|
The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
Introduction:
Woman as Other<=
/h1>
FOR
a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is
irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been
spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more a=
bout
it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered
during the last century seems to have done little to illuminate the probl=
em.
After all, is there a problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women,
really? Most assuredly the theory of the eternal feminine still has its
adherents who will whisper in your ear: ‘Even in Russia women still=
are
women’; and other erudite persons – sometimes the very same
– say with a sigh: ‘Woman is losing her way, woman is
lost.’ One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist,
whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in
this world, what their place should be. ‘What has become of
women?’ was asked recently in an ephemeral magazine.
But
first we must ask: what is a woman? ‘Tota mulier in utero’, s=
ays
one, ‘woman is a womb’. But in speaking of certain women,
connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped =
with
a uterus like the rest. All agree in recognising the fact that females ex=
ist
in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of
humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhort=
ed
to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every
female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be soconsidered she must
share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is t=
his
attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a Platonic essence,=
a
product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to
bring it down to earth? Although some women try zealously to incarnate th=
is
essence, it is hardly patentable. It is frequently described in vague and
dazzling terms that seem to have been borrowed from the vocabulary of the
seers, and indeed in the times of St Thomas it was considered an essence =
as
certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy
![3D"SdB](3D"Beauvoir--SecondSex_files/image011.jpg") But conceptuali=
sm
has lost ground. The biological and social sciences no longer admit the
existence of unchangeably fixed entities that determine given
characteristics, such as those ascribed to woman, the Jew, or the Negro.
Science regards any characteristic as a reaction dependent in part upon a=
situation. If today
femininity no longer exists, then it never existed. But does the word woman, then, have =
no
specific content? This is stoutly affirmed by those who hold to the
philosophy of the enlightenment, of rationalism, of nominalism; women, to
them, are merely the human beings arbitrarily designated by the word =
woman. Many Americ=
an
women particularly are prepared to think that there is no longer any place
for woman as such; if a backward individual still takes herself for a wom=
an,
her friends advise her to be psychoanalysed and thus get rid of this
obsession. In regard to a work, Modern
Woman: The Lost Sex, which in other respects has its irritati=
ng
features, Dorothy Parker has written: ‘I cannot be just to books wh=
ich
treat of woman as woman ... My idea is that all of us, men as well as wom=
en,
should be regarded as human beings.’ But nominalism is a rather
inadequate doctrine, and the antifeminists have had no trouble in showing
that women simply ar=
e
not men. Surely woman is, like man, a human being; but such a declaration=
is
abstract. The fact is that every concrete human being is always a singula=
r,
separate individual. To decline to accept such notions as the eternal
feminine, the black soul, the Jewish character, is not to deny that Jews,
Negroes, women exist today – this denial does not represent a
liberation for those concerned, but rather a flight from reality. Some ye=
ars
ago a well-known woman writer refused to permit her portrait to appear in=
a
series of photographs especially devoted to women writers; she wished to =
be
counted among the men. But in order to gain this privilege she made use of
her husband’s influence! Women who assert that they are men lay cla=
im
none the less to masculine consideration and respect. I recall also a you=
ng
Trotskyite standing on a platform at a boisterous meeting and getting rea=
dy
to use her fists, in spite of her evident fragility. She was denying her
feminine weakness; but it was for love of a militant male whose equal she
wished to be. The attitude of defiance of many American women proves that=
they
are haunted by a sense of their femininity. In truth, to go for a walk wi=
th
one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided i=
nto
two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits,
interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these
differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What=
is
certain is that they do most obviously exist.
If her function=
ing
as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain =
her
through ‘the eternal feminine’, and if nevertheless we admit,
provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question
“what is a woman”?
To state the
question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact t=
hat
I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a b=
ook
on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myse=
lf,
I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be
based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as=
an
individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The
terms masculine
and feminine<=
/em>
are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In
actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two
electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, a=
s is
indicated by the common use of man
to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the
negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst=
of
an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think t=
hus
and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defence is=
to
reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby remo=
ving
my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to
reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’, fo=
r it
is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. A man is in=
the
right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to
this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with refere=
nce
to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the
masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiarities imprison her =
in
her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. I=
t is
often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact
that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that th=
ey
secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection
with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he
regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by
everything peculiar to it. ‘The female is a female by virtue of a
certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle; ‘we should regard=
the
female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Th=
omas
for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an
‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is
depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary boneR=
17;
of Adam.
Thus
humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to =
him;
she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: ‘Woman,
the relative being ...’ And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’Uriel:
‘The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of wom=
an,
whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself ... Man can th=
ink
of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’=
And
she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’,=
by
which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being.
For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and
differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; sh=
e is
the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the
Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.’ <=
/span>
The
category of the Othe=
r
is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies=
, in
the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality ̵=
1;
that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached =
to
the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts.=
It
is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those =
of
Dumézil on the East Indies and Rome. The feminine element was at f=
irst
no more involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra, Uranus-Zeus, Sun-Moon, and
Day-Night than it was in the contrasts between Good and Evil, lucky and u=
nlucky
auspices, right and left, God and Lucifer. Otherness is a fundamental
category of human thought.
Thus
it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once settin=
g up
the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the s=
ame
compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile ‘others’ =
out
of all the rest of the passengers on the train. In small-town eyes all
persons not belonging to the village are ‘strangers’ and susp=
ect;
to the native of a ![3Dbeauvoir1947bresson.jpg](3D"Beauvoir--SecondSex_files/image012.jpg") country
all who inhabit other countries are ‘foreigners’; Jews are
‘different’ for the anti-Semite, Negroes are
‘inferior’ for American racists, aborigines are
‘natives’ for colonists, proletarians are the ‘lower
class’ for the privileged.
Lévi-Strauss,
at the end of a profound work on the various forms of primitive societies,
reaches the following conclusion: ‘Passage from the state of Nature=
to
the state of Culture is marked by man’s ability to view biological
relations as a series of contrasts; duality, alternation, opposition, and
symmetry, whether under definite or vague forms, constitute not so much
phenomena to be explained as fundamental and immediately given data of so=
cial
reality.’ These phenomena would be incomprehensible if in fact human
society were simply a Mitsein
or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, =
on
the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a
fundamental hostility towards every other consciousness; the subject can =
be
posed only in being opposed – he sets himself up as the essential, =
as
opposed to the other, the inessential, the object.
But
the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim. The
native travelling abroad is shocked to find himself in turn regarded as a
‘stranger’ by the natives of neighbouring countries. As a mat=
ter
of fact, wars, festivals, trading, treaties, and contests among tribes,
nations, and classes tend to deprive the concept Other of its absolute sense and to make
manifest its relativity; willy-nilly, individuals and groups are forced to
realize the reciprocity of their relations. How is it, then, that this
reciprocity has not been recognised between the sexes, that one of the
contrasting terms is set up as the sole essential, denying any relativity=
in
regard to its correlative and defining the latter as pure otherness? Why =
is
it that women do not dispute male sovereignty? No subject will readily
volunteer to become the object, the inessential; it is not the Other who,=
in
defining himself as the Other, establishes the One. The Other is posed as
such by the One in defining himself as the One. But if the Other is not to
regain the status of being the One, he must be submissive enough to accept
this alien point of view. Whence comes this submission in the case of wom=
an?
There
are, to be sure, other cases in which a certain category has been able to
dominate another completely for a time. Very often this privilege depends
upon inequality of numbers – the majority imposes its rule upon the
minority or persecutes it. But women are not a minority, like the American
Negroes or the Jews; there are as many women as men on earth. Again, the =
two
groups concerned have often been originally independent; they may have be=
en
formerly unaware of each other’s existence, or perhaps they recogni=
sed
each other’s autonomy. But a historical event has resulted in the
subjugation of the weaker by the stronger. The scattering of the Jews, the
introduction of slavery into America, the conquests of imperialism are
examples in point. In these cases the oppressed retained at least the mem=
ory
of former days; they possessed in common a past, a tradition, sometimes a
religion or a culture.
The
parallel drawn by Bebel between women and the proletariat is valid in that
neither ever formed a minority or a separate collective unit of mankind. =
And
instead of a single historical event it is in both cases a historical
development that explains their status as a class and accounts for the
membership of partic=
ular
individuals in that class. But proletarians have not always
existed, whereas there have always been women. They are women in virtue of
their anatomy and physiology. Throughout history they have always been
subordinated to men, and hence their dependency is not the result of a
historical event or a social change – it was not something that occurred. The reas=
on why
otherness in this case seems to be an absolute is in part that it lacks t=
he
contingent or incidental nature of historical facts. A condition brought
about at a certain time can be abolished at some other time, as the Negro=
es
of Haiti and others have proved: but it might seem that natural condition=
is
beyond the possibility of change. In truth, however, the nature of things=
is
no more immutably given, once for all, than is historical reality. If wom=
an
seems to be the inessential which never becomes the essential, it is beca=
use
she herself fails to bring about this change. Proletarians say
‘We’; Negroes also. Regarding themselves as subjects, they
transform the bourgeois, the whites, into ‘others’. But women=
do
not say ‘We’, except at some congress of feminists or similar
formal demonstration; men say ‘women’, and women use the same
word in referring to themselves. They do not authentically assume a
subjective attitude. The proletarians have accomplished the revolution in
Russia, the Negroes in Haiti, the Indo-Chinese are battling for it in
Indo-China; but the women’s effort has never been anything more tha=
n a
symbolic agitation. They have gained only what men have been willing to
grant; they have taken nothing, they have only received.
The
reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organising themselv=
es
into a unit which can stand face to face with the correlative unit. They =
have
no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no such
solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat. They are not =
even
promiscuously herded together in the way that creates community feeling a=
mong
the American Negroes, the ghetto Jews, the workers of Saint-Denis, or the
factory hands of Renault. They live dispersed among the males, attached
through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to
certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly than they are=
to
other women. If they belong to the bourgeoisie, they feel solidarity with=
men
of that class, not with proletarian women; if they are white, their
allegiance is to white men, not to Negro women. The proletariat can propo=
se
to massacre the ruling class, and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro m=
ight
dream of getting sole possession of the atomic bomb and making humanity
wholly Jewish or black; but woman cannot even dream of exterminating the
males. The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any
other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in hu=
man
history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman=
has
not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves rive=
ted
together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible.
Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a total=
ity
of which the two components are necessary to one another.
One
could suppose that this reciprocity might have facilitated the liberation=
of
woman. When Hercules sat at the feet of Omphale and helped with her spinn=
ing,
his desire for her held him captive; but why did she fail to gain a lasti=
ng
power? To revenge herself on Jason, Medea killed their children; and this
grim legend would seem to suggest that she might have obtained a formidab=
le
influence over him through his love for his offspring. In Lysistrata Aristop=
hanes
gaily depicts a band of women who joined forces to gain social ends throu=
gh
the sexual needs of their men; but this is only a play. In the legend of =
the
Sabine women, the latter soon abandoned their plan of remaining sterile to
punish their ravishers. In truth woman has not been socially emancipated
through man’s need – sexual desire and the desire for offspri=
ng
– which makes the male dependent for satisfaction upon the female. =
Master
and slave, also, are united by a reciprocal need, in this case economic,
which does not liberate the slave. In the relation of master to slave the
master does not make a point of the need that he has for the other; he ha=
s in
his grasp the power of satisfying this need through his own action; where=
as
the slave, in his dependent condition, his hope and fear, is quite consci=
ous
of the need he has for his master. Even if the need is at bottom equally
urgent for both, it always works in favour of the oppressor and against t=
he
oppressed. That is why the liberation of the working class, for example, =
has
been slow.
Now,
woman has always been man’s dependant, if not his slave; the two se=
xes
have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily
handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Almost nowhere =
is
her legal status the same as man’s, and frequently it is much to her
disadvantage. Even when her rights are legally recognised in the abstract,
long-standing custom prevents their full expression in the mores. In the
economic sphere men and women can almost be said to make up two castes; o=
ther
things being equal, the former hold the better jobs, get higher wages, and
have more opportunity for success than their new competitors. In industry=
and
politics men have a great many more positions and they monopolise the most
important posts. In addition to all this, they enjoy a traditional presti=
ge
that the education of children tends in every way to support, for the pre=
sent
enshrines the past – and in the past all history has been made by m=
en.
