Contextualizing Gender

1.4 Gender Perspectives in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (Volume 1)

Prof. Rashmi Gaur
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee

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The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949)
• Passionate and incendiary, The Second Sex defines the
fundamental oppression of women by men, characterizing
them, at every stage, as the Other, defined exclusively in
opposition to men.
• Man occupies the role of the self, or subject; woman is the
object, the other. He is essential, absolute, and
Source: Vintage classics
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.
This distinction is the basis of Beauvoir’s later arguments.

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• Two English translations:
1. Howard M. Parshley in 1953
2. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-
Chevallier in 2009.
• Howard M. Parshley, a retired zoologist, who was
commissioned to do the translation, was asked to
condense it. Parshley cut 15 percent of the original
972 pages.
• As Francine Du Plessix Gray comments,“… and so it was
this truncated text that ushered two generations of
women into the universe of feminist thought, inspiring
pivotal later books like Betty Friedan’s “Feminine
Mystique” and Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics.”
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• In the introduction to the book, Beauvoir points to the
essentialism of women by referring to different notions and
practices that reduce her to womb and try to put her within
fixed categories.
• Man is considered as both positive and a universal category;
while woman is thought of as a negative category.
• “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, as 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” (Beauvoir, The Second Sex 15).

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• The Second Sex identifies the ways in which the myth of woman hides the diversity
of women belonging to different races and classes.
• It argues against the either/or frame of the woman question (either women and
men are equal or they are different). It argues for women’s equality, while insisting
on the reality of the sexual difference.
• However, she finds it unjust and immoral to use the sexual difference as an
argument for women’s subordination.
• As a phenomenologist she is obliged to examine women’s unique experiences of
their bodies, and to determine how these experiences
are co-determined by what phenomenology calls the
everyday attitude.

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• The book opens with the question, "What is a woman,"(pg.13) and defines the
historicity of the question by referring to several philosophers of the Western
canon.
• The introduction explores questions of Alterity concerning historical situations of
dominance and subordination.
• Beauvoir defines Alterity as "the fundamental category of human thought”(p.26).
• In the conflicting sexual binary, woman is the Other. Beauvoir feels that it tends
to cast suspicion upon all the justifications that men have
ever been able to provide for it.

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• Beauvoir argues that historically, men sought to make "the fact of their
supremacy a right”(pg.31), creating laws they turned into principles.
• She argued that ‘Gender’, the social structure that positions women as
inferior, has organized human societies far longer than capitalism or modern
forms of government. Therefore, women’s subordination cannot be explained
as a product of other social systems – it is a social process in and of itself.
• She concludes the introduction by emphasising that change can only occur
when vague notions of inferiority, superiority, and equality are abandoned .

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 Beauvoir Explains The Second
Sex
• A rare video interview of
Beauvoir. by Jean Schreiber in
1975.
•It explains the reasons behind
woman’s subordination to men.
•Beauvoir emphasis the history of
womanhood and the power
struggle between different
genders.

Source: Brut India [YouTube]

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 Outline
• The book is divided into two volumes
• Volume 1 consists of "Facts and Myths," which has an "Introduction" and three
parts. The first word of the "Introduction" is "I" .Thus, the reader is introduced to
the unconventional nature of seemingly academic work as the narrator
announces herself informally in the first person. Moreover, she is identified by
her sex.
• It consists of three parts and is further subdivided into chapters in these parts:
❖ Part 1- Destiny (Chapter 1-3)
❖ Part 2- History (Chapter 1-5)
❖ Part 3- Myths (Chapter 1-3)

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Part I: Destiny; Chapter 1- Biological Data
• The chapter opens with a simple definition: Woman is "a womb, an ovary."
Insult or exaltation – in terms of the male version - roots woman in nature and
"confines her in her sex“(p.41).
• Beauvoir concludes that sexual differentiation cannot be deduced at the
cellular level, but with respect to reproduction, differentiation occurs “as an
irreducible and contingent fact” (p.43).
• This section does not explain the reasons of sexual
hierarchy.

