The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
In the chapter of her book The Second Sex entitled “the Woman in Love,” Simone de Beauvoir characterizes the romantic ideal of the relationship with a man as a woman’s purpose as a form of self-deception (translated here as “bad faith”). The self-deception de Beauvoir describes is based in the thesis of The Second Sex. This is the idea that women have been deceived into believing that they are second-class humans. Western culture, according to de Beauvoir, teaches us that women are missing some elusive element of the self that endows men with freedom- a concept essential to the existentialist definition of the conscious being. Therefore, a woman can never find fulfillment as a thinking person as long as she believes that men are free beings and women their dependents. This state of affairs is reinforced through an all-encompassing system of thought that posits man as subject and woman as object, “doomed to dependency.” (In this chapter, de Beauvoir writes about the “modern woman” whose consciousness of her self has not yet matured. Therefore, when “woman” is referred to here, this is merely shorthand for the self-deceiving woman. The independent woman is another matter entirely.)
De Beauvoir postulates that the reason why women’s idea of love is so much more intense than men’s is because the woman, unable to become a whole person in and of herself, thinks that by attaching herself to a man she can transcend her position in life. She can move from object to subject through osmosis- the ultimate expression of “being for the other.” She can claim a share of his activities and his accomplishments in the public realm which she is prohibited to enter. Giving herself wholly to the man ...
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...that many women cling to even after they give up hope that “he” will ever come.
Is there a solution to this paradox, this Catch-22 that de Beauvoir describes? Yes, she says, but only when certain conditions are met. First, a woman must have a solid sense of herself as an existentialist “free being” before she goes looking for love. Second, the love relationship must be a freely chosen association of equals committed to respecting each other’s freedom. As de Beauvoir writes on p.667:
“Genuine love ought to be founded on the mutual recognition of two liberties; the lovers would then experience themselves both as self and as other; neither would give up transcendence, neither would be mutilated; together they would manifest values and aims in the world. For the one and the other, love would be revelation of self by the gift of self and enrichment of the world.”
Adele had learned these values by living in Poland, which possessed a far more egalitarian view of women’s roles in the community, which allowed Adele to evaluate American patriarchal society from a differing point of view: “I—a servant? Even in our worst poverty in Poland none of our people have ever been servants. Tailors, storekeepers, but never a servant. Should I be the first to go down? In this perspective, Beauvoir’s theory of the historically constructed gender roles of women as the “other” are subjective, since many differing societies can possess egalitarian views of women: Beauvoir focused not on an individual consciousness but on a relationship…She redefined feminist discourse through her epistemological privileging of female voices.” These are important aspects of Adele’s view of the world, since she has an alternative perspective on how women should be educated from her experiences in Poland,. Beauvoir argues that women can make an actual choice about their gender role identity, since many subservient aspects of female identity are artificial creations by patriarchal social institutions. Certainly, Beauvoir’s The Second Sex defines the social aspects of women’s choices, which Yezierska implies in her main character, Adele, as she struggles to eventually start
..., the society begins to see love as a goal. Romantic love becomes a noble trait and just quest if one wishes to embark on it.
...tion of both methods can be used to show France’s idea of what love is. Patrick John Ireland argued that France’s idea of love “is a human force controlled by man with great difficulty; it is a spontaneous, natural, and all-consuming power, the experience of which leads to an almost blind passion at times” (133). To be in love, one must be entirely devoted and passionate to one another to the point of blind passion. This is so for Yonec (the Princess jumps out of the tower) and Lanval (Lanval’s complete rejection of the human world until he is brought into the world of his lover). Not only does France portray love as natural and all-consuming, but also shows the private and unearthly nature of love that cannot be contained to the realm of the human world. Rather, love transcends the boundaries of the human world and enters into a world where love reigns supreme.
The last heroic couplet provides no hope and leaves only frustrating thoughts for the lover: "All wayes they try, successeless all they prove,/To cure the secret sore of lingering love". The speaker even argues that though Nature provides satisfaction for physical urges (e.g. hunger and thirst), Nature does not give Love the same satisfaction. The speaker describes a lover as a type of Sisyphus, enslaved in a vicious cycle of trying to accomplish the task (of fulfilling love's desires), only to have the problem roll back down and having to start over again.
Charlotte Perkin’s Gilman and Simone de Beauvoir is both forward thinking authors who through their writing captured the concept of women being represented within society as a secondary sub species of man. Gilman through her literary work “The Man-Made World: Our Androcentric Culture”, and de Beauvoir in her work “The Second Sex”. Both of these women presented strong arguments that explored the dehumanization of women throughout history, and explored how language and thought processes during their times continued the process of women being viewed as an “other” in reference to men.
Monique Wittig, a radical feminist, illuminates, “For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we call servitude”. The concept of justifying the female inferior image based on biology and the ‘w...
Their work has been of great value as philosophers and researchers today study the idea of love. Without their knowledge and viewpoints on the matter, theorists would not have an initial point to base their contemporary research off of. The beliefs of what love is, and the different levels it holds were concepts philosophers studied to help develop and strengthen their metaphysical opinions on love. In the end, Diotima continues to share her perceptions on the principles of love. She declares that once you have been in love, you will never be seduced again. If this is true, how can one explain the desire for an affair or
The Woman in Love, a section taken from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, describes her theories on men and women in love and the vast differences and purposes they think love is for. This book was published in 1949, and with this in mind we can understand the way she describes women as the weaker sex and how dependent women are on men. In the beginning of the text she states that “The word ‘love’ has not all the same meaning for both sexes, and this is a source of the grave misunderstandings that separate them...love is merely an occupation in the life of the man, while it is life itself for the woman(683).” This first quote from this chapter is important because it really outlines what she is about to get at throughout the entire...
In The Lais of Marie de France, the theme of love is conceivably of the utmost importance. Particularly in the story of Guigemar, the love between a knight and a queen brings them seemingly true happiness. The lovers commit to each other an endless devotion and timeless affection. They are tested by distance and are in turn utterly depressed set apart from their better halves. Prior to their coupling the knight established a belief to never have interest in romantic love while the queen was set in a marriage that left her trapped and unhappy. Guigemar is cursed to have a wound only cured by a woman’s love; he is then sent by an apparent fate to the queen of a city across the shores. The attraction between them sparks quickly and is purely based on desire, but desire within romantic love is the selfishness of it. True love rests on a foundation that is above mere desire for another person. In truth, the selfishness of desire is the
First, unconditional love is portrayed within Beauty’s relationship with her two mean sisters. The two sisters are disliked by others because of their vain and pride (De Beaumont 32). They ‘always insisted that they would never marry unless they found a duke or, at the very least, a count”, but when men asked Beauty in hand of marriage, she pol...
There are only two genders in the whole world, one is male and the other is female. There are lots of advocates and sociologist who has spoken for the equality between men and women but till now the goal of equality has not been achieved yet. Women have always been dominated by the men in the Patriarchal society where men are the head of the household and the rule makers. Men are the supreme authority and women are the followers. When we hear these things, even in the 21 century it is not the new or surprising things because it is still being practiced in our society and there aren’t any women in the world that had not been through this discrimination at least once in their life time. It is not that, women have not fight for their right but the fact is that nobody is there to hear their voices. Women have always wanted to gain their rights and they have also fought for it too but it is their misfortune that their privileges and opportunities are always taken away from them by the men. The question might arise whether all human beings are equal? If so why male and female are not equal? Being a woman brought up in a developing country, I have experienced the effects of this societal dichotomy. Thus, I would like to delineate this aspect of the division in the society by using the Feminist Theory to analyze women’s position in the Patriarchal society and I am choosing Simone de Beauvoir as my theorist.
Rupert Birkin, the Lawrentian leading male of Women in Love, extols a philosophy of "star-equilibrium" in which the partners of a love relationship remain separate and individual, not blurred into one another, but together in knowledge of their difference. (WIL 230)
This sense of individualism shared in the writing s of Zola and Herbert and depicted in the paintings of David and Delacroix shows people looking back in history that women in France were not perceived the same way in similar countries. A nation like our own didn’t give voting rights to women until thirty years ago. The culture of France and French people and their perception of women in society eventually helped France to be the classiest, most respectful nation of power.
There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.
Love is not a god as the fine philosophers of Greece once suggested. Love is something far more powerful and universal, for not all people believe in gods, yet people cannot refuse the existence of love. Instead, love is a condition of the human body that cannot be denied. True love is obstinate; in the way that music pours into the ears of an audience, love pouring into the heart of a man cannot be stopped, denied, or set off course. Love is a natural instinct. You cannot artificially make love where there is none or where it does not belong. Yet, the condition of being in love grows independent of all rationale. It grows places where an observer may not understand its existence. Attempting to fight love in such a situation leaves even powerful and noble families, such as the Capulets and Montagues, suddenly powerless. When love takes control of two souls, it takes the lovers on a journey. The journey is the growth of love throughout its many progressive stages. In this way, the growth of love between two people is analogous to the growth and development of a painted masterpiece. A work of art and a bond of love both have distinct stages and characteristics. A painting initially begins with a vision in the mind of the artist. This vision is a perfect vision that the artist will strive to replicate on her canvas. Similarly, love often begins on a visual level based on the physical attractions between two people. The vision of the painter is soon transformed into quick, loose sketches. The pencil freely marks the page; the artist has no control over where it goes, he merely paints. Similarly, lovers have no control over their new feeling of love that has taken over their bodies and rendered them helpless. After an artist has loos...