At the present time, when women are beginning to take part in the affairs=
of
the world, it is still a world that belongs to men – they have no d=
oubt
of it at all and women have scarcely any. To decline to be the Other, to
refuse to be a party to the deal – this would be for women to renou=
nce
all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior
caste. Man-the-sovereign will provide woman-the-liege with material prote=
ction
and will undertake the moral justification of her existence; thus she can
evade at once both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liberty in
which ends and aims must be contrived without assistance. Indeed, along w=
ith
the ethical urge of each individual to affirm his subjective existence, t=
here
is also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a thing. This is an
inauspicious road, for he who takes it – passive, lost, ruined R=
11;
becomes henceforth the creature of another’s will, frustrated in his
transcendence and deprived of every value. But it is an easy road; on it =
one
avoids the strain involved in undertaking an authentic existence. When man
makes of woman the Other, he may, then, expect to manifest deep-seated
tendencies towards complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the
status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels=
the
necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because
she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other.
But
it will be asked at once: how did all this begin? It is easy to see that =
the
duality of the sexes, like any duality, gives rise to conflict. And doubt=
less
the winner will assume the status of absolute. But why should man have won
from the start? It seems possible that women could have won the victory; =
or
that the outcome of the conflict might never have been decided. How is it
that this world has always belonged to the men and that things have begun=
to
change only recently? Is this change a good thing? Will it bring about an
equal sharing of the world between men and women?
These
questions are not new, and they have often been answered. But the very fa=
ct
that woman is the=
Other
tends to cast suspicion upon all the justifications that men have ever be=
en able
to provide for it. These have all too evidently been dictated by men̵=
7;s
interest. A little-known feminist of the seventeenth century, Poulain de =
la
Barre, put it this way: ‘All that has been written about women by m=
en
should be suspect, for the men are at once judge and party to the
lawsuit.’ Everywhere, at all times, the males have displayed their
satisfaction in feeling that they are the lords of creation. ‘Bless=
ed
be God ... that He did not make me a woman,’ say the Jews in their =
morning
prayers, while their wives pray on a note of resignation: ‘Blessed =
be
the Lord, who created me according to His will.’ The first among the
blessings for which Plato thanked the gods was that he had been created f=
ree,
not enslaved; the second, a man, not a woman. But the males could not enj=
oy
this privilege fully unless they believed it to be founded on the absolute
and the eternal; they sought to make the fact of their supremacy into a
right. ‘Being men, those who have made and compiled the laws have
favoured their own sex, and jurists have elevated these laws into
principles’, to quote Poulain de la Barre once more.
Legislators,
priests, philosophers, writers, and scientists have striven to show that =
the
subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on ear=
th.
The religions invented by men reflect this wish for domination. In the
legends of Eve and Pandora men have taken up arms against women. They have
made use of philosophy and theology, as the quotations from Aristotle and=
St
Thomas have shown. Since ancient times satirists and moralists have delig=
hted
in showing up the weaknesses of women. We are familiar with the savage
indictments hurled against women throughout French literature. Montherlan=
t,
for example, follows the tradition of Jean de Meung, though with less gus=
to.
This hostility may at times be well founded, often it is gratuitous; but =
in
truth it more or less successfully conceals a desire for self-justificati=
on.
As Montaigne says, ‘It is easier to accuse one sex than to excuse t=
he
other’. Sometimes what is going on is clear enough. For instance, t=
he
Roman law limiting the rights of woman cited ‘the imbecility, the
instability of the sex’ just when the weakening of family ties seem=
ed
to threaten the interests of male heirs. And in the effort to keep the
married woman under guardianship, appeal was made in the sixteenth centur=
y to
the authority of St Augustine, who declared that ‘woman is a creatu=
re
neither decisive nor constant’, at a time when the single woman was
thought capable of managing her property. Montaigne understood clearly how
arbitrary and unjust was woman’s appointed lot: ‘Women are no=
t in
the wrong when they decline to accept the rules laid down for them, since=
the
men make these rules without consulting them. No wonder intrigue and stri=
fe
abound.’ But he did not go so far as to champion their cause. =
It
was only later, in the eighteenth century, that genuinely democratic men
began to view the matter objectively. Diderot, among others, strove to sh=
ow
that woman is, like man, a human being. Later John Stuart Mill came ferve=
ntly
to her defence. But these philosophers displayed unusual impartiality. In=
the
nineteenth century the feminist quarrel became again a quarrel of partisa=
ns.