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Part I: Destiny; Chapter 2- The Psychoanalytical Point of View
• Beauvoir opens this chapter by criticizing Freud who she notes “was not very
concerned with woman's destiny“(p.74).
• Systematically disabling the psychoanalytic reliance on sexuality as the basis of
personality and the accompanying insistence on anatomy as destiny,
Beauvoir comments on the psychoanalytic recognition of difference with respect to
masculine and feminine behaviours, of which, she insists, both sexes are capable.
• Finally, making a myth of psychoanalytic narratives, and preferring choice over
psychoanalytic determinism, she notes that a girl climbing a
tree is not emulating her father, nor is she exhibiting virile
behaviour when she paints, writes, or engages in politics.
These activities are not only "good sublimations," but
"ends desired in themselves”.
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• Later, Jacques Lacan focused on the notion of the girl's
unresolved sexuality. His positive assessment of the
developmental hesitations in girls -- which Freud had
labelled as "infantile" and "incomplete“-- is a significant
revision.
– He certified that those who combine the traits of "incomplete" Sigmund Freud Jacques Lacan
development, more typical of girls but distributed across individuals, Source: Max Source: The
Halberstadt Australian
are capable of living in search of values (p.75). National
University
• Beauvoir asserts that woman's sexual initiation begins in
trauma, necessarily requiring a masculine intervention.
• Beauvoir takes up those aspects of feminine experience
that remain conventionally unspoken, but are foundational
to identity and perspective.

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 Part I: Destiny; Chapter 3-The Point of View of Historical Materialism
• Beauvoir points out that historical materialism refuses the
definition of woman as a sexed organism.
• Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the
State (1884) chronicles the importance of women in the Stone
Age. A primitive division of labour meant equality between the
sexes, which led to discovery (of metals) and inventions (plough, Friedrich Engels
private property, slaves); also gradually led to "the great historical Source: Panaroma del
Henares
defeat of the female sex” .
• Gradually changes occurred: women's restriction to
housework, domination by man, the replacement of
maternal right with paternal, and the transmission of
property from father to son rather than woman to her clan.

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• But, as Beauvoir points out, woman is not simply a worker, and there are times
during which her ability to reproduce is as important as her ability to produce.
• Engels wanted to eliminate the family in a socialist state, enabling women to
work.
• However, Beauvoir has dismissed this theory as being superficial because it does
not account for how these values developed in the first place.
• She points to factors shaping women’s condition that lie outside labour
distribution; for example, childbirth and sexuality. Because these are not
accounted for by historical materialists like Engels, she
believes it is necessary to go beyond this theory in order
to fully explain women’s condition in society.

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Part II: History; Chapter 1
• Part II begins with Beauvoir’s speculative account of women's
roles in the pre-agricultural world: carrying heavy loads and
accompanying men in battle.
– Physical strength—a key value for survival—was, however, limited for
women by the reproductive demands placed upon them. It resulted in Painting from the burial
women’s continued dependence on men for protection and sustenance. chamber of Sennedjem, c.
1200 BC.
• Motherhood left woman "riveted to her body" like an animal and Source: The Yorck Project

made it possible for men to dominate her, and also Nature.

– Women's lives are characterized as repetitious throughout their
childbearing years, while men's lives are creative.
• To be biologically destined to repeat life, or to live life
within the confines of a procreative life – living inside -
is termed as immanence.

