The Second Sex
Also known as Le Deuxième Sexe
Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 analysis of women's oppression through history.
At a glance
Key ideas
The Other, Biology is not destiny, Two factors …
See all 5Criticism
Alfred Kinsey, Unconscious misogyny, Judith Butler's reading …
See all 4Connections
Simone de Beauvoir and The Feminine Mystique
See all 2
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Beauvoir asks "What is woman?" and answers that humanity is defined as male, with woman as the Other.
- The first volume, Facts and Myths, rejects biology, psychoanalysis and historical materialism as explanations and traces women's subordination through history and myth.
- The second, Lived Experience, follows a woman's life from childhood, arguing that femininity is imposed by society.
- She ends looking to a future in which men and women are equals.
Why it matters
- It is regarded as a groundbreaking work of feminist philosophy and the starting point of second-wave feminism.
Key facts
- Author
- Simone de Beauvoir1
- Published
- 1949, in two volumes: Facts and Myths, and Lived Experience1
- Written
- In about 14 months between 1946 and 1949; some chapters first appeared in Les Temps modernes1
- First English translation
- 1953, by H. M. Parshley (Alfred A. Knopf), widely criticised as poor and abridged1
- New translation
- November 2009, by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, unabridged1
- Reach
- About 22,000 copies in its first week in France; translated into 40 languages1
- Banned
- On the Vatican's Index of Prohibited Books until the Index was abolished in 1966; banned in Francoist Spain in 19551
Key ideas
-
The Other1
"Humanity is male, and man defines woman not herself, but as relative to him."
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Biology is not destiny1
Values cannot rest on physiology; biology must be read in its social and economic context.
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Two factors1
Women's condition depends on taking part in production and freedom from reproductive slavery.
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Myths of woman1
She reads Montherlant, Lawrence, Claudel, Breton and Stendhal as reflecting collective myths of woman.
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Made, not born1
A girl's feminine destiny is imposed on her; she has no innate maternal instinct.
Criticism
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Alfred Kinsey1
Found it interesting as literature but of no value to science.
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Unconscious misogyny1
Biographer Deirdre Bair reported this as one of the most sustained criticisms; Stevie Smith said Beauvoir did not like women.
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Judith Butler's reading1
Butler reads it as separating sex from gender; Toril Moi and Nancy Bauer contest that reading.
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Camille Paglia1
Praised it as "the supreme work of modern feminism".
Connections
Links
Sources
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