One of the consequences of the industrial revolution was the entrance of
women into productive labour, and it was just here that the claims of the
feminists emerged from the realm of theory and acquired an economic basis,
while their opponents became the more aggressive. Although landed property
lost power to some extent, the bourgeoisie clung to the old morality that
found the guarantee of private property in the solidity of the family. Wo=
man
was ordered back into the home the more harshly as her emancipation becam=
e a
real menace. Even within the working class the men endeavoured to restrain
woman’s liberation, because they began to see the women as dangerous
competitors – the more so because they were accustomed to work for
lower wages.
In
proving woman’s inferiority, the anti-feminists then began to draw =
not
only upon religion, philosophy, and theology, as before, but also upon
science – biology, experimental psychology, etc. At most they were
willing to grant ‘equality in difference’ to the other sex. T=
hat
profitable formula is most significant; it is precisely like the ‘e=
qual
but separate’ formula of the Jim Crow laws aimed at the North Ameri=
can
Negroes. As is well known, this so-called equalitarian segregation has
resulted only in the most extreme discrimination. The similarity just not=
ed is
in no way due to chance, for whether it is a race, a caste, a class, or a=
sex
that is reduced to a position of inferiority, the methods of justification
are the same. ‘The eternal feminine’ corresponds to ‘the
black soul’ and to ‘the Jewish character’. True, the Je=
wish
problem is on the whole very different from the other two – to the
anti-Semite the Jew is not so much an inferior as he is an enemy for whom
there is to be granted no place on earth, for whom annihilation is the fa=
te
desired. But there are deep similarities between the situation of woman a=
nd
that of the Negro. Both are being emancipated today from a like paternali=
sm,
and the former master class wishes to ‘keep them in their placeR=
17;
– that is, the place chosen for them. In both cases the former mast=
ers
lavish more or less sincere eulogies, either on the virtues of ‘the
good Negro’ with his dormant, childish, merry soul – the
submissive Negro – or on the merits of the woman who is ‘truly
feminine’ – that is, frivolous, infantile, irresponsible the
submissive woman. In both cases the dominant class bases its argument on a
state of affairs that it has itself created. As George Bernard Shaw puts =
it,
in substance, ‘The American white relegates the black to the rank of
shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for noth=
ing
but shining shoes.’ This vicious circle is met with in all analogous
circumstances; when an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a
situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the signif=
icance
of the verb to be
must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static v=
alue
when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of ‘to have
become’. Yes, women on the whole are
today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer
possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue?
Many
men hope that it will continue; not all have given up the battle. The
conservative bourgeoisie still see in the emancipation of women a menace =
to
their morality and their interests. Some men dread feminine competition.
Recently a male student wrote in the Hebdo-Latin:
‘Every woman student who goes into medicine or law robs us of a
job.’ He never questioned his rights in this world. And economic
interests are not the only ones concerned. One of the benefits that
oppression confers upon the oppressors is that the most humble among them=
is
made to feel superior; thus, a ‘poor white’ in the South can
console himself with the thought that he is not a ‘dirty niggerR=
17;
– and the more prosperous whites cleverly exploit this pride. =
![3D"simone-de-beauvoir](3D"Beauvoir--SecondSex_files/image013.jpg") <=
span
style=3D'font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:windowte=
xt'>Similarly,
the most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women=
. It
was much easier for M. de Montherlant to think himself a hero when he fac=
ed
women (and women chosen for his purpose) than when he was obliged to act =
the
man among men – something many women have done better than he, for =
that
matter. And in September 1948, in one of his articles in the Figaro littéraire,
Claude Mauriac – whose great originality is admired by all –
could write regarding woman: ‘We listen on a tone [sic!] of polite
indifference ... to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her =
wit
reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.’ Evident=
ly the
speaker referred to is not reflecting the ideas of Mauriac himself, for no
one knows of his having any. It may be that she reflects ideas originating
with men, but then, even among men there are those who have been known to
appropriate ideas not their own; and one can well ask whether Claude Maur=
iac
might not find more interesting a conversation reflecting Descartes, Marx=
, or
Gide rather than himself. What is really remarkable is that by using the
questionable we
he identifies himself with St Paul, Hegel, Lenin, and Nietzsche, and from=
the
lofty eminence of their grandeur looks down disdainfully upon the bevy of
women who make bold to converse with him on a footing of equality. In tru=
th,
I know of more than one woman who would refuse to suffer with patience
Mauriac’s ‘tone of polite indifference’.