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 Part II: History; Chapter 2
• When agricultural settlements came up, legal and social structures also developed.
Women were still valued, largely because children were needed to work the land.
Without knowledge of the father's role in procreation, many tribes remained
matrilineal, recognizing the importance of the mother in birth and care of children.
• Beauvoir however believes, like Lévi-Strauss, that for men, women are not peers. In
their mystery, women are Other, and always under men's guardianship.
• As man gains land, wealth, and slaves, woman is deprived of her domestic duties also,
making her gradually redundant. By dominating the world, man triumphs over
woman. Women and children become possessions, like the
land.
• Beauvoir claims that the story of the "devaluation of woman
represents a necessary stage in the history of
humanity" (p.109).
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 Part II: History; Chapter 3
• According to Beauvoir, "once woman is dethroned by ... private property, her fate is
linked to it for centuries”(pg. 117).
– Owning nothing, she is hardly a person. She can be disowned at will, male prenuptial chastity is not a
value, and a husband's adultery is not judged severely. The advent of private property helped men to
define women as property, which led them to value sexual fidelity.
– Beauvoir raises questions of women’s right to private property and inheritance as patriarchy makes
adjustments to local custom and law. A problem, for example, for societies founded in
agnation, is the family without a male heir.
• Beauvoir compares the position of women in Greece, where women did not
have any freedom; and Rome, where despite freedom,
women did not have any means of employment, often
resulting in hedonism and gluttony .
• Beauvoir concludes that happiness is not the necessary
component or condition of freedom.
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 Part II: History; Chapter 4
• Beauvoir suggests that Christianity has abetted the
subordination of women:
– Saint Paul writes: "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ
is the head of the church”.
– The story of the Virgin birth acknowledges that the woman's body is dirty
and a place of sin.
• During the medieval ages, women’s situation remained
stagnant, though cultural norms sometimes gave certain Source: Edmund Leighton

relaxations. Beauvoir cites the example of German families.

• She also points out that with the abolishment of
serfdom, rural communities developed in which spouses
lived on equal footing, each doing work to sustain the
family.
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 Part II: History; Chapter 5
• Beauvoir says that in the 19th and 20th centuries, "participation in
production and freedom from reproductive slavery ... explain the
evolution of woman's condition”(p.171).
• Notes that 1890 onwards women have rallied for reproductive rights,
divorce initiated by women and suffrage. Also notes that it was in
1897 that the French women won the right to testify in court.
• She regrets that women's history has been written exclusively by Source: Benjamin
Moran Dale

men. Throughout history, women mostly could not or would

not act for their own benefit.
– She condemns anti-feminism’s false conclusions about history: that
“women have never created anything grand” or “woman’s situation
has never prevented great women personalities from blossoming”
(p. 185).

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 Part III: MYTHS
• The Second Sex makes a clear distinction between myths (mythologization) and
facts with respect to women's situation.
– The first volume of her autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, had also critiqued some
of the oppressive myths which dominate women’s lives.
• The philosophical tradition, which is supposed to be crucial for men, creates
'others' for itself - women, the masses, children. Beauvoir says that historically
men have always controlled all powers, and “since the earliest days of their
patriarchate, they have thought it best to keep woman in
a state of dependence” (p.159).
• There are governing myths: cultural beliefs transmitted
through familiar stories—legends, fairy tales, folk tales—
that convey certain beliefs/mental habits to posterity.
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• Men have written the history of women, and have also
defined the mythological substructure of their
inferiority. It is crucial in forcing women into a
coagulated inessential object position.
• Inescapable is the governing myth of Judeo-Christian
culture, the story of Eve, who was never Adam's equal;
since the very beginning, Eve’s potential as an individual
is irrelevant.
Source: Jacob Jordaens
• Eve is a convenience for Adam: a thing, an object.
• Twenty years later, Kate Millett echoed it by
commenting that patriarchy has God on its side (Sexual
Politics, 1970).

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 The Myth of Woman as Nature
• Nature is both Life and Death. Nature is the fertile material
source from which man’s existence emerged, is sustained,
and which man transforms in his image at will to suit himself.
• Through man's projections, woman comes to embody
Nature "as Mother, Spouse, and Idea" and each takes on the
duality and contradictions that man perceives in his own
existence. TV Tropes

• Woman, like Nature, is ambiguous. She inhabits

contradictions; she is both the solidified immanence and
the Nothingness of existence that allows for
transcendence. Woman's ambiguity makes her seem
magical
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• Mother Earth is both life and death—and the oft-cited
masculine fear of the feminine is rooted in such myths of
power and loss of control.
• The Myth of Woman as Nature- Spouse: In this version of the
myth, nature is seen as a spouse by man. He finds that all
natural objects - shining stars, moody moon, sunlight, the
darkness of caves, wildflowers – have feminine essence.
Source: Pinterest
• This myth is man’s projection of woman as a magical and
sexed object – suitable to be conquered and possessed
through man’s virility.

