviews the position of women from the time of the earliest agricultural communities up to the ancient world, detecting two major phases.] With the agricultural stage of human development and the advent of collective property, institutions came into being, codifying sexual differentiation for the first time. Yet by virtue of the importance of having offspring, women were held in very high esteem, their powers being equated with those of the earth. They had important domestic and agricultural, even commercial roles. Men respected and feared them as they did Nature itself. But women were still regarded as Other: there was no reciprocity or equality between the sexes, and political power was always in the hands of men. Marriage was an arrangement made between men to regulate economic relations between male-dominated groups. Variations in the systems of lineage made little difference to womens concrete circumstances. They were to be possessed and exploited as was the earth. If Man adored Woman, it was still he who decided to do so, and she never ceased to represent the immanence that he desired to transcend. Womens prestige diminished as Man became a tool-maker in the Bronze Age and began to conquer Nature. Man had been a slave to his own fears in worshipping women. The gods were now removed from the earth to the heavens: male gods began taking over from the female ones, as men took back the part of their existence that they had temporarily alienated in women and Nature. Their need for expansion and domination made womens physical incapacity into a curse. Male slaves were more useful for work and women lost their economic role. The husband turned his power over his slaves against women, who also become enslaved. Ideologically, the great revolution came with the system of descent through the male rather than the female line. Mens domination of the world was well established by the time that written records came into being. By then a kind of Manicheism prevailed, whereby women were equated with evil. Yet mens recognition that women are also indispensable has made for an ambivalence in their attitude throughout the rest of history. III (Ch.3. Patriarchal Times and Classical Antiquity)

[Beauvoir explains the nature of womens subservience in patriarchal societies, then goes on to describe the forms that it took in the ancient world.] Henceforth womens history is permanently bound up with that of private property and mens perception of the need for inheritance to pass from father to son. In the early patriarchies women were effectively owned by men, first by their father and then by their husband, to whose clan they came to belong. Adultery on the part of a wife was severely condemned, although men might be polygamous. Where these general principles have gone unchallenged, as in the Muslim world, women are little better than slaves. This was also true of Jewish society in Biblical times, where, as in the East, a widow was often obliged to marry her dead husbands brother. In Babylon and Persia, womens situation was somewhat better, but it was more favourable still in Egypt, which, significantly, at first had no private property as such. In Ancient Greece, laws of inheritance ensured that the fate of women was directly in the hands of men, both those in the their own family and public administrators. Yet in Sparta, which scorned the family and private property, women were treated more or less on equal terms with men and enjoyed considerable freedom. In most ancient cultures, prostitution as a commercial enterprise developed out of certain sacred rites, but in Greece it was systematised at different levels: on the bottom rungs, there was wretchedness and exploitation, but the hetaerae, though living on the edge of society, were cultured and liberated. The general situation of women in Ancient Greece was one of semi-slavery, although the misogyny displayed in written records suggests that men found marriage a burden because women enjoyed some power in the home. In Ancient Rome womens position was governed by the conflict between family and state. With the advent of the Republic, women had even less legal protection than in Greece, once more belonging first to their father, then to their husband. But this generated conflicts between father and husband, so that women acquired legal rights relating to the resolution of such disputes. Moreover, both their important domestic, economic and social roles and the states need to curb powerful families eventually gave rise to further legal rights for women in their capacities as daughters, wives and sisters. At the same time, the state was denying them other rights as individuals. Since womens education was inadequate and no form of public or political action was open to them, they were obliged either to submit to male values or to resort to protests of one kind or another. Their new-found freedom was an empty one. IV (Ch.4. Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France) [This section offers a survey of the social situation of women from early Christian times to the eighteenth century, with a break in the text marking off the sixteenth century as a kind of watershed. But this broad chronological framework is somewhat complicated by the fact that Beauvoir also attempts to take account of certain differences from one country to another. Furthermore, at the end of each of the two major phases she goes back to review some of the significant writings about women during the period.] The emergence of Christianity contributed a great deal to the oppression of women. Their role within the Church was from the first a secondary one, and the Christian conception of marriage involved their subordination to men. A womans dowry was deemed to belong to her children. Among the barbarians, the Germanic tradition accorded respect and significant rights to women, who were in the charge of men but not considered morally inferior. This tradition continued in the early Middle Ages, although the state gradually acquired power over the family. Under the feudal system, however, women at first had no rights at all, and even when they were

allowed to inherit, they were still subject to the power of their husband and his suzerain, being harshly treated and scarcely respected at all. The concept of courtly love and the idealisation of women in the 12th and 13th centuries did not change their situation profoundly. It was the breaking up of the feudal system which, at least in France, eventually gave rights of ownership, and more, to unmarried women and widows. Yet, as so often, those women most fully integrated into society had the fewest privileges, since subordination within marriage persisted, because of the implications for private property. Only in very poor families was there a kind of equality between husband and wife. The 16th century saw the formulation of laws that would dictate womens totally subordinate position throughout the ancien rgime. Womens nature and inferiority was claimed as a theoretical justification. In all European countries the married woman was a servant rather than a partner. Furthermore, as monogamy became the official creed, more women were exploited as prostitutes, and unmarried women were accorded no status at all in society. Only in exceptional circumstances could women achieve anything substantial, as a few queens or women-regents and certain saintly women did. From the 13th century onwards there had been heated argument in literature about love and women, but it was essentially a secondary phenomenon, a male controversy arising out of the Churchs ambiguous attitude towards marriage: there was no question of changing womens role in society, upon which it had no effect at all. Of the women who were famous during the Italian Renaissance most were courtesans, enjoying licence rather than genuine liberty, and this was to be the pattern in succeeding centuries. Womens education in general remained inadequate, but because they had leisure to acquire knowledge and culture a significant number came, in the 17th and 18th centuries, to acquire considerable intellectual influence and even to become involved in politics. Great actresses and courtesans also enjoyed fame. Yet no woman achieved the heights of a Dante or a Shakespeare. Culture was only ever the domain of a female elite and even they had more obstacles to overcome than men. In general, they did not have the material independence that generates inner freedom. The controversy about women continued to rage in literature in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The very success that women had achieved became itself an object of criticism, but there were also staunch feminists, like Poulain de la Barre and the philosophes, who recognised that an inferior education was a crippling disadvantage for women. V (Ch.5. Since the French Revolution: The Job and the Vote) [In this final historical section Beauvoir looks at the development of womens position from the French Revolution up to the late nineteen-forties, then draws some general conclusions about womens history as a whole, as well as their situation in society in 1949.] The French Revolution did little to improve the lot of women. It was carried out by men and preserved bourgeois values, although new laws concerning inheritance and divorce were rather more favourable to women. The Napoleonic Code, which regulated womens position in society for a century, actually delayed their emancipation by giving men extensive powers over their wives and their wives goods. Women were largely confined within the family, being poorly educated and having no economic or political status. Respected in the home, most bourgeois women were content, because their dependence on men also brought class privileges.

Their interests were very much bound up with those of their husbands and they had little in common with working-class women. But industrialisation was to lead to the emancipation of the working class. In principle, socialism sought to liberate women as well as workers from their slavery, but the socialists who saw women as having their own distinctive feminine qualities did not serve their cause, any more than did certain womens movements. Theoretical arguments were, however, less influential than economic developments: new machines made womens physical weakness insignificant and they broke away from the home to provide the required labour in factories. This was the great industrial revolution of the 19th century, which transformed womens lot and opened up a new era for them. Yet for decades the tradition of female submission and resignation, as well as their failure to see their situation in collective terms, meant that women were severely exploited in industry. Their working conditions were poor and their wages extremely low. Furthermore, male workers saw them as a kind of threat. Nevertheless, womens participation in industrial production continued to grow. The First World War precipitated this process and also drew women from the bourgeoisie into the liberal professions. Reconciling work and childbearing is always a problem for women. In the 19th century birth control in various forms spread in France in spite of the legal position. At the same time the idea that abortion is murder disappeared, although it was seen as a crime against the state. In spite of resistance and the survival of outdated morality, in the middle of the 20th century pregnancy has at last become largely a deliberately regulated process. Women are no longer the slaves of childbearing, but can integrate it into the pattern of their lives. Enough progress was made in the 19th century for women to assume the economic role offered to them. The whole subsequent evolution of womens situation is to be explained by both their involvement in industrial production and their freedom from the slavery of reproduction - the conjunction of these factors inevitably transformed their social and political status. Feminist movements became influential and womens claims were heard even among the bourgeosie. Personal property was now as important as land, which was no longer a force holding the family together. The link between husband and wife could be seen as a temporary one and divorce became more common. Women eventually acquired civil and political rights in France, England and America, but only after a long fight. Feminism was a secondary issue for French socialists, and bourgeois women sought reform rather than revolution. Only in 1945 were French women given the vote. The struggle had been no less bitter in England and America. Emancipation was achieved against varying degrees of opposition in other European countries, but feminism was at its very strongest in the U.S.S.R., where progress appears to have been spectacular in most respects. Equal rights is now recognised as a principle by the United Nations. The battle appears to be won: women will be more and more a part of what used to be a male society. The whole history of women has clearly been fashioned by men. Where women have exercised pressure, this is only because men have allowed it. Men have always held womens fate in their hands and have decided on it in their own interests. Women have never formed a cast of their

own, have never sought to play a part in history as a separate sex. Most have resigned themselves to their fate, and even those who have not have accepted male values and perspectives. Yet laws and customs have never coincided in such a way as to given them genuine freedom, so that only in very exceptional circumstances have particular women achieved great things. In general, they have never wielded an active influence in economics, technology or politics. It is clear that it is not womens inferiority that has precluded them from playing a part in history: their exclusion from human history has resulted in their being considered inferior. Womens fate has been closely linked with the development of culture and the arts. Their collective contribution to intellectual life is a significant one, but individual contributions have been, on the whole, less impressive. Their marginal situation prevents the emergence of genius. There is no domain in which women have had the same chances as men and many are now claiming a wholly new status. But they do not wish special value to be accorded to their femininity: they seek transcendence, as men do, and the combination of abstract rights and concrete possibilities that will allow them to exercise genuine freedom. This state of affairs is coming about, but the present period is a transitional one. The world is still in the hands of men: proper equality has not yet been brought about. Marriage is much more of a burden to women than to men, since they do no have complete control over pregnancy and bear virtually all of the responsibility for the care of their children, as well as the household. They still find it much more difficult than men to reconcile marriage and work. The condition of French peasant women, for instance, is appallingly hard, but even women in the liberal professions meet far more obstacles and carry far more handicaps than men. Old values persist in modern conditions: women now have more opportunities, but marriage is still considered a most honourable career for them. They are brought up more with marriage than with personal development in mind. They are encouraged to feel inferior, and a vicious circle ensues as this increases their desire for a husband. Work in itself does not bring them liberation, so that they often seek to be liberated from work by marriage. Even if a woman wishes above all to reconcile the two, a more extenuating effort is required of her than of a man. Since mens prestige and privileges encourage women to try to please them, we need to examine the hopes, expectations and ideals that men have in relation to women, since these are a crucial element in womens situation. Troisime partie: Mythes (Pt III: Myths) Ch.I (Ch.1. Dreams, Fears, Idols) [Beauvoir divides this complex and lengthy chapter into three sections. The first finds in mens metaphysical needs the deepest source of the myths that they forge about women; the reason why they seek to see woman as the Other. Then Beauvoir examines how, from mens point of view, this attempted categorisation operates: in relation to male attitudes towards Nature (second section); and when men also consider woman as a partner or associate (third section). The division between the second and third sections has a chronological aspect, marking the point in human history at which men began to regard women as free individuals in their own right. But a central thread of the argument running through both sections is Beauvoirs consideration of the changing and interacting myths of woman as Mother, Wife and Idea. After the third of these areas is taken up in particular, after Beauvoir can go on to argue that real women can be seen not to conform to mens myths and therefore represent all of mens values and their opposites.] Mans attempts to conquer nature do not satisfy him ontologically or morally: either nature is a pure obstacle and remains foreign to him, or he succeeds in mastering it only at the cost of

destroying it. In either case he remains alone. In order to achieve transcendence and have his freedom confirmed he needs the presence of other minds, similar to his own but quite separate. Yet these other minds seek to dominate him, just as he seeks to dominate them. In human beings, reciprocal recognition of each others metaphysical status is the very best that can be achieved. But such authenticity and wisdom require a constant struggle, constant tension. Human relations are always subject to dangers: their success is never secure. Mens aspirations are contradictory, for they seek repose as well as development, stasis as well as consciousness. Women are the incarnation of this dual longing, being less alien and silent than nature, but not quite identical with men and therefore not demanding reciprocal recognition. Women never had to be enslaved: they accepted male sovereignty and men did not have to fear that they would revolt against their status. Creation myths all demonstrate this. Eve was created after Adam, from his rib and in order to save him from solitude. She has consciousness but is naturally subordinate to her man. Mens fondest wish has often been to possess physically a creature who is free, yet docile enough to confirm his natural ascendancy. As Other, woman represents the being-in-itself that man seeks, and through which he strives to realise himself. She is not the only incarnation of the Other and at certain times other idols have been more important to men. Perhaps myths about women will disappear altogether when they fully assert themselves as human beings, but for the present such myths are close to the heart of all men. Women have not created myths about men, having no religion or poetry of their own. They adore mens gods. The world is represented solely from the male point of view, but men take this representation as the absolute truth. Myths are difficult to describe and those about women are contradictory, showing women as both mens aspiration and their downfall. The Other is evil, but is necessary to good. Hence myths about women represent no fixed concept, but the movement from good to evil, evil to good. Woman, as Mother, Wife and Idea, incarnates nature, and men are ambivalent about nature, which is at one and the same time their enemy and their ally. In myths women are usually presented as the immanent or passive element - the Earth - and men as the transcendent or active element - the Seed. The Earth, with its mysterious fecundity, is always revered, but mostly women have symbolised mans earthly limitations or contingency, the way in which life leads to death. Birth and motherhood provoke spontaneous revulsion as well as respect: the Fates both spin and cut the thread of life. Yet death may also be seen as regenerating life; men may wish to be at one with the forces of the Earth and reabsorbed into it. Men project their horror of birth and contingency onto their image of women. Because of their link with fecundity, menstruation and menstrual blood are usually seen as a sign of womans impurity and are at the centre of many elaborate customs and taboos. Men try to dissociate motherhood and their sexual relations with women. Yet women still constitute mens major access to the fundamental forces of the universe; eroticism is a privileged form of transcendence. The sexual act is conquest: men possess and master women as they do their land, though they also fear being taken over by uncontrollable forces. Virginity is the most powerful symbol of the mysteries of womanhood, at once fascinating and disturbing. Again, it is the subject of countless beliefs and rituals relating to mens possession of women. Older women who are virgins untamed by men - are often seen as witches, in league with the devil.

In possessing a womans body, man possesses and enjoys all of the riches of nature. But youth, health and above all beauty are important factors. Because woman is to be possessed, ideals of feminine beauty always encompass the inert, passive qualities of objects. Her body must be seen as facticity and immanence, so that many fashions deliberately hamper its movement. Make-up and jewels serve to petrify the female body; to capture or contain nature and display it as fashioned by male will; to hide the decay that all flesh is heir to. Seeking to possess nature through women, but a transfigured form of nature, men finally condemn women to artifice, since natural physical deterioration inspires fear and hatred. Sexuality and the male sexual organ are sources of pride insofar as they represent activity and transcendence, but sources of shame to the extent that the flesh is passive and subject to obscure natural forces. Male possession of the Other through the sexual act proves to be impossible, since men find themselves temporarily possessed by pleasure and women subsequently escape their grasp. Moreover, woman casts a kind of magic spell over man; he becomes alienated from himself and is drawn into immanence. In a complex cycle women, in their capacities as both mothers and lovers, come to be associated with death. In societies where man does not fear death, there is no hostility towards the flesh and woman is simply a source of physical delight. But within the Christian framework the flesh is linked with sin, and women, as Other, represent temptation and evil. They have to be tamed and controlled, so that their magic may be used by the collectivity. At a certain phase in the changing relations between men and women, man seeks to dominate the natural forces that woman exercises by making her his associate, and many myths illustrate this. But as male individuality is asserted, so a woman too must be seen as an autonomous centre of human consciousness. In the western world the womans role as wife has usually accommodated this requirement. Within Christianity, if women renounce the flesh they too may be saved, though they remain subordinate to men. The figure of the Mother of God is the counterweight to that of Eve the temptress. The Virgin Mary, like the virgin priestesses and saints, retains her feminine powers intact, but her role is a secondary one: the mother kneels before her son and acknowledges her inferiority. The victory of men over women is consummated in the cult of Mary: Gods will is that women should be subordinate to men. Now that woman has renounced her claims to power she can actually be honoured as a vassal and enjoy a new role in male mythology. Motherhood can now be revered as woman becomes the mediatress between man and the forces of the cosmos. Firmly assimilated into society, the mother can now, without losing all of her mystery, represent what is good. A man must transcend his roots but has no need to be ashamed of them. And after action he can take comfort from his return to the bosom of nature. Even death can be integrated into life and the good. The mother is the guardian of laws and customs and her influence over her son becomes a beneficial social force as nature and society are seen to be in harmony. Beneath the surface the horror of motherhood is still present. Since the Middle Ages in France this has been transferred onto the figures of the mother-in-law and the stepmother. On the other hand, figures like those of the grandmother, the kind old lady, the nurse and the nun all surround and support the favourable image of motherhood. There is also a corresponding image of the Wife, who, tamed by marriage and subordinated economically and socially, can constitute a mans greatest treasure. He is proud of her, as of his other possessions, and she is charged with representing his status and his merits. Furthermore, he

gains deep satisfaction from dominating and forming her morally and intellectually. His devoted companion still embodies the mysteries of nature, but these present no threat to him. Indeed, the home that his wife maintains offers the comfort of continuity and a refuge from the outside world. Since the advent of Christianity, women have stood for certain spiritual values. They have frequently symbolised the essence of collectivities like towns or countries, and individual male writers have sought their own soul in a feminine form. Ideas and abstract institutions are also commonly given feminine characteristics: men feminise their ideals because these are the essential forms of the Otherness physically embodied by women. Woman is no longer seen as dragging man down, but as inspiring him, leading him to the good. She is at the source of life and mediates between man and God, often being a figure of mercy. Without threatening male principles, she is allowed to soften or enrich them, gently reminding men of their contingency and of their aspirations. She represents the poetry of human life and is mans poetic inspiration. She is sometimes his advisor, often his judge. She embodies society as well as nature; she is mans challenge and his goal. And yet she must have no goals of her own: she must recognise man as her destiny. Man seeks from her confirmation of his most personal qualities. She is the Other who sees him as he really is, or as he wants others to see him; the Other who can be controlled without ceasing to be Other. Yet woman is real, as well as an invention of man. He projects his hopes for transcendence onto the Idea of woman, but the objective reality often appears to let him down, leading him to see women as mediocre and deceitful. In the process of dominating woman, man has deprived her of the magic that constituted her attraction. His wife is no longer an erotic object for him: the institution of marriage militates against both sex and love, leading to adultery on both sides. Womens freedom is theoretically acknowledged and yet they are kept in captivity. Their only recourse against this is revolt in the form of infidelity, that is the exercising of their magic on other men. Literature abounds in examples of mans jealousy and womans inconstancy. Yet although social pressures cause the husband to have certain public expectations about his wifes role, deep down he is drawn to the sin and evil that her sexuality represents. The natural forces that the unfaithful wife draws upon must be contained by society, which often punishes her severely and sometimes also the husband for losing control of her. From ancient beliefs to modern films the image of the femme fatale freely employing her charms is a powerful and disturbing one. When men are attracted by the challenge and try to overcome womens freedom in this respect, they fail. To this extent woman becomes the enemy in a constant battle between the sexes. And yet the image of the ideal woman also persists, so that women in fact embody all of mens values and everything that opposes those values: woman is both the devoted mother and the unfaithful lover, as well as a multitude of ambiguous forms in between these two poles. Womans complexity is itself part of her fascination. Her very faults are to be cherished insofar as they increase the mysterious quality of the Other: she needs to be elusive and unpredictable to satisfy mens contradictory desires. The stereotypes of the pure young girl and, especially, the prostitute lend themselves to a variety of uses in male mythology. The fallen woman can be saved, or can exemplify the attractions of vice and debauchery, but all images of woman express mans changing and conflicting aspirations.

Which particular myths about women any individual adopts depends partly on personal factors. Neuroses and the Oedipus Complex reflect, not social pressures, but a mans inner conflicts, which go back to his ambiguous relations with his own mothers body and which can have repercussions of various kinds upon his subsequent relations with women. In images of women are concentrated all of mens hopes and fears, successes and failures, all of his actions and feelings, his values and their opposites. He needs to hang on to these images, whatever their relationship with reality; they are at the heart of all of his reflexions on life. Woman is everything for man, but she is everything within the category of the inessential; she is everything that is Other. Because she is Other, she is never quite what man expects of her, and in this she represents the disappointment that is at the heart of all existence. Ch.II (Ch.2. The Myth of Woman in Five Authors) [As a kind of confirmation of the prevalence of the myths about women that she has been examining, Beauvoir next looks at five writers who blend these myths in their own distinctive ways, but in ways that can stand as typical.] I. Montherlant ou le pain du dgot ((1) Montherlant or the Bread of Disgust) Montherlant belongs to the tradition of those men who consider women to be clearly inferior to men, and something of a danger. In his attacks on the figure of the Mother, it is his own contingency that he is deploring. Women are seen as dragging men down, drawing them into their immanence. But Montherlant is afraid of the true challenge of freedom and the real. He believes in a feminine essence and defines it negatively, as an absence of virility. But if the function of women is just to provide pleasure for men, Montherlants heroes are not sensualists, for this would give women a hold over them: they seek, rather, the cerebral pleasure of domination. They wish to fashion and control women; womens duty - and good fortune - is to submit to their wishes. Yet there is contradiction in the satisfaction that his heroes obtain from dominating creatures that are supposed to be so pitiful. Sometimes women are pitied, but mostly they are regarded with contempt. They must be made to recognise their abjection. Montherlants morality applied to inferior males too, yet he was fearful of competition and conflict with men: the opponents of his heroes are women, children, animals. The heroes stand alone, incapable of love and friendship, just as much characterised by immananence as are the women they despise. There is no more merit in his own narcissistic dreams than in those he sees women as having. Montherlant is not at grips with reality. His world is one of gesture rather than action: his heroes sacrifice or persecute women in the name of entirely vacuous principles. II. Lawrence ou lorgueil phallique ((2) D.H.Lawrence or Phallic Pride) For D. H. Lawrence the truth of life lies in the animality in which humans have their roots. A mans whole life should be an expression of his virility and women are the indispensable opposite pole in this process. In the authentic sexual act there is no assertion of personality or ego, only complete reciprocity, in which both parties are in tune with the cosmos. In contrast with Montherlant, he sees mens attempts to dominate women as misguided and self-defeating, since the result can only be solitude. Yet if he does not regard women as a means to an end or a mere pretext, he believes passionately in male supremacy. It is the male, the phallus that embodies the basic forces of life and its mystery. Man represents transcendence, woman immanence. The social consequence is that women should be subordinate and devoted. They miss their feminine vocation in striving for independence and should renounce the search for autonomy, even sexual autonomy in the form of orgasm. It is above all women characters who must learn and develop in Lawrences novels.

Men easily submit to the order of the cosmos, but women need the mediation of the male, need to recognise the divinity of the male and come to accept their role as Other. III. Claudel et la servante du seigneur ((3) Claudel and the Handmaid of the Lord) Claudels version of Catholicism accepts the whole of creation, so that even womans role as temptress is seen as a necessary part of Gods design, of the harmony of the universe. She represents the risk, without which there could be no question of salvation. Women may also embody, for man, the physical riches of the world, the whole of nature. By giving themselves to a man within the sacrament of marriage, they fulfil their destiny: both partners conquer death and reach God in such a union. But socially men have precedence: Claudel believes in hierarchies, including that of the family, of which the husband is the head. It is men who actively carry out Gods designs: women support and comfort them. Women must be loyal, faithful and submissive; they draw their grandeur from this very subordination, often being closer to saintliness than men. Although Claudel stresses that women are the instrument of mens salvation, women are seen as able to attain their own salvation in solitude. Yet their role is that of the Other, the handmaid of the Lord. In short, women are exalted, but in claiming that their particular role on earth ensures their eternal salvation, Claudel is sanctioning traditional male privileges in the name of the will of God. IV. Breton ou la posie ((4) Breton or Poetry) Breton, like Claudel, believes that a mans love for a woman can constitute a kind of transcendence. But it reveals the secrets of the world itself rather than supernatural ones. Poetry is present in women, as it is in all things. They are part of the real world but generate mystery, enigma and open the doors to the world of the surreal. Through reciprocal love, a man can possess the Truth in the form of a body and soul, though social circumstances can lead men to make mistaken choices. In the ideal woman a man discovers the secrets of the world and, above all, beauty. She is the key to nature, from which she is indistinguishable; she is poetry. Her beauty is knowledge of the essence of things: her love is salvation, the salvation of humanity. The time has come to value womens ideas rather than mens, which have conspicuously failed. In spite of male dominance, it is women who have kept the miraculous powers that come from being in touch with the deepest forces of life. Art must bring into prominence the woman-child, in whom the alternative to male perspectives reaches its most transparent. It is femininity as such that carries the special element which can save humanity. Since the love through which the ideal is attained is reciprocal, women are not inferior to men. But we are not told whether the process operates in the same way for women. Do they too find the key to life and beauty in their lover? Or do they just confirm their lovers own discovery? Does the woman constitute poetry for herself, as she does for men? Breton does not talk of women as subjects. They seem to interest him only insofar as they are the route to truth. Women are Truth, Beauty, Poetry - everything in the category of Other. Again, they are everything except just themselves. V. Stendhal ou le romanesque du vrai ((5) Stendhal or the Romantic of Reality) For Stendhal, women were real creatures of flesh and blood, to whom he devoted much of his life. He did not believe in a feminine essence, but considered that the oppression associated with womens situation in society could actually help them to reject bourgeois self-importance and lead authentically free lives. His heroines have the strength and energy to make total commitments. They are admirable by virtue of their ingenuity in overcoming the obstacles placed in their path, and moving because of the handicaps that their upbringing confers upon them. They reject orthodox values in order to be true to themselves and to answer the most basic moral questions. Mans contemplation of

these virtues in women enables him to cultivate them in himself. Love for women reveals to him the true goals of existence. Reciprocity is possible because women, like men, must be regarded as subjects and not as Other. Stendhal projected himself into his women characters. He sought emancipation for women not only in the name of freedom in general, but also for the sake of individual happiness. He refuses myths: women are simply human beings, exciting in their own right. VI ((6) Summary) Each of these authors reflects the great collective myths about women described earlier. Woman is always the special case of the Other, through which man realises himself. But the particular myths adopted and the relations between them relate to the way in which any individual man asserts and transcends himself. These authors, with the exception of Stendhal, sense an immanent core to their transcendence and project it onto women. For each, the ideal woman is that embodiment of the Other best suited to bringing out the part of himself that he values most. And in each case women are expected to love him and forget themselves. Even in Stendhal, the heroines help male characters to achieve their destiny. Every male writer betrays in his image of women his general ethic and the idea that he has of himself. Women always have a role as Other, since men always need to arrive at an awareness of themselves. Ch.III (Ch.3. Myth and Reality) To assess the importance in daily life of myths about women, one has first to measure the relationship they bear to reality. Myths about women postulate eternal, absolute, static ideas, which cannot be challenged by reality. If the alleged essence of Womanhood is contradicted by the behaviour of real women, then the behaviour is said to be wrong and the women unfeminine. The myths have been derived from experience: women are different. But the proper relationship between men and women is one of reciprocity: both sexes consist of individuals seeking to assert themselves over others, but also seeking confirmation from others. Myths about women ignore this reciprocity, refusing to treat women as subjects and the equals of men. In reality women are many things, but each myth tries to encapsulate them in their entirety. Men are puzzled in the face of a plurality of incompatible myths. Society sometimes generates broad images of women that conflict with one another: how can woman be at once the praying mantis and a mother-goddess? Because of this kind of contrast, ambivalence comes to be seen as a general characteristic of Womanhood. Individuals and societies decide according to their needs which image of women to choose from the whole range. Patriarchal societies, seeking to confine women to the home, stress the idea of womens immanence and bring it about by restricting her transcendence. To attribute significance to ones experience of women is not to create myths, which involve unjustified generalisation. Women no more represent the Flesh or Nature than men do: their position in nature is different from mens, but they too are free to react to brute facts as they choose. Claiming that certain burdensome features of womens existence are natural enables men to go on enjoying their own privileges. Similarly, referring to the mysteries of femininity allows men to avoid any effort to understand or to establish authentic relations with real women. The subjectivity of others and some aspects of physiology are indeed enigmas, but this has nothing to do with a fundamental ambiguity in women: it relates to the ultimate elusiveness of all consciousness. Human beings are known by their acts alone and mens economic and social privileges allow them great freedom of action. The restrictions upon women, on the other hand, leave little room for active expressions of love or other feelings. They do not know what they

might have become, or what they are, having no means of defining themselves by their action in the world. The apparent mystery of womens nature is no more than a void. In any case, their situation as subordinates encourages them to dissimulate and deceive. Moreover, men not only consider women asthe Other: they wish women to think of themselves as Other, to become a mystery to themselves. The reality of the mystery disappears when one subjects it to honest scrutiny, just as the mysterious qualities of women in fiction come to be elucidated in the course of the story. Myths are largely explained by the use that men make of them. Only when men are not totally absorbed by the process of survival do they invent myths about women. Patriarchal society uses them to impose its laws and values upon individuals, who are flattered to be able to explain their own personal experience in terms of mythical views of women. But in fact men would lose nothing by abandoning their myths and looking at women as living realities. Women do not have to be mysterious for relations with them to be rich and intense; for poetry, adventure and love to persist. By now men have accepted womens equality to a large degree, but they continue to ask them to take a secondary role and womens position between these two poles is unstable. A woman can be torn between her work and the femininity required of her. Mens perceptions may be changing in a way that makes it possible for women to reconcile work and sexual attractiveness. But this may generate new myths. In any case, the present situation is uncomfortable for women, though they must not look back. It is to be hoped that men, for their part, will openly acknowledge the changes that are taking place, so that women may live at ease in society. II. Lexprience vcue (Bk 2. Womans Life Today) Introduction Women are now repudiating the myth of femininity and affirming their independence, but in practical ways they are still subordinate to men, whose prestige continues to rest on solid economic and social bases. There is still a need to study womens traditional destiny. How are they brought up and ensnared? How can they escape and forge a new future in spite of the burden of the past:? Premire partie: Formation (Pt IV: The Formative Years) Ch.I. Enfance (Ch.1. Childhood) [In this chapter and the next, Beauvoir reviews in quite strict chronological sequence the different phases of development undergone by the female child, the adolescent girl and the young woman in the face of the feminine model and role that society foists upon them.] One is not born a woman: one becomes a woman. The dramas of birth and weaning are fundamentally the same for young children of both sexes, as are the main phases of their development and their reactions to them. But other people intervene in an individuals evolution from the very first and in the case of girls the intervention is designed to impose a particular sense of womens vocation upon them. From about six months, the child - already a transcendent subject and afraid of its freedom - can recognise itself as an object in the eyes of others, discover itself in an alienated form. Up to the age of three or four, therefore, both sexes are equally anxious to please and to receive approval. But childrens other means of refusing their separate, independent existence - that is, by becoming lost in the mothers arms - is taken away from boys earlier than from girls. Paradoxically, this is because males are valued more highly than females; more is expected of them. The boys prized virility finds embodiment in his penis, which is an object revered by those around him. Since the little girls sexual organs are ignored, she already finds herself in a different situation from a boys, and is encouraged to see herself as physically inferior. The so-called "castration complex", where it exists, can take many forms and by no means always signifies deep-seated

penis envy. For a variety of reasons, including convenience of urination and potentiality for play, many girls would like to have a penis. But these are not the factors that lead to their feeling of inferiority, which springs from their discovery of the special prestige accorded to boys and their virility. The penis constitutes a kind of alter ego for the boy, who can alienate himself in a part of his body that becomes a symbol of autonomy and transcendence. The girl is given a doll instead and encouraged to identify with its passivity and prettiness, to become narcissistic. The boy can see his body as an instrument for conquering nature and physical dominance of others, whereas the girl is taught - especially by her mother and other women around her - to give up her autonomy and make herself into an object, in order to please men. A vicious circle sets in, whereby she becomes less able to exercise her freedom. For the first few years of their lives, girls have little difficulty in accepting the role they are given. They practise their vocation on their doll; become fascinated by the process of childbearing; and participate in their mothers domestic work. But they can scarcely fail to envy the esteem and privileges accorded to boys, who miss no opportunity to assert their superiority. As the girls development takes her beyond her mothers orbit, she realises that it is men who rule the world. Gradually she recognises that her father has sovereign authority in the family and that it is through him that the family relates to the outside world. There is rivalry in the boys recognition of his fathers superiority, but the girl can only look on, powerless, in admiration, hoping for approval. Moreover, the fact that other men share the prestige of her father is confirmed for her by history, literature, songs, legends, politics and religion. She is encouraged to sacrifice herself for the love of a man, or God, and can easily become masochistic. But the little girls desire for activity is strong. It drives her to break away from her mothers influence and to find at least one special girl friend. At 10 or 12 most girls would like to be boys. The restrictions they experience make them turn their energy inwards: they become nervy, bored and emotional. Whereas the boys future is an open one, the girl is invited to submit to a role and destiny imposed upon her from outside. She therefore becomes much more preoccupied with questions of sex, conception and childbirth, often being horrified and frightened by the phenomena. Puberty comes earlier for girls than for boys and involves more significant changes. At first they are ashamed of the physical developments it brings: their bodies become alien objects and they are intensely self-conscious. The onset of menstruation, even if the girl has been prepared for it, is always seen as unpleasant and humiliating. She may be proud of having grown up, but quickly discovers that, far from bringing her new privileges, the process means only inconvenience and worry each month. But it is the social context that turns menstruation into a curse. The girl realises that it seals her fate as a member of an inferior and subordinate class, and psychological problems often result. She develops erogenous zones and can be stimulated sexually by accidental lascivious contacts, without quite understanding what is happening. The discrepancy between these realities and her romantic dreams adds to the confusion. Unlike the boy, she is expected to hide her growing eroticism, or experience it passively. At one and the same time she desires and fears the sexual role expected of her. She revolts against the idea of physical penetration by a man and her anxiety expresses itself in her obsessions, as well as in certain symbolic patterns of behaviour. She is made to repress her feelings and experiences a guilt that can affect her subsequent sexual