I
have lingered on this example because the masculine attitude is here
displayed with disarming ingenuousness. But men profit in many more subtle
ways from the otherness, the alterity of woman. Here is a miraculous balm=
for
those afflicted with an inferiority complex, and indeed no one is more
arrogant towards women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is
anxious about his virility. Those who are not fear-ridden in the presence=
of
their fellow men are much more disposed to recognise a fellow creature in=
woman;
but even to these the myth of Woman, the Other, is precious for many reas=
ons.
They cannot be blamed for not cheerfully relinquishing all the benefits t=
hey
derive from the myth, for they realize what they would lose in relinquish=
ing
woman as they fancy her to be, while they fail to realize what they have =
to
gain from the woman of tomorrow. Refusal to pose oneself as the Subject,
unique and absolute, requires great self-denial. Furthermore, the vast
majority of men make no such claim explicitly. They do not postulate woman as
inferior, for today they are too thoroughly imbued with the ideal of
democracy not to recognise all human beings as equals. =
![3D"SdB](3D"Beauvoir--SecondSex_files/image014.jpg") In the bosom of=
the
family, woman seems in the eyes of childhood and youth to be clothed in t=
he same
social dignity as the adult males. Later on, the young man, desiring and
loving, experiences the resistance, the independence of the woman desired=
and
loved; in marriage, he respects woman as wife and mother, and in the conc=
rete
events of conjugal life she stands there before him as a free being. He c=
an
therefore feel that social subordination as between the sexes no longer
exists and that on the whole, in spite of differences, woman is an equal.=
As,
however, he observes some points of inferiority – the most important
being unfitness for the professions – he attributes these to natural
causes. When he is in a co-operative and benevolent relation with woman, =
his
theme is the principle of abstract equality, and he does not base his
attitude upon such inequality as may exist. But when he is in conflict wi=
th
her, the situation is reversed: his theme will be the existing inequality,
and he will even take it as justification for denying abstract equality. =
So
it is that many men will affirm as if in good faith that women are the eq=
uals
of man and that they have nothing to clamour for, while at the same time t=
hey
will say that women can never be the equals of man and that their demands=
are
in vain. It is, in point of fact, a difficult matter for man to realize t=
he
extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly
insignificant but which produce in woman moral and intellectual effects so
profound that they appear to spring from her original nature. The most
sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman’s concrete situatio=
n.
And there is no reason to put much trust in the men when they rush to the
defence of privileges whose full extent they can hardly measure. We shall
not, then, permit ourselves to be intimidated by the number and violence =
of
the attacks launched against women, nor to be entrapped by the self-seeki=
ng
eulogies bestowed on the ‘true woman’, nor to profit by the
enthusiasm for woman’s destiny manifested by men who would not for =
the
world have any part of it.
We
should consider the arguments of the feminists with no less suspicion,
however, for very often their controversial aim deprives them of all real
value. If the ‘woman question’ seems trivial, it is because
masculine arrogance has made of it a ‘quarrel’; and when
quarrelling one no longer reasons well. People have tirelessly sought to
prove that woman is superior, inferior, or equal to man. Some say that,
having been created after Adam, she is evidently a secondary being: others
say on the contrary that Adam was only a rough draft and that God succeed=
ed
in producing the human being in perfection when He created Eve. WomanR=
17;s
brain is smaller; yes, but it is relatively larger. Christ was made a man;
yes, but perhaps for his greater humility. Each argument at once suggests=
its
opposite, and both are often fallacious. If we are to gain understanding,=
we
must get out of these ruts; we must discard the vague notions of superior=
ity,
inferiority, equality which have hitherto corrupted every discussion of t=
he
subject and start afresh.
Very
well, but just how shall we pose the question? And, to begin with, who ar=
e we
to propound it at all? Man is at once judge and party to the case; but so=
is
woman. What we need is an angel – neither man nor woman – but
where shall we find one? Still, the angel would be poorly qualified to sp=
eak,
for an angel is ignorant of all the basic facts involved in the problem. =
With
a hermaphrodite we should be no better off, for here the situation is most
peculiar; the hermaphrodite is not really the combination of a whole man =
and
a whole woman, but consists of parts of each and thus is neither. It look=
s to
me as if there are, after all, certain women who are best qualified to
elucidate the situation of woman. Let us not be misled by the sophism that
because Epimenides was a Cretan he was necessarily a liar; it is not a
mysterious essence that compels men and women to act in good or in bad fa=
ith,
it is their situation that inclines them more or less towards the search =
for
truth. Many of today’s women, fortunate in the restoration of all t=
he
privileges pertaining to the estate of the human being, can afford the lu=
xury
of impartiality – we even recognise its necessity. We are no longer
like our partisan elders; by and large we have won the game. In recent
debates on the status of women the United Nations has persistently mainta=
ined
that the equality of the sexes is now becoming a reality, and already som=
e of
us have never had to sense in our femininity an inconvenience or an obsta=
cle.