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 Myth–making and Existential Morality
• Woman, in these myths, is entirely denied the Subject status, as well as the ability
to transcend beyond herself.
• Locked into immanence, into her facticity, her situation created through man’s
transcendence; she is all of nature's passive and inert objects that man can act on
and transform at will.
• Man transcends beyond himself in creating the Myth of Woman as Nature (as
Mother, Spouse, Death). Woman has no myths of her own.
Beauvoir asserts that these myths are world-making.
• For Beauvoir, a woman is "all … which is inessential:
she is wholly the Other." Her stories, her mythic
identity, have been constituted by him.

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 Chapter II: The Myth of Woman in Literature
• Beauvoir compares the representation of women by Henry-Marie-Joseph-Millon de
Montherlant , D. H. Lawrence, Paul-Louis-Charles-Marie Claudel, André Breton and
Stendhal (born Henri Beyle).
• These writers have represented women as a reflection of collective myths. The only
exception is Stendhal. Others show men as the destiny of women. She is required in
every case to forget herself in her love to a man. The other or woman is shown as a
reflection of the ego and ideas of man.

D. H. Lawrence Claudel André Breton

Montherlant Stendhal

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 – Montherlant's work reduces women to objects of masculine disgust.
– While elevating the masculine, Lawrence—in contrast to Montherlant—has enduring faith in
the feminine. Still, women are subjugated by the male virility.
– Claudel's women are loyal, faithful, sweet and humble—in other words, resigned.
– Breton also does not speak of woman as subject.
– Beauvoir calls Stendhal (1783–1842), a "tender friend of women," capable of creating women
characters whose identities are made by their specific experiences and needs. He avoids the
mythic woman "disguised as shrew, nymph, morning star,
or mermaid."
• Beauvoir concludes that “in defining woman, each writer
defines his ... ethic and the ... idea he has of himself.”

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 Chapter III: Myth and Reality
• According to Beauvoir, Literature propagates different kinds of
myths about women and womanhood. All of the transient,
Is parable, only:
• The idea of the “Eternal Feminine”, which presents an abstract The insufficient,
Here, grows to
reality:
concept of timeless and unchangeable feminine essence as The indescribable,
Here, is done:
absolute truth, clashes with the day to day experiences of Woman, eternal,
Beckons us on.
~ Goethe’s Faust
flesh and blood women. Part IId

• She comments that the “eternal feminine” fiction is

reinforced by biology, psychoanalysis, history, and
literature.
• Women are portrayed in contrary archetypes simultaneously.
– As evil, employing their erotic attraction; or as guardian angels and
courtesan – generous patronesses for poets and artists.

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• Beauvoir argues that there is no secret essence of
femininity. It does not exist. Human Beings in their real
essence cannot be defined in objective essence.
• Beauvoir also opines that the myth is in large part
explained by its usefulness to man.
• Myths help in the self-justification of regressive customs
and social mores. It further imbues the psyche through
movies, religions, traditions, language, tales, songs, and The Myth of Disney Princess
Source: Cosmopolitan
other social institutions.
• Further, people belonging to the working classes do not
have the luxury to embellish their womenfolk with images
and ornaments.
• Contemporary myths to propagate patriarchal values
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• Beauvoir also refers to women’s relation to means of production. They are owned
by men -- imparting a dominance to them, enabling them to look at the Other
from an exalted position.
• The oppressed—women—learn to hide their real feelings, and are "taught from
adolescence to lie to men." Thus, women live between their subjectivity and their
otherness. Essentially, facing oneself as Other, and accepting the bargain with
experience is the beginning of relief.
• Beauvoir concludes, quoting Laforgue, that woman will become fully human only
"when woman's infinite servitude is broken.”

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Thank You

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References
• Brut India.(2021, Apr 2021). Simone de Beauvoir Explains "One is Not Born, but
Rather Becomes, a Woman”. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Aekr9sLbVhQ
• The second sex volume 1 Part 1 Chapter 1 summary. (n.d.). Course
Hero. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Second-Sex/volume-1-part-1-
chapter-1-summary/
• The second sex introduction summary. (n.d.). Course
Hero. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Second-Sex/introduction-summary/
• Tidd, U. (2009). Simone de Beauvoir. Reaktion Books.

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