life. Traumatised and divided against herself, she faces the future in a state of anxiety and shame. Ch.II. La Jeune Fille (Ch.2. The Young Girl) Economic and social forces combine to press upon the girl, when she reaches puberty, the role of waiting for her man to come along. From now on she has physical handicaps that males do not share and these have psychological consequences. But it is the way in which she becomes aware of these facts that is crucial. Boys at this stage can and do assert themselves through physical violence: because girls are not allowed this recourse, the expression of their subjectivity is blocked and, losing self-confidence, they are condemned to a passive acceptance of the world. Menstruation brings monthly anxieties and physical disorders, though these only confirm an inferiority complex developed during the girls childhood. This complex also bears upon her intellectual attainments, since she is not encouraged to aim high academically. Her independence of movement is restricted in a variety of ways and her future seen as depending upon her husband-to-be. She is expected to refrain from taking any initiatives, to be passive; she must stop considering herself as essential and think of herself as inessential, as Other. This is an agonising moment of transition for the adolescent girl, who in most cases resigns herself to her socially-assigned role, albeit after some slight resistance. She comes to see herself as a sexual object for men and this generates a certain narcissism with regard to her physical appearance. It also causes her to create and cherish a secret self, in her intimate diary, her imagination and her dreams. Dreams can isolate the girl and constitute a way of escaping reality, but she is equally likely to have an intimate girl friend. While boys are separated by the sexual desire that drives them towards something different from themselves, adolescent girls, as the objects of desire, are drawn together and usually have lesbian tendencies that are closely bound up with their narcissism. Sometimes this will lead on to a secret passion for an older woman, who shares something of the prestige accorded to men but is not associated with the fear of rape. Most girls, however, quickly pass through this phase and turn towards men, often in the first instance men who are inaccessible or for some other reason present no sexual threat. The girl prefers her imaginary life and relationships to concrete reality. She may seek an unattainable ideal in men, or discover a male mentor. In either case, her idol must not manifest animal instincts, and she herself must not become a mere object to be taken. There is now shame intermingled with her narcissism: she is both a coquette and a prude. She does not wish to be a child any longer, but will not submit fully to her adult female role. Her attitude is one of refusal and revolt, yet she is too divided within herself to challenge the world; she does no more than defy it symbolically or flee from reality. Adolescent girls are very susceptible to self-deception, as well as to all kinds of bizarre or perverse conduct that reveals their ambivalence towards sexuality in particular and their situation in general. Unable to engage in proper action in the world, and with the weight of mens expectations upon them, they are driven to play-acting, to lies and subterfuges. Beneath their apparent idealism they are vain and jealous. Yet although all of the faults commonly associated with adolescent girls arise out of their situation, so do certain qualities. Some girls manage to assume this situation authentically. Girls inner life is richer, more complex than that of boys, and they are capable of rising above the conformism of the male world by questioning orthodox values in the name of freedom. They are also more open and attentive to others than boys, and more sensitive to the poetry of the world and to nature, with which they identify in order to escape from male-dominated society.

Sometimes they devote themselves to mysticism or love of humanity, but mostly their positive projects come to nothing in the world: they leave the relative autonomy of childhood behind and pass submissively into adulthood. It cannot be said that these developments definitely take place at specific ages, but often, towards the end of the period of adolescence when she has accepted her femininity, the young woman enjoys a brief moment of excitement at the future. Yet as she begins to think realistically about marriage, the need to find a husband becomes more urgent, making her harder, more selfish. In recent times circumstances have allowed young women to become less obsessed with finding a man, but it is still more difficult for them to gain independence than it is for young men; more difficult for them to reconcile work or study with the social pressures to achieve a certain status and justification in marriage. In any case, whatever the young womans general attitudes as she becomes an adult, she has at some time to undergo her first experience of sexual intercourse. Ch.III. LInitiation sexuelle (Ch.3. Sexual Initiation) [The content of this chapter is broader than the title indicates. After a general analysis of the nature of womens sexuality, Beauvoir describes, with many examples, the trauma of a young womans sexual initiation, then goes on to show the different ways in which its consequences may affect the whole of the rest of a womans sexual life.] A womans first major sexual experience is always a break with her past and one that affects the rest of her life. For the male, the precise physiological goal of intercourse is the pleasure of ejaculation. A mature womans sexuality is more complex than her earlier clitoral pleasures, and the first time she is penetrated always constitutes a kind of rape. It is not certain that there are specific vaginal orgasms, but in any case the womans arousal during intercourse depends upon the experience as a whole and requires her complete consent. The consent involved embraces dependence upon the male and subordination to the species.In patriarchal societies, there has always been one set of rules for men and another for women: men are able to extend their sexual experience beyond marriage, whereas women must offer a sexual service to their husbands only. Mens sexual vocabulary centres on possession and conquest, and the aggression required of them physiologically is prized because of their sovereignty on the social level. Women are seen as displaying only passive characteristics in the sexual sphere. In fact, womens sexuality does not need to be awakened by men, but their desires are vague and relate back to earlier sensual satisfactions. The roughness of men alienates them somewhat, but even when they find the right combination of physical qualities in a man, womens anatomy prevents them from simply following their sexual drive and taking what they desire. This generates a deep sense of frustration. Yet active physiological responses are required of women in the sexual act. They are not naturally passive, but have to make themselves passive. The balance required between active participation and relaxation is a delicate one, easily broken: the young virgin is ill-prepared mentally and physically for her sexual initiation. She may still be grappling with problems from her childhood, and in any case she cannot but have doubts about her body, when it is being exposed for the first time to male judgement. Her first experience of intercourse may give her either lifelong confidence or permanent neuroses. Whether it be with a brutal lover or a husband insistent on his conjugal rights, or even with a gentle and considerate partner, the experience always constitutes rape. The pain involved is less

significant than the humiliation of being physically dominated, conquered. She is a passive instrument of the mans pleasure: both social taboos and her own personal reactions very often produce inner conflicts and feelings of disgust. The fear of becoming pregnant also constitutes an inhibiting element for the woman, as does the use of contraceptive methods, where these are available to her. Hence a womans sexual initiation will often prove traumatic, producing mental disturbances, sometimes of a severe and lasting kind. New attitudes towards sex on the part of young Americans - attitudes beginning to spread in France - are making the transition easier, but premature or superficial sexual experience can result in permanent semi-frigidity in the woman. Women are more intensely gripped and more radically transformed by sexual desire than men, yet they are less likely to attain orgasm. Psychological factors are critical in this respect, for a woman is sexually at ease neither with a man who is entirely selfish, nor with one who too obviously sets out to satisfy her. If there is not genuine reciprocity, the woman may go on to punish herself and her partner by her sexual frigidity, just as she may do so if a man will not marry her. In any case, the different sexual rhythms of men and women often mean that women are left unsatisfied. Their needs do not centre specifically on the genital system, but relate to the body as a whole and are never entirely satisfied. On the other hand, a woman may consider the mans orgasm a suitable conclusion to the sexual act. She really wishes to merge with her man physically and therefore resents any words or actions that break the spell, whereas he sees intercourse as a certain kind of struggle for domination. Some women are masochistic; that is, they see themselves as the objects that they are in the eyes of men, and act accordingly. Self-punishment is often a characteristic of adolescent girls and it can be a feature of, and reinforce, the frigidity of the mature woman. But masochism, though more of a temptation for women than for men, because of the passive role assigned to them, is not a natural feature of female sexuality: it is an inauthentic attempt to escape from it. The woman must overcome her passivity and establish a relationship of genuine reciprocity with her partner. With good will on the part of the man, too, the sexual act can provide pleasure and satisfaction for both: its poignancy comes from the fact that it constitutes the conscious physical union of two separate individuals. Unfortunately, it usually takes the woman until her midthirties to shed all of her sexual inhibitions, and by this stage she is becoming less desirable physically. The sexual life of women depends in part upon the social and economic context. But if sexuality is an area of experience in which all human beings crucially discover the ambiguity of their condition as both subject and object, the conflicts involved are more dramatic for women, who have to overcome their classification as objects before they can achieve transcendence. Precisely because of male privileges, however, men are often reluctant to recognise themselves as creatures of the flesh. Women have a more authentic experience of their embodiment, although they are frustrated in their desire to take active possession of something sexually in the way that men can. Ch.IV. La Lesbienne (Ch.4. The Lesbian) [In broad terms, this short but dense chapter first places lesbianism within Beauvoirs philosophical and moral perspective, then focuses on the actual nature of the phenomenon, stressing above all that circumstances affect its particular manifestations.]

Contrary to popular belief, lesbians cannot be identified by their physical appearance. Nor do any particular hormonal or biological factors determine their sexuality. A womans sexual development is a function of her global attitude towards existence. Lesbianism is a mental rather than an organic phenomenon, but it is not determined by external circumstances, as psychoanalysts believe. Choice is involved, and the choice of lesbianism may be an authentic or an inauthentic one. It is one kind of attempt to overcome the major sexual problem faced by women: that of reconciling their own claims as autonomous subjects and the passivity expected of them. Mostly, it involves accepting rather than rejecting femininity and provides no challenge to the traditional form of the division of the sexes. Lesbian inclinations are so common among adolescent girls that what requires explanation is only the exclusivity of the choice of women partners. The model of femininity held up by society is an artificial ideal that prevents women from asserting themselves as free individuals. They will revolt against it when society offers insufficient compensations for the restrictions involved, and this revolt can take many forms, including the adopting of virile attitudes. Furthermore, all of the circumstances that lead to frigidity can also lead a woman to turn to other women for solace, although many lesbians have not entirely lost the desire for normal heterosexual relations. The lack of a male organ can cause mental disturbance in lesbians, but stable and long-lasting relationships can also be established, often analogous to those between a young man and an older woman. In some cases, a lesbians sexual orientation relates back to ill-treatment or over-anxiousness on the part of her mother, but this is never a sufficient explanation of lesbianism, which involves choice and can arise in entirely different ways. It is not always a matter of the woman refusing to make herself into an object. In fact, most lesbians are seeking to share the experience that another person has in sexual contact with their body. Between two women, physical love is full reciprocity, with each being subject and object at the same time. Lesbianism is always a free choice reflecting the individuals global attitudes, but external circumstances are influential and many women are thrown together by work or other factors. Some turn to other women as a consolation for their disappoinments with men. In any case, there is suppressed or displaced lesbianism in many heterosexual women. There is also a mixture of masculine and feminine elements in the sexuality of every lesbian. Hence any form of relationship is possible between lesbian partners, who find the particular equilibrium that suits the situation and their personal tendencies. As with heterosexual couples, all kinds of motivations, undercurrents, and changes can be seen in lesbian pairs. Yet because they are not institutionalised, lesbian relationships are lived out more sincerely. Less pretence is involved than between man and woman, and a greater intimacy is possible. Physical contact is less frenetic and never degenerates into revulsion. But since there is also less mystery between two women, they can be merciless with each other; emotional scenes are frequent and extreme. This is partly because lesbian relationships are usually under threat from society, and do not allow any need for children to be easily satisfied. Lesbians need certain male characteristics in order to cope with the world on their own. If they are provocative and affected, this is because they cannot live out their situation unself-consciously.

