The Second Sex

by Simone de Beauvoir

  In any case, some will object that if such a world is possible, it is not desirable. When woman is “the same” as her male, life will lose “its spice.” This argument is not new either: those who have an interest in perpetuating the present always shed tears for the marvelous past about to disappear without casting a smile on the young future. It is true that by doing away with slave markets, we destroyed those great plantations lined with azaleas and camellias, we dismantled the whole delicate Southern civilization; old lace was put away in the attics of time along with the pure timbres of the Sistine castrati, and there is a certain “feminine charm” that risks turning to dust as well. I grant that only a barbarian would not appreciate rare flowers, lace, the crystal clear voice of a eunuch, or feminine charm. When shown in her splendor, the “charming woman” is a far more exalting object than “the idiotic paintings, over-doors, decors, circus backdrops, sideboards, or popular illuminations” that maddened Rimbaud; adorned with the most modern of artifices, worked on with the newest techniques, she comes from the remotest ages, from Thebes, Minos, Chichén Itzá; and she is also the totem planted in the heart of the African jungle; she is a helicopter and she is a bird; and here is the greatest wonder: beneath her painted hair, the rustling of leaves becomes a thought and words escape from her breasts. Men reach out their eager hands to the marvel; but as soon as they grasp it, it vanishes; the wife and the mistress speak like everyone else, with their mouths: their words are worth exactly what they are worth; their breasts as well. Does such a fleeting miracle—and one so rare—justify perpetuating a situation that is so damaging for both sexes? The beauty of flowers and women’s charms can be appreciated for what they are worth; if these treasures are paid for with blood or misery, one must be willing to sacrifice them.

  The fact is that this sacrifice appears particularly heavy to men; few of them really wish in their hearts to see women accomplish themselves; those who scorn woman do not see what they would have to gain, and those who cherish her see too well what they have to lose; and it is true that presentday developments not only threaten feminine charm: in deciding to live for herself, woman will abdicate the functions as double and mediator that provide her with her privileged place within the masculine universe; for the man caught between the silence of nature and the demanding presence of other freedoms, a being who is both his peer and a passive thing appears as a great treasure; he may well perceive his companion in a mythical form, but the experiences of which she is the source or pretext are no less real: and there are hardly more precious, intimate, or urgent ones; it cannot be denied that feminine dependence, inferiority, and misfortune give women their unique character; assuredly, women’s autonomy, even if it spares men a good number of problems, will also deny them many conveniences; assuredly, there are certain ways of living the sexual adventure that will be lost in the world of tomorrow: but this does not mean that love, happiness, poetry, and dreams will be banished from it. Let us beware lest our lack of imagination impoverish the future; the future is only an abstraction for us; each of us secretly laments the absence in it of what was; but tomorrow’s humankind will live the future in its flesh and in its freedom; that future will be its present, and humankind will in turn prefer it; new carnal and affective relations of which we cannot conceive will be born between the sexes: friendships, rivalries, complicities, chaste or sexual companionships that past centuries would not have dreamed of are already appearing. For example, nothing seems more questionable to me than a catchphrase that dooms the new world to uniformity and then to boredom. I do not see an absence of boredom in this world of ours nor that freedom has ever created uniformity. First of all, certain differences between man and woman will always exist; her eroticism, and thus her sexual world, possessing a singular form, cannot fail to engender in her a sensuality, a singular sensitivity: her relation to her body, to the male body, and to the child will never be the same as those man has with his body, with the female body, and with the child; those who talk so much about “equality in difference” would be hard put not to grant me that there are differences in equality. Besides, it is institutions that create monotony: young and pretty, slaves of the harem are all the same in the sultan’s arms; Christianity gave eroticism its flavor of sin and legend by endowing the human female with a soul; restoring woman’s singular sovereignty will not remove the emotional value from amorous embraces. It is absurd to contend that orgies, vice, ecstasy, and passion would become impossible if man and woman were concretely peers; the contradictions opposing flesh to spirit, instant to time, the vertigo of immanence to the appeal of transcendence, the absolute of pleasure to the nothingness of oblivion will never disappear; tension, suffering, joy, and the failure and triumph of existence will always be materialized in sexuality. To emancipate woman is to refuse to enