The Second Sex! Essay Example

He is essential, absolute, and transcendent.

She is inessential, incomplete, and mutilated.He extends out into the world to impose his will on it, whereas woman is doomed to immanence, or inwardness. He creates, acts, invents; she waits for him to save her. With that being said, Beauvoir vainly writes against the attempts at ruling how women ought to be and live in society.

Some even consider the novel to be controversial. When Beauvoir died in April 1986, one French differentialist, Antoinette Fouque, a founder of the des femmes bookstore on the Left Bank, declared that the author of The Second Sex had been pushing an "intolerant, assimilating, sterilising universalism, full of hatred and reductive of otherness".The most controversial argument seen in the novel is taken place in Beauvoir’s analysis of myths (volume 1). In it, she explores the concepts of the myth known as “Eternal Feminine” (containing various other myths such as: mother earth, the virgin, the motherland, mother nature etc. ) In it, Beauvoir centralizes idea of how women were brought to this social theory of being less than of man by turning to biology, history (materialistic), and psychoanalysis.

These type of justifications proved the kind of essential differences between man and women, but failed to prove that a woman is inferior to that of a man.Beauvoir emphasizes that the type of myths being portrayed of women are but a mere attempt to trap women into the impossible belief of denying individuality of all women. The kind of myths that were abusing the role women played in society arose from the dismay of discomforted men, birthing its own way into society. One controversial example she addresses seems

to be the issue of motherhood being seen as the guardian of life to one, but the blame of death to another.

The belief that man feels at having to be born from their mothers wound, and later on casted onto death only results in the mother being put at blame for both. Thus, the idea that women as mothers are being contradicted in these myths for this ideal situation which results in women being unfairly seen in society because of their blame for existence. This kind of contradictory leaves women to be the kind of symbol of “life” while at the same time, being ridiculed and robbed of their individuality.In her second volume of The Second Sex, she addresses the idea that women are not born feminine, but rather consume their femininity as they grow throughout the sexist society, taking on the ideas that women are unequal to men; therefore, they should act upon the injustice idea.

Beauvoir notes in her second volume, “When I wrote that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman I meant just this that women become feminine through the process of social ‘brainwashing and stereotyping. She states key points of womanhood that are notably unseen or foreign in man: pregnancy, lactation, and menstruation.Thus, this type of phenomena contributes to the marked difference in women all together. Furthermore, what society seems to overlook when they take these types of differences are the existential importance’s that each carry on.

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. Women overall are raised believe that the only way to achieve happiness and gain uccess is through the acceptance of denying her true identity. Women all over are being deprived of their possibilities for fulfillment and opportunity because they are shaped based on their childhood where they learn to accept the dissatisfying life of work around the house, nurturing and raising children, and the sexual slavishness. While living the kind of adulthood, Beauvoir addresses the certain roles women live in a sexist society: wife, mother, and sexual entertainment.

De Beauvoir also views the old age of women and where they “take place” in society.When a woman reaches her capacity to reproduce, she is said to have lost her overall purpose in life, thus her overall identity is lost. In the last chapter of the section, “Woman’s Situation and Character,” de Beauvoir reiterates the controversial idea that woman’s situation is not a result of her character; rather, her character is a result of her situation. Her mediocrity, complacency, lack of accomplishment, laziness, passivity—all these qualities are the consequences of her subordination, not the cause.The difficulty of breaking free from “femininity”—of sacrificing security and comfort for some ill-conceived notion of “equality”—induces many women to accept the usual unfulfilling roles of wife and mother. Among the multiple negative stereotypical claims that of a women, one that finds itself to define a women is a praying mantis.

In the novel, Beauvoir notes this harsh and unflattering comparison “refers to the female insect’s habit of devouring the male immediately following intercourse.The shrewish, nagging wife, the “ogress” who demands too much

out of life, the tyrannical lover who withholds her body—any woman who threatens male supremacy is accused of cannibalism. ” Women fear being known as to aggressive or to forward thus creating the symbolic idea of the praying mantis. Beauvoir lastly discusses the importance of how women can gain overall human fulfillment.

She supports this analysis by arguing, “Liberation must be women's work.It is not a matter of appealing to men to give women their freedom, but a matter of women discovering their solidarity, rejecting the bad faith temptations of happiness, and discovering the pleasures of freedom. ” In Beauvoir’s eyes, the only way liberated women can free themselves is by eliminating two social theories: the idea of the only way women can be independent is by being like men and secondly, the idea that there is no other option other than being “socialized as a women passively”. The Second Sex profoundly tands firm in its belief that the individual, regardless of sex, class or age should be encouraged to define themselves as well as take on the responsibility that comes along with the idea of freedom for all. Simone de Beauvior attempt at creating an autobiography of who she was and where she stood ended up shocking and leaving many astounded by the brilliance of her work. Beauvoir not only addressed many fundamental questions, but she carved a new outlook in society for women everywhere.

The Second Sex remains to this day one of the foundational texts in philosophy, feminism, and women’s studies.

1. "Tori Moi on the Relevance of Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex | Books | The Guardian. ".
2. Beauvoir, Simone De, Constance Borde,
   

and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. “The Second Sex. ” New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.