A decision to wear male clothes may be a matter of convenience, or it may express an unwillingness to be on display like other women. A self-assured, virile lesbian may mix freely with men and be uncomfortable with women, but mostly a lesbians relations with men are bound to be ambiguous: she feels inferior, but deeply resents male privileges. Some lesbians form into groups and claim that they have no need of men, either sexually or socially. Yet they can become imprisoned in this inauthentic role, just as others adopt a lesbian pose simply to attract a certain kind of man. Lesbianism is not a deliberate perversion, any more than it is a fatal curse: it is a freely adopted choice in a particular situation. Physiological, psychological and social circumstances are part of the phenomenon but are not determining factors. Like all patterns of human behaviour, lesbianism can be a rich experience or result in failure, according to whether it is pursued authentically or inauthentically. Deuxime partie: Situation (Pt V: Situation) Ch.V. La femme marie (Ch.1. The Married Woman) [In her first two brief sections, Beauvoir notes that marriage is changing but emphasises that many of its traditional features, springing from male dominance, persist. Next she argues that there is an inherent conflict between sexual love and the institutional function of marriage. Then she describes the housewifes role in the marital home. And in a long final section she examines the quality of the experience of married life, analysing and stressing the hostilities that it generates.] Marriage is the destiny traditionally reserved for women. The new economic position of women has changed the institution itself, which is now coming to be seen as a freely agreed union of two people. But the current period is a transitional one: not all women work, and the nature of marriage is still heavily marked by the practices and values of the past. The woman has always been given in marriage to men by other men, and yet it has been regarded as the only social justification for her existence. She has had to satisfy her mans sexual needs - thereby providing a service - and produce children. Unlike a man, she has had no genuine alternative, and on marrying has become subordinate to her husbands authority in almost all respects. He has continued to enjoy transcendence in many ways, while the wifes role has been an entirely immanent one. She has maintained the home and the species, but has had no part in forging the future or shaping the world. This is still broadly the form that marriage takes. Even emancipated women often prefer marriage to work and seek success through their husbands, since womens work is usually illpaid, and remaining single still constitutes the most severe social disadvantage for a woman. Arranged marriages, always more common in France than elsewhere, still take place within the bourgeoisie. Girls are still taught how to catch their husband, and they normally marry out of resignation or self-interest, rather than enthusiasm. Their apprehensiveness at the prospect, which involves a sharp break with their past, frequently leads to neurosis. That marriages are not normally made on the basis of love is implicit in the very nature of the institution, which is designed not for personal happiness but to serve the collective interest. Marriage constitutes a bargain, whereby the woman provides a sexual service in exchange for a certain protection: personal preferences and romantic love do not come into the matter. Claiming to give moral dignity to a womans eroticism, marriage in fact seeks to suppress it. If husbands arouse their wives sexually, they run the risk of seeing them seek pleasure with other men. In the nineteenth century, the bourgeoisie had to find a way of defending marriage in the face of claims that women had a right to love. It was unconvincingly argued by Balzac that a husband could induce conjugal love in his spouse, even where there was no love to begin with, and there were

other theoretical attempts to integrate eroticism into marriage. In America husbands are now encouraged to acknowledge and meet their wives sexual needs. But marriage as traditionally conceived is far from creating the best conditions for the awakening and development of a womans sexuality. When sexual behaviour is supposed to be justified by reference to God or society and does not encompass recognition of the individuality of those involved, it is no more than bestial. The superimposition of a pompous marriage ceremony upon an animal function is paradoxical and obscene. It is stupid and barbarous, for instance, to turn the difficult moment of sexual initiation into a duty. Many women go through their whole lives without experiencing sexual arousal or pleasure. Since their sexual capacity is almost indefinite, this shows that marriage, which claims to regularise female eroticism, in fact destroys it. All of these difficulties can be overcome if there is mutual love and respect for freedom between partners, but the principle of marriage is obscene, because it degrades the physical act, turning into a matter of rights and duties something that should be based upon spontaneous attraction. The proximity and legitimacy associated with marriage can sometimes help a womanto achieve sexual satisfaction, but an appalling risk is involved whenever a woman marries a man that she does not know sexually. Equally, neither romantic love - which provides no guarantee of sexual compatibility - nor strong sexual attraction in itself offers a good basis for a lifetimes partnership. Eroticism soon comes to play a minor part within a marriage. The couple are too close to generate the intersubjectivity and transcendence that is essential, so that sex becomes a kind of mutual masturbation. Private fantasies may sustain relations, but they can lead to voyeurism, sadism and masochism. Physical love simply cannot be regulated socially: it must be based upon an individuals freedom. In any case, the bourgeois ideal of marriage does not promise a woman love, but security and happiness. She will have an important domestic role, but be protected by, and live through, her husband, whose activity in the world will give meaning and justification to her life. In practice, she has to make a world of her own out of the family home. The very objects around the housewife give her a certain sensual satisfaction and express her personality as well as the familys social status, but the activity involved in housework, cooking and taking care of her family does not amount to transcendence or self-affirmation. The struggle to keep the home clean and fresh is at best a thankless one, a constant effort to keep evil at bay rather than a way of achieving positive good. Everything becomes a potential threat to the familys possessions, so that the wife risks losing all spontaneous enthusiasm for life, even developing a distinctive kind of sado-masochism. The processes of selecting, buying and preparing make cooking a more positive and rewarding activity than housework, but even here repetition soon exhausts the pleasures available. The womans attempts to stamp her own personality on the carrying out of her chores can be exhausting and never produce any outcome that is lasting. She is over-dependent upon expressions of satisfaction or pleasure on the part of her husband and children, for their main interests ultimately lie outside the home. However much her efforts are appreciated, she holds a subordinate, secondary, parasitic position.

In a change as radical and stressful as that produced by puberty, a woman is torn away from her parents to take up what she knows will be her permanent role as a wife. She is often much younger than her husband and has not been brought up in a way that enables her to adjust so easily to marriage. This can result in mental disorders, but in any case the woman finds it difficult both to accept her husband as mentor and to acknowledge his animal instincts: either her respect for him is diminished, or it is too great for her to abandon herself sexually with him. She usually begins by deceiving herself into believing that she has great love for him, but harbours hostility beneath the surface. Since, with his greater command of argument, the husband can usually overcome her tentative attempts to assert her independence, the young wife will either give up the struggle, allowing him to think for her, or persist in some form of stubborn rebellion against male domination. Again, she may be deliberately frigid with her husband, or flirtatious with other men in order to taunt him. A hostile wife will usually seek to deny the husband his transcendence, by seeing him as passive flesh or ridiculing his projects. Breakdown of the marriage can result, but mostly the woman is anxious to maintain her married status. Indeed, she will normally employ a whole range of techniques passed on down the ages in order to keep her husband - techniques that will continue to be needed as long as men enjoy their economic and social privileges. The defenders of marriage argue that its worst aspects are the fault of the individuals concerned and not of the institution itself. But if in many marriages the partners arrive at some workable compromise, only very rarely do such couples avoid the state of boredom: their relationship has ceased to be living or dynamic. The bourgeois concept of conjugal love produces lies and repression, encouraging the husband to take no interest in his wifes state of mind and preventing the wife from becoming involved in the husbands work. Often the pattern of the wifes day is boredom; waiting with expectation; then disappointment when the husband returns. The housewifes burdens are especially heavy in the provinces and she may seek to escape into a world of dreams and fantasies, which can lead to perversion and even crime. A certain stoicism may see her through her daily grind, or she make take up voluntary work, but in neither case does she have a positive purpose or an adequate outlet for her energies. The special qualities of countless women have been lost to humanity because of marriage. Yet if a wife devotes herself totally to her husband, the risk is that he will find her attentions excessive: the contradictory demands that he is making of her are impossible to meet. The ideal relationship - based upon mutal recognition of freedom, and with both parties able to develop as a result of their separate links with the community - is more often found outside than within marriage. It takes many forms with regard to sexuality and friendship, and constitutes the richest source of joy and strength open to human beings. Individuals are not responsible for the failures of marriage: the institution itself is a fundamentally perverted one that is bound to lead to disaster. It is changing, but as long as the husband bears sole economic responsibility for the couple, any appearance of equality will be an illusion. Wives are often more involved in their husbands work now and the master-slave dialectic can be said to have brought the man under his wifes domination. Yet her dependence goes deeper and has been internalised. They are both oppressed by an institution they did not create, though it is male domination that has made womens condition a problem for both sexes. It is in the interests of both that the situation should

be changed, that marriage should not be allowed to be a career for women. Even women who work are not considered as supporting the couple to the same degree as a man. Often their work is simply an additional chore which does not bring them genuine independence. In any case, it is still extremely difficult to reconcile work with childbearing, which is supposed to give marriage its meaning and constitute the womans main joy and justification. Ch. VI. La Mre (Ch.2. The Mother) [After a preliminary discussion of abortion, Beauvoir looks, again in chronological sequence, at pregnancy; childbirth; the mothers relations with her young child (son or daughter); and relations with an older child. She makes some concluding remarks about the dangerous myths concerning motherhood.] Womans natural function is childbearing, but human society can resist nature and, since the advent of birth control, pregnancy is partly a matter of choice. When a mistake is made, recourse to abortion may be possible. But bourgeois society is hypocritical about abortion: it is still illegal in France, though the justifications given for this are belied by the facts, or are in flagrant contradiction with arguments used elsewhere by the bourgeoisie and the Church. Antifeminists are determined to resist any measures that might free women. Yet abortion is carried out illegally on a large scale, often resulting in the suffering or even death of the mother, particularly among the poorer classes. Many women experience guilt or shame and have serious moral scruples at a moment when men are permitted to adopt cynical, contradictory attitudes. Because it is men who are at fault but women who pay the price, mens fine words and purported values have little credence thereafter. Legalised abortion and birth control would allow women to take full responsibility for their pregnancies, which at present are still governed partly by chance. The course of a womans pregnancy and her attitude towards maternity vary according to the degree of enthusiasm or revolt with which she greets the prospect. Her complex feelings may well hark back to childhood and adolescence: pregnancy may be a way of breaking free from her mother, or may cause her to fall back under her mothers influence. Again, she may wish the childs father to have no involvement in its upbringing, but more usually she will want and need the fathers support. Her own reaction to pregnancy may mirror her husbands, or may reflect any hostility she feels towards him. Her deepest feelings will be mixed, since the foetus is experienced as both a physical part of herself and something alien or parasitical. She is about to transcend herself, and yet she is conscious of being at the mercy of strong natural forces. The illusion that pregnancy gives a meaning or justification to the life of the child-to-be, or to the mothers, needs to be shed. In fact, it brings intimations of mortality. The womans attitude to pregnancy changes according to the different stages. At first, her body revolts against it, and her mental state may exacerbate physical disturbances like vomiting. A conflict between her desire to keep the foetus and a wish to destroy it may be at the root of certain physical problems and even spontaneous miscarriages. Later, the biological exchanges involved allow the woman to adapt and feel more in charge. A special kind of peace and satisfaction often comes with her recognition that she is the key to the future, the incarnation of the species, though women who have seen themselves essentially as sex objects suffer at this stage. In the final phases of pregnancy, the mother becomes aware of the foetus as a separate, autonomous being and reacts with either wonderment or repugnance. This reaction, in turn, will govern the nature of the delivery, but in any case, the woman will need help, and she once again finds herself dependent on others.