Many problems appear to us to be more pressing than those which concern u=
s in
particular, and this detachment even allows us to hope that our attitude =
will
be objective. Still, we know the feminine world more intimately than do t=
he
men because we have our roots in it, we grasp more immediately than do men
what it means to a human being to be feminine; and we are more concerned =
with
such knowledge. I have said that there are more pressing problems, but th=
is
does not prevent us from seeing some importance in asking how the fact of
being women will affect our lives. What opportunities precisely have been
given us and what withheld? What fate awaits our younger sisters, and what
directions should they take? It is significant that books by women on wom=
en
are in general animated in our day less by a wish to demand our rights th=
an
by an effort towards clarity and understanding. As we emerge from an era =
of
excessive controversy, this book is offered as one attempt among others to
confirm that statement.
But
it is doubtless impossible to approach any human problem with a mind free
from bias. The way in which questions are put, the points of view assumed,
presuppose a relativity of interest; all characteristics imply values, and
every objective description, so called, implies an ethical background. Ra=
ther
than attempt to conceal principles more or less definitely implied, it is
better to state them openly, at the beginning. This will make it unnecess=
ary
to specify on every page in just what sense one uses such words as superior, inferior, better, wo=
rse,
progress, reaction, and the like. If we survey some of the wo=
rks
on woman, we note that one of the points of view most frequently adopted =
is
that of the public good, the general interest; and one always means by th=
is
the benefit of society as one wishes it to be maintained or established. =
For
our part, we hold that the only public good is that which assures the pri=
vate
good of the citizens; we shall pass judgement on institutions according to
their effectiveness in giving concrete opportunities to individuals. But =
we
do not confuse the idea of private interest with that of happiness, altho=
ugh
that is another common point of view. Are not women of the harem more hap=
py
than women voters? Is not the housekeeper happier than the working-woman?=
It
is not too clear just what the word happy
really means and still less what true values it may mask. There is no
possibility of measuring the happiness of others, and it is always easy to
describe as happy the situation in which one wishes to place them. <=
/o:p>
In
particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced hap=
py
on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we
reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subje=
ct
plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that ser=
ve
as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual
reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for prese=
nt
existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every
time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a
degradation of existence into the ‘en-sois’
– the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of
liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral
fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spel=
ls
frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every
individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence
involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chos=
en
projects.
Now,
what peculiarly signalises the situation of woman is that she – a f=
ree
and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds
herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of th=
e Other.
They propose to stabilise her as object and to doom her to immanence since
her transcendence is to be overshadowed and for ever transcended by anoth=
er
ego (conscience)
which is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict
between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego) – who al=
ways
regards the self as the essential and the compulsions of a situation in w=
hich
she is the inessential. How can a human being in woman’s situation
attain fulfillment? What roads are open to her? Which are blocked? How can
independence be recovered in a state of dependency? What circumstances li=
mit
woman’s liberty and how can they be overcome? These are the fundame=
ntal
questions on which I would fain throw some light. This means that I am in=
terested
in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness bu=
t in
terms of liberty.
![3D"_40648272_ap_sartre_beauvoir_203.jpg"](3D"Beauvoir--SecondSex_files/image010.jpg") Quite
evidently this problem would be without significance if we were to believe
that woman’s destiny is inevitably determined by physiological,
psychological, or economic forces. Hence I shall discuss first of all the
light in which woman is viewed by biology, psychoanalysis, and historical
materialism. Next I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the
‘truly feminine’ has been fashioned – why woman has been
defined as the Other – and what have been the consequences from
man’s point of view. Then from woman’s point of view I shall
describe the world in which women must live; and thus we shall be able to
envisage the difficulties in their way as, endeavouring to make their esc=
ape
from the sphere hitherto assigned them, they aspire to full membership in=
the
human race.
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