The mothers first feelings towards the new-born child vary: a miracle has happened, yet she is sad and almost always disappointed, feeling no particular bond with the child. Breast-feeding can forge an intimate link, but not all women can manage it. Many are frightened by their new responsibilities and look hostilely upon the child as a tyrant threatening their freedom. The attitudes of those close to her also have an important influence on the nature of the mothers treatment of her baby, but in any case she will not suddenly find her life justified. The maternal instinct does not exist: the mothers attitude is governed by her situation as a whole and the way in which envisages it and reacts to it. Nevertheless, a woman will usually be uplifted by maternity. She can dominate her young child in the way that men dominate women, even obtaining an analogous sensual satisfaction. Then, as the child grows and becomes more of an individual, the relationship becomes more complex. Because the child can do nothing in return, a mothers concern to meet its every need deserves praise, but motherhood is usually a strange mixture of narcissism and altruism. The risk is that the mother will work out her own frustrations on the child, punishing it for the wrongs that she has suffered in the male-dominated world. Most women repress impulses of this kind, but cannot prevent them from surfacing from time to time in a sadistic moodiness, often on the pretext that the child is not conforming to the model set for it. The masochistic and tyrannical devotion of certain mothers is equally harmful. In any event, the child inevitably rebels against its mother when it begins to find its feet. In general, mothers cope less well with daughters than with sons, whose possibilities of transcendence they seek to share. But in order to assert her own claims over her son, a mother will tend to stifle him and actually reduce his chances of success in the world. Since girls do not belong to the privileged sex, the mother has even more hold over a daughter, attempting to reproduce in her all of her own attitudes towards femininity. Most women live in a state of resentment at their own lot and either seek to impose the same fate upon their daughter, or are determined that the daughter shall not share it. In either case, grave difficulties arise when the mother begins losing her authority over her daughter. She may persecute an older daughter who is the fathers favourite, and will tend to resist any external influence that challenges her own, for instance on the part of the girls friends or teachers. And in the end, she has to acknowledge her defeat. An uneasy friendship may ensue between mother and older daughter, but the former remains permanently frustrated and the latter feels pursued by a curse. All of this shows how false and dangerous are two common beliefs. It is evidently not the case that maternity is automatically a fulfilling experience for a woman. A child is no panacea and the mothers relations with it depend upon the form of her life as a whole. There can be disastrous consequences if the womans decision to have a child is made out of weakness and not strength. Child-rearing is a valid choice for a woman, but it does not provide a ready-made justification for her existence. It is not a natural obligation, nor even an especially privileged activity for a woman. The assertion that having children is womens supreme goal has no more value than a publicity slogan. It is equally false that children are sure to be happy in the arms of their mother. Maternal love is not a natural phenomenon, and there are bad mothers. Even normal parents can give their children complexes and neuroses, which they in turn will pass on to theirs. It is criminal to restrict and disable women in so many ways, then give them the care of children. Children should be abandoned to their parents a great deal less than they are at present. Mothers have to

justify their own lives, without reference to their children, and they should play a part in the economic, political and social life of the community. In a properly organised society, work and motherhood would be reconcilable: working mothers would then have more to give to their children and be better qualified to bring them up. Genuine autonomy and equality with the husband would also make it easier for a woman to reconcile marital relations, housework and child-bearing, which currently react adversely upon one another. Ch.VII. La Vie de socit (Ch.3. Social Life) [Beauvoir analyses the particular social pressures that bear upon the housewife, showing that her situation affects the way she dresses; governs her day-to-day contacts with other houswives; dictates the nature of her friendships with other women and men; and sometimes drives her to adultery.] Any individual family has to relate to other social units, but while the husband has links with the community through his work, it is the wife who represents the couple and its social standing in her relations with fellow housewives or other outsiders. The way she dresses, for example, while being bound up with her image of herself and her sexual attractiveness, is also an expression of her social situation. She may be conformist or rebellious in relation to conventions of decency, but, in any case, she must keep up appearances in her dress and make-up. And the more she needs work, the more important it will be for her to be elegant. Caring for her body and her appearance can be satisfying, but it is time-consuming and creates anxieties. Even if this becomes an obsession, the woman, again, can never achieve a permanent victory: time takes its toll of the body, and clothes can be damaged. Knowing that her husband looks at her through the eyes of others, she dresses not for him, but to have her beauty and taste recognised by other people. Yet the confirmation she is seeking cannot be relied upon and is never definitive. The housewifes social visits or receptions mostly involve other women. They are duties more than pleasures and generate little genuine communication. The joy of entertaining rapidly turns into a matter of obligation, bringing fears of disaster. It becomes one more feature of the treadmill of the housewife, without doing anything to reduce the loneliness of her days at home. There is a specific quality to friendships between women, which are based upon complicity in immanence. Sharing confidences, recipes and hints, they set up a kind of world of their own, based upon their own moral code. For some women, the warmth and intimacy of this rival world is more precious than relations with men, but only rarely does the complicity involved develop into genuine friendship. An element of competition and hostility always enters into relations between women, especially with regard to men. The shadow of the male world hangs heavily over them: they are comrades in captivity and can console one another or plan escape, but only men can liberate them. Even if the husband loses his prestige in the eyes of his wife, she usually still regards men as the key to salvation and seeks another as her mentor. It may be her father or another relative, or a professional man like a priest or doctor, in which case her behaviour may take strange forms. Some women engage in fantasies about actors or seek male admirers, without wishing to put their marriage at risk. Of those who eventually commit adultery, some do so as an act of defiance against their husband, but more are trying to compensate for disappointment in their marriage. Ironically, the

institution of marriage, in seeking to regulate female eroticism, leads logically to adultery. If marriage is a kind of obligation for the woman, she takes a lover out of free choice, and he lifts her out of her daily routine. Yet extra-marital affairs have their own pitfalls and often become as dull and unsatisfactory as marriage itself. Adultery is still seen as much more of a fault in women than in men, so that even in circles where women enjoy a degree of sexual freedom, they have to engage in degrading pretences and run a great risk of alienating their husband. It is very difficult for a woman to act as mans equal when this equality is not universally recognised and sanctioned by society. Ch.VII. Prostitues et htares (Ch.4. Prostitutes and Hetairas) [Here Beauvoir first discusses common, then high-class prostitutes, arguing that female stars are the modern equivalent of the latter.] Where there is marriage, there is prostitution. In their own interests, men insist on fidelity in their wives, but they are unable to observe it themselves. The argument has been that some women have to be sacrificed to prostitution, so that men can relieve their baser instincts with them and treat honest women with respect. Prostitutes are outcasts and yet economically their situation is parallel with that of the married woman: in both cases, the sexual act is performed as a service for some kind of remuneration. But because, unlike the wife, the prostitute is not treated with respect as a human being, she encapsulates all of the forms of womens enslavement to men. No hereditary or physiological factor, no particular penchant for vice turns women into prostitutes, whose principal concern is to earn money. Society and not they should be blamed for the activity. Many prostitutes are young women who have been living away from home and have previously been exploited as maid-servants, or sexually abused. Few girls decide on prostitution immediately after losing their virginity. They may be led into it, or have to take it up because they have been abandoned by their family, or because illness or the birth of a child gives rise to the sudden need for money. They may at first see it as a temporary measure but be fully drawn into the trade by pimps. A prostitute needs the help and protection of a man, and she may be particularly attached to him. Many prostitutes, however, seek pleasure and satisfaction in the arms of another woman. In any case, there is strong solidarity among prostitutes. Many have special clients for whom they feel some affection, but for the most part they regard men with indifference, even scorn and disgust. Yet they are comfortable in their belief that they have a place in a society that requires their services. Their financial and material position is a much more painful feature of their existence. Common prostitutes are exploited by pimps, hounded by the police, and frequently catch venereal or other diseases. They are often addicted to alcohol or drugs, have many back-street abortions, and tend to die young. For centuries, the high-class prostitute or courtesan was recognised as an individual and could even hope to be influential through a famous protector. The modern equivalent is the female star, who also satisfies mens dreams in exchange for fame and fortune. The links between prostitution and art have always been close, for artistic performances of various kinds have long been part of the stock-in-trade of high-class prostitutes. Stars, like courtesans, have to please an audience of men. They exploit not just their bodies but their whole feminine person as capital, and they may be called hetaerae. But, unlike the genuine creative artist, they are not opening up new routes for human transcendence. They are using the traditional role assigned to women in order to ensnare men in immanence too. This enables them to acquire a certain economic autonomy and live on a par with men. They belong to no single man, but depend heavily upon

lovers or protectors and watch anxiously as their own beauty fades. The strain of having to continue to please men or the public is considerable. Often the hetaera becomes bourgeois and conservative, considering herself to be a paragon of virtue. Relations with others, male or female, come to be dominated by her central need to retain her prominent, privileged position. Occasionally, an exceptional dancer or actress can achieve real freedom, but mostly the hetaeras independence is an illusion, her freedom negative. She may sacrifice everything for her career, but it will usually be in male hands. Insofar as she succeeds in exploiting men, she does so at the cost of disproportionate narcissism. Ch.VIII. De la maturit la vieillesse (Ch.5. From Maturity to Old Age) [Beauvoir here describes the very final phase of a womans life, from the time of the menopause to her death.] As at other stages, the transition from maturity to the long final phase of a womans life is a more sudden and brutal one than the equivalent in men. The menopause is an organic phenomenon that has strong symbolic significance, especially for those women who have been most concerned about their femininity. Even before it, women are haunted by the fear of growing old, since the process will result in the loss of their hold over men. Those who have sacrificed most discover that they have been tricked. They can become morose and embittered, or try to start all over again, compensating for past errors and failures, if only in their imagination. They may lose their grip on reality or, exalted, commit themselves fully to religion, or to some other cause. But the moments of exaltation will be followed by depression in which the menopausal woman engages in recriminations and suffers from morbid jealousy. Her sexual desires may intensify as her physical attractions diminish, and she may seek young lovers, even if she has to pay for them. Many of these problems disappear if a woman consents to grow old gracefully. But if she finally discovers her freedom at this stage, there is nothing left for her to do with it. A man in his fifties is at the height of his career, but a woman feels that she is no longer needed. If she invests all of her hope in her son, disillusionment follows, since he fails to live up to her excessive expectations and eventually seeks to break free. There can be no lasting complicity or collaboration between them, and the advent of a daughter-in-law will usually be seen by the mother as a permanent barrier. An older womans relationship with her daughter is often fixed in a pattern of hostility going back to earlier years. Yet even if she identifies very closely with the daughter, she will, again, finally be faced with resistance and rebellion. It takes a rare combination of generosity and detachment in an older woman for her to be able to find enrichment through the lives of her children without dominating them or being hurt by them. And it takes a similar attitude to enable her to enjoy a loving relationship with her grandchildren without clashing with the parents. Any freely-chosen relationships with younger people that serve as a substitute for these family links give rise to the same problems and pitfalls. A woman may resign herself to less intense relations with those closest to her, but then these do little to counteract the solitude and boredom of her old age. The real tragedy of the older woman lies in her knowledge that she has no function to fulfil. Whether she takes up knitting or painting, she does so essentially to pass the time, and if she joins womens charitable organisations, she finds that in most cases the acts of charity are no more than a pretext for forming and maintaining an organisation of some kind. Even the positive results achieved by such associations in America have no coherent or constructive plan for society behind them. As long as womens existence remains a parasitical one, they will not take an effective part in the creation of a better world. Very few women break out of the parasitical

mould, and most, late on in their lives, fall back into the kind of routine that has always been their lot. As their husbands grow more dependent upon them, some recognise that they have been duped from first to last, but only stoicism or cynicism can result from any new insights: there is no stage in her life at which a woman enjoys both independence and the possibility of effective action. Only at the very end, with the approach of death, does she normally attain a certain serenity. Ch.X. Situation et caractre de la femme (Ch.6. Womans Situation and Character) [Pulling some threads together in this chapter, Beauvoir describes certain general characteristics of women which arise directly out of their situation: their tendency to accept things as they are; the resentment at their dependence which makes them awkward, even deceitful, with men; their search for peace and harmony, often through religion; their greater sensitivity to the world and others. Finally, Beauvoir argues that women must work collectively for their liberation.] It is because womens condition has changed only superficially since ancient times that the same character has been attributed to them across the ages. The behaviour-patterns discernible in women are due not to physiological or psychological determinism, but to economic, social and historical conditioning. The paradox of their situation is that they belong to both the male world and a section of it where male values are contested: they are both docile and rebellious. A woman is not given the skills to master the material world: real action is unknown to her and she leaves to men the business of examining, evaluating and judging things in the world. Mens gods and leaders, laws and values seem like transcendent realities to her, and, having no ideas of her own, she is sometimes stubbornly conservative in her attitudes. On the other hand, she may accept the form of the law as such and be happy to see its content change. In general, women accept things as they are, but their resignation can be associated either with virtues of patience and stoicism or with sterile over-cautiousness. Nevertheless, they can be as bold as men when they identify with a cause. Many of womens alleged faults - materialism, sensuality, triviality, servility - stem from the fact that their horizons are blocked. They can have no positive goals of their own and therefore settle for the happy medium or mediocrity. Men clip womens wings, then deplore the fact that they cannot fly. Similarly, they take away from women all possibility of genuine communication with others, then complain that they are narcissistic. Because women have so little grip on the male world, they remain vulnerable and anxious. Many live out their situation in a state of resentment against their dependence. Yet they still need to respect the male world, and this can result in a kind of Manicheism, which takes away some of the anguish of constantly deciding what is good and bad. A woman tends to blame her husband or lover, whom she sees as the embodiment of male society, for the state of the world, although she has no wish to leave him. This is why she is given to scenes and to tears, which constitute a symbolic release, and probably why women pretend to attempt suicide more often than men. Much of womens behaviour is a protest against their situation of dependence, but the protest often takes the trivial form of keeping men waiting, or general capriciousness. There are areas of womens experience to which men have no access, and women reject masculine logic both because it does not work in these areas and because it is an instrument of violence in the hands of men. A woman understands that all principles are ambiguous and that men use their moral code inauthentically in order to mystify and dominate women. But women respond in kind, by tricking and deceiving men in matters of love. All womans faults reflect her situation, and men are prepared to encourage these faults in order to claim that their own

dominance is justified. Suspicious of mens systems, women think in terms of the particular rather than the general, and they all consider themselves as exceptional cases. But they have ambivalent feelings about men, and therefore about themselves and the world too. Instead of taking responsibility for their lives, they live partly in a world of ideals and dreams. They perceive their bodies as both a burden and a promise of happiness and success. They find in nature either a reflection of their own freedom or a pretext for spiritual ecstasy. Since a woman cannot engage in action, her key idea will be that of harmony, since this implies the possibility of passive participation in the order of things. The ideal of a state of peace is precious to her because of the tension that normally characterises her life, but this is a trap, since good is not static and the individual does not have a place in some global harmony. Religion has always been the supreme compensation that society offers to women. Religion sometimes provides justification for male dominance, but in modern times it has been more of an instrument for the mystification of women, who have been led to believe that they are the equals of men in the eyes of God, in spite of social discrimination, and that their rewards will come in heaven. The Church has never taken God to be encouraging women to shake off male dominance, yet women discover in religion weapons to use against men, whose logic can be questioned in the name of the mysteries and whose pride can be categorised as a sin. Since Gods world is good, womens passivity is sanctified, her femininity glorified. And each woman can invoke the divine will in order to justify her own authority over those subordinate to her. In fact, women use religion as a pretext for satisfying their own desires, whether they choose asceticism or sensuality, pride or humility. They are thereby a powerful tool in the hands of the Church, which resists moves for their emancipation. It is womens situation, then, that explains their character. Many men, too, are restricted within a subordinate, inessential role. Those in the working classes attempt to escape through political action, but those in the middle classes have chosen such a role and are actually more easily dominated by conventions, aspirations and social pressures than women. Women are less likely to hide behind the notion of human dignity, more sincere in their emotions, thoughts and reactions. A special feminine sensitivity is partly mythical, but women do pay more attention to themselves and the world than men do. Not being ruled by abstract concepts or projects, a woman is conscious of the richness and singularity of the world. She has more time to study her own feelings and can be more sympathetic to those of others. She is capable of genuine generosity and, in general, having anxiously to invent her own modes of conduct, is closer to authenticity than her self-assured husband. But women have to overcome male mystifications in order to achieve these advantages. In the higher social classes, they simply identify with the values of their male masters in order to enjoy the same privileges, and are worthless creatures. It is absurd, therefore, to talk of women in general, let alone consider whether one sex is superior to another. Mens situation is infinitely preferable to that of women. Because they have far more concrete opportunities of freely projecting themselves into the world, their achievements are considerably greater. Freedom is complete in all individuals, but because it is abstract and empty in the case of women, their only authentic recourse is revolt. Resignation is an abdication of responsibility: women must reject the limits of their situation and work for their liberation. This liberation can come only on a collective scale and depends upon the continuing evolution of womens economic position. In

the meantime, there have been, and still are, many women seeking their own individual salvation. They are striving for justification or transcendence within their situation of immanence, trying to convert their slavery into freedom - through narcissim, love or mysticism. Troisime partie: Justifications (Pt VI: Justifications) [In each of the three chapters of Part III, Beauvoir describes a way in which some women, rather than taking part in a collective revolt against womens subordinate situation, try to provide a justification of their subjugation through narcissism, idolatrous love, or mysticism. These phenomena may form part of the life of the independent woman, but as life-styles in themselves, as attempts at individual salvation, they are doomed to failure.] Ch.XI. La Narcissiste (Ch.1. The Narcissist) The restricting circumstances of womens condition invite them to turn inwards more than men, and to alienate themselves in self-love. Having her aspirations as a subject frustrated, a woman may try to be both subject and object for herself, because she has been encouraged to see herself as an object since childhood. A man finds his own image in the mirror too static to represent him, but a woman can be entranced by hers and identify herself with it. She can see beauty, desire, love and happiness in the mirror, all embodied in herself, and devote her life to exploring the promise of this revelation. She may enter into an internal dialogue with herself, giving shape to her contingent life. Looking back with nostalgia to the uniqueness of her childhood and the sovereignty she enjoyed, she may seek to convince herself that she has preserved its freshness. She creates for herself, or takes over from fiction, a whole character, a destiny - if necessary, the role of victim. Ignoring the facts of her past and her daily routine, she sees the key to her life as lying in some mysterious, incommunicable quality, or a particular mission. She likes nothing more than to talk about herself and have others talk to her about herself. Social life is particularly important to her, for she needs a public. The narcissist may actually take to the stage, simply in order to be on display. Yet whatever path to glory the narcissist may choose, she will not be fully committed to the activity involved, but only to the attention that it brings. Narcissists who do not wish to be in the public eye may attempt to influence or inspire eminent men, in order to take over anothers transcendence. They need to be desired and loved, to have their superiority confirmed in the eyes of men, and may well imagine that they have powers of fatal attraction that drive men to extravagant conduct. Considering themselves the centre of the world, they may equally develop a persecution complex. In any case, they lose their grip on the real world, seriously misjudging themselves and making no genuine contact with others. Since it is not metaphysically possible for narcissists to maintain the illusion of identity with their image of themselves, they experience failure in all respects. Their need to please men constitutes a form of dependence, even slavery. The paradox in the narcissists attitude is that she seeks to be valued by a world on which she places no value, since she alone counts in her own eyes. Her vanity is never satisfied; she is constantly at risk and anxious. Old age will often find her in a pathological state of paranoia. Ch.XII. LAmoureuse (Ch.2. The Woman in Love) The word love has different meanings for members of the two sexes and this is a source of serious misunderstandings. Love is a womans very life, but only one part of a mans. Men remain sovereign, wishing to absorb a woman into their lives, not to be absorbed, but since a womans situation condemns her to dependence, she may choose to abdicate before her master, to worship a man and turn love into her religion. Often, however, women are unable to see any of the men they know as a god, and very few, in fact, dedicate their whole lives to a great love. Some commit themselves fairly late on in their lives, as a kind of last resort. The misfortune of all women is that they are tempted or encouraged not to struggle on their own behalf, but to let

things take their course and thereby attain great happiness. When they discover this to be an illusion, it is too late. If women seek a father-substitute in their lover, this is because they wish to regain the security of childhood, to feel that their existence is justified in the eyes of someone else and therefore in their own. Hence they are particularly vulnerable to men who enjoy social prestige. For most women only their great admiration for a man can compensate for the humiliation and defeat brought by the sexual act, but if they believe their lovers feelings for them to be permanent and absolute, they can enjoy their sexuality to the full. The paradox of idolatrous love is that a woman seeking her own salvation should reach the point where she tries to abandon her own existence entirely, through a union with someone else. The phenomenon necessarily has a mystical aspect, but the need for the woman to devote every moment of her life to her man can easily lead to self-punishment, or martyrdom. The goal is identification with the loved one and the reward consists in being recognised by the man as no more than a part of him. But if the woman thus feels her life to be justified, the position is rarely a stable one. A man is human, not divine, and his own life is itself not justified in a way that would justify that of his woman. The excessive expectations generated by the womans failure to realise this lead to disillusionment and acrimony. Idolatrous love becomes a series of demands by the woman, a kind of tyranny. And yet the woman does not really want a man who is no more than a prisoner: he must preserve his transcendence in order to be able to save them both. The combination of demands involved cannot be met, as the woman knows in her moments of lucidity. When she is no longer loved, a normal woman will eventually recognise the fact, but some degree of self-deception is always present and can, in extreme cases, lead to pathological states. A modest measure of happiness if the woman is prepared to acknowledge that she is not necessary, but simply useful to her man, although even this involves the painful process of waiting for him in a variety of ways. Since a woman is constantly afraid that her man will come to love another, her demands upon him always contain an element of sexual jealousy. This jealousy fundamentally contests the love that she has made into a religion, while tying her even more closely to her man. No desperate extra effort to make herself attractive will bring back the fascination that she originally exercised over him. Any woman who has been prudent enough to make secure provision for the future is not altogether a victim of idolatrous love, which almost always leads to catastrophe, with the woman left with nothing to live for. Only if an abandoned woman is young, or if she has special qualities, is there a chance that she may recover from the disaster. Authentic love has to be based upon the reciprocal recognition of freedom by two individuals, who discover the world together without either of them renouncing transcendence for the sake of the other. Women help men to find themselves, but in the current situation love relationships on an equal footing are still rare: mostly, through love, women try to overcome the dependence to which they are condemned by accepting that dependence. Men have mystified women by urging that a womans life and salvation are bound up with love, so that when a woman discovers that the man does not, in fact, want the burden of unconditional love, her life seem vain. At present love is one of the most pathetic manifestations of the curse that hangs over the woman deprived of transcendence. Ch.XIII. La Mystique (Ch.3. The Mystic) Since love is alleged to be womans vocation, she will often devote herself to love of God, if human love is ruled out or has proved unsatisfactory. She is used to regarding man as a divinity, and in both cases her love is

meant to justify her existence by reference to a sovereign being. Love of God and the love of a man are often inextricably intertwined, but in any event the nature of the love is essentially the same. The mystic draws on human love not simply for the language in which to describe her love of God, but also for physical reactions, which become part of her mystical experience. In a case like that of Saint Teresa, love of God is not a sublimation of sexual feelings: rather, in one single movement she seeks union with God and experiences this union physically, the objective physical expressions of her love being a mark of its strength. She was living out as a woman a metaphysical problem - that of the relationship between the individual and transcendent Being which goes beyond gender. Yet she is a striking exception: minor mystics have an essentially feminine view of the world and their salvation. First and foremost, in the love of God, as in the love of a man, a woman is seeking a glorification of her narcissism. She is exalted at the thought of being constantly seen and loved, and is able indirectly to worship her own image. In human love, glorification of the womans body involves humiliation and suffering on her part: similarly, the mystic is prepared to mortify her flesh to make it an instrument of her salvation. Especially in countries like Italy and Spain, where sensuality is a strong characteristic, devotion takes on a markedly carnal flavour. For the religious woman, God usually takes on the form of a creature of flesh and blood, and the physical suffering of Christ is an image with which she identifies particularly strongly. Of the 321 people recognised by the Catholic Church as bearing the stigmata, only 47 are men. Through love, the shedding of blood and suffering lead to glory. But ecstasy and visions are not enough for some mystics, who wish to convey their experience to the world through their acts. In the cases of Saint Catherine, Saint Teresa and Joan of Arc, mystical experience simply strengthens their commitment to certain lines of action. But other mystics have little concern what action they take, as long as they are doing something that suggests they are chosen by God. Mystical fervour, like love and narcissism, can be integrated into the life of an active and independent woman. But insofar as they are attempts at individual salvation, they are doomed to failure. The woman is either trying to relate to something unreal (her own image, or God), or is in an unreal relationship with a real being. In each case, she has no grip on the world. She fails to escape from her own subjectivity and her mystified state prevents her from realising her freedom. The only way in which a woman can authentically exercise her freedom is by engaging in positive action within society. Quatrime Partie: Vers la libration (Pt VII. Towards Liberation) Ch.XIV. La Femme indpendante (Ch.1. The Independent Woman) [Beauvoir points out that work for women has not yet (in 1949) radically changed womens subordinate position in society. Then she shows how those privileged women - mostly professional - who have attained real independence through work still labour under severe handicaps in respect of work, sexuality, and long-term relationships. She next argues that adverse social circumstances - education in particular - still generate psychological barriers in women. And finally she reiterates that it is solely because of their situation that, at the very highest levels of human endeavour (particularly in the arts) woman have so far achieved rather less than men.]

Giving women the right to vote and taking away certain restrictions has not radically changed their situation, because they are still not economically independent. Only work can guarantee women real freedom, for as active producers they rediscover themselves as subjects, rediscover their transcendence. At present, however, work in itself does automatically bring liberation, as it would in a socialist world. Most workers are still exploited, and the social structure has not yet been radically changed by the evolution of womens position. A world that has always belonged to men still bears their imprint. Working women still have their household chores as well as their work, and they are not recognised as the equals of men. They are only just beginning to develop social and political awareness: many women are not yet willing to give up the benefits of male support. Their wages are insufficient to give them independence, so that most are enslaved to both men and work. Nevertheless, there are already a fairly high number of privileged professional women who have gained economic and social autonomy through their work. They are a minority, but their situation is much debated and needs to be closely examined in connection with womens future possibilities. They have gone no more than part of the way towards true liberation: because of their upbringing and social attitudes in general, their autonomy poses distinctive problems. The independent woman is one who, by definition, is breaking out of her traditional feminine role. Yet defying conventions of make-up or dress has the effect of devaluing her sexually and socially, and may harm her professionally. Equally, observing such conventions is a timeconsuming constraint. The independent woman is torn: being unable to abandon the expectations of femininity imposed upon her earlier, she attempts to live like a man and a woman at the same time, thereby adding greatly to her burdens. Particularly if she is an intellectual, she will suffer from an inferiority complex about her sexual attractiveness to men. Independent women are beginning to combine work and sexual attractiveness successfully, but it is still more difficult for them than for men to achieve sexual and sentimental satisfaction. Sexual adventures may imperil their reputation or career; unlike men, they have no simple way of paying for sex; they run considerable practical risks in taking casual sexual partners; and their human dignity makes them want a man to be gratified by the gift of their body. A woman can take the initiative sexually only by promising submission. If it fails, she is seriously humiliated, and if it succeeds, it is the man who is seen as having triumphed. And there is the permanent risk of being regarded as a woman of easy virtue. In the sexual act itself, the man is often determined to impose himself, whereas the woman can scarcely do so. She can gain no satisfaction from masochism if she does not believe in male superiority, and it is difficult for her to experience affection or friendship for a man who does not regard her as an equal. A woman suffers more than a man from a failed affair: she is rarely sincere when she claims to be seeking only sexual pleasure from a relationship. It is much less easy for a woman than for a man to reconcile marriage or a long-term liaison with a career. She usually agrees to cope with the home and children in addition to her work, continuing to accept, more or less, that justification of her existence will come through devotion to a man. Less than fully involved in her work, she is irritated that it encroaches upon her love for her man. If she does not want children, she risks having them accidentally, yet if she wants them, she is not free to choose how and when. In either case, they will badly disrupt her working

life. Balancing the demands of love and work generates constant tension in the woman, and this in turn makes the physiological aspects of womanhood more onerous. Objective circumstances are also unfavourable for women trying to succeed professionally. As a student and early in her career, the young woman rarely has the same chance as a man. Whether or not she has household chores to cope with, her upbringing will have produced a preoccupation with her femininity that obstructs a wholehearted commitment to her work. Seeing her contemporaries marry into money, she wonders why she has chosen the most difficult path. Her early education is partly governed by the assumption that she is less capable than men, so that she later attributes any lack of success to this inferiority. Hence she may become overconscientious, to the point of stifling her critical sense and her intelligence, as well as rendering her studies boring. She does not dare to aim high and knows, in any case, that neither men nor women would show great confidence in her professionally, or willingly take orders from her. She may well over-react against such prejudice. Striving to prove herself, she cannot relax and becomes incapable of initiatives or boldness, her prudence condemning her to mediocrity. She can have a perfectly honourable career, but by the very highest standards will still trail behind men. For the present at least, women are too self-conscious to achieve great things. Actresses, singers and dancers are in a different and privileged category, since their career allows them to assert their femininity, but there are special pitfalls for them, too, and most are more concerned with their ego than with their art. Women who are creative artists detach themselves from the male world, but cannot possibly succeed in their attempt to justify themselves in the world of the imagination. Mostly, they write or paint in order to fill a void in their lives rather than out of a serious commitment to art. They are unwilling to learn the difficult techniques or submit to the discipline involved, mistakenly believing that spontaneous self-expression is sufficient. Their narcissism comes between them and the reality that they ought to be exploring. They are actually hiding reality and even their own authentic experience behind a screen of poetic imaginings. They lack the courage to risk displeasing anyone and the weight of male culture crushes their originality. Some have talent, but none develop it with fanatical persistence to the point of genius. Many accept society as it is and sing the praises of bourgeois virtues and ideals, reinforcing the myths of femininity. Others (like George Eliot, the Bronts, Jane Austen) have contested the state of their society, but so much of their energy has been absorbed in the struggle to reach what is no more than the starting-point for a man that they have been unable to go further. They do not have the range of experience of a Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, or the irony and nonchalance of a Stendhal. Women writers are still too preoccupied with destroying illusions and lies to go beyond this to examine reality. They excel in observing the given, describing the inner life of women and some aspects of the world of nature, but very few have penetrated to a further dimension. Their books lack metaphysical resonance, since they take the world seriously rather than questioning it. Most male writers are the same, and it is again only when they are judged by the very highest standards that women writers seem mediocre. Women simply do not have the freedom that men have to discover the world, and themselves, on their own. They can feel alone in the world, but never experience the transcendence, and anguish, of standing alone and sovereign in front of the world. Constraints and tradition prevent women from feeling responsible for humanity and the universe, as great men can and do. None of the experiences that inspired the work of a Van Gogh would have been open to a woman. Saint Teresa is virtually the only woman who has lived out for herself, in total

abandonment, the human condition. Only when women can ignore sexual differentiation will they be able to identify with humanity as a whole and explore reality as a whole. The limits of womens achievements to date are to be explained not by some mysterious essence but by their situation, which is in the process of changing. When women are free, it is not certain that their ideas will be different from mens, because they have to assimilate themselves to men in order to gain freedom. But womens possibilities of development have undoubtedly been stifled in the past, and their potential lost for ever. It is high time, in their interests and in the interests of all, that women were given their chance. Conclusion Are we condemned to permanent war between the sexes, or do the present conflicts represent a transitional phase of human history? We have seen that such hostility is neither biologically nor psychologically determined. In fact, over the centuries the conflict has taken two different forms. Being oppressed, women have tried in various ways to destroy male superiority, by mutilating men, by undermining their truths and values. But they now no longer wish to draw men into the state of immanence that they themselves experience: they wish to enjoy transcendence. It is now men who are resisting, refusing to give up their sovereignty or privileges and bringing about a direct struggle for dominance. Modern women accept masculine values and rightly consider themselves mens equals. If they are sometimes driven by their impossible situation to seek the best of both worlds - using their traditional feminine charms, but hoping to gain a new kind of respect as equals - men are also hypocritical, refusing to give women what they would need in order to do all that is allegedly expected of them. The struggle between the sexes will go on as long as they fail to recognise each other as equals; that is, as long as femininity as such exists. There is a vicious circle, in which each sex is its own victim as well as a victim of the other. Each sex is in complicity with the other: women pursue a yearning for renunciation, men a yearning for alienation. Each sex recognises its own cowardice and self-deception in the other. Most men are still pursuing the myth of virility and sovereignty, but this makes them dependent upon women. They too, would be liberated by the liberation of women, but they fear their own liberation and prefer to keep women in chains. Many understand that this involves the mystification of women: some use it cynically, others try to convince themselves that women are privileged by virtue of their lack of responsibilities. In any case, womens complicity in their situation is greater than with most oppressed people. They accept the lies told to them from childhood onwards because these encourage them to follow the easiest path, and all human beings are anxious about their freedom, tempted by the easiest path. Women are wrong to give in to the temptation, but men are badly placed to criticise them, since they offer the temptation. Yet in argument, each sex holds the other responsible for the situation. The situation is not one of equality: the woman needs the mans presence and time much more than the man needs hers. They can find a kind of balance, but often the woman feels the man is giving up too little, and the man that he is giving up too much. He may have a bad conscience and give generously of his time, but it will become clear that he resents this when arguments arise. The man can do no right, because of the general situation of oppression, and the woman, who is necessarily a victim, cannot avoid becoming a vixen. There is no fully satisfactory solution, since the conditions are wrong. Both sexes would benefit from the advent of womens independence. As the Russian Revolution promised, women would be brought up in the same way as men, and they would have to work, but would have the same working conditions and

wages. They would have the same sexual freedom, and the sexual act would no longer be considered a service for which remuneration was required. Marriage would be based on free choice, and divorce would be easily available. Birth control and abortion would ensure that maternity, too, was freely chosen, and all women and children would have the same rights. Maternity leave would be paid for by the state, which would take charge of children, not by taking them away from their parents, but by ensuring that they were not abandoned to the parents. Women are not creations of nature but the products of civilisation. If others intervention in their lives were different, the result produced would be different. Their economic situation is fundamental and this has changed, but the changes have not yet brought their required moral, social and cultural consequences. At present, everywhere in the world they are torn between the past and the future, between male and female roles. Only wholesale changes in society can bring women equality. If girls were brought up in exactly the same way as boys, by men and women who were recognised as equals, the Oedipus complex would be of little importance and the lack of a penis would not in itself generate an inferiority complex. Girls would not seek compensation in narcissism and fantasy, nor would their physiology or sexuality be a burden to them. Sex and love would be relations between equals. They would be in a position to tackle and overcome the problems of the human condition. Sexual relations would be a matter of reciprocity and not victory or defeat. Women are perfectly capable of taking any responsibilities offered to them. One could not expect men to give up their current privileges out of pure generosity, but they have already been driven, in their own interests, to allow women partial emancipation. It is more or less certain that women will eventually arrive at complete economic and social equality. Traditional feminine charm may be lost in the process, along with other myths that men cherish, other functions that women fulfil for men. But love, happiness, poetry and imagination will remain. New types of relationships between men and women will arise, and there is no reason to suppose that uniformity will ensue. The sexual differences between men and women will remain, as will the special sensuality and sensitivity that women derive from their unique relationship with their own body, men, and children. Sexual relations will continue to focus and express the whole range of basic conflicts, successes and failures of the human condition. Men and women will recognise each other as subjects, but also each sex will recognise the other as Other. The miracle of the division of the species into two categories will remain. Indeed, only when the enslavement of half of the species is abolished will the full significance of that division and of the human couple be revealed. Freedom has to be made to triumph in the world as it is, and one aspect of this task is that men and women must unequivocally affirm a kinship that goes beyond the natural differences that exist between them.

References
1. ^ de Beauvoir, Simone, Force of Circumstances translated by Richard Howard (Penguin, 1968) 2. ^ de Beauvoir, Simone The Second Sex(Vintage Books, 1973), p. 301 3. ^ Butler, Judith, 'Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex' in Yale French Studies, No. 72 (1986), pp. 35-49.

4. ^ a b Moi, Toril, 'While we wait: The English translation of The Second Sex' in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol. 27, no 4 (2002), pp. 10051035

See also

Feminist existentialism

External links

'The Second Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir (Free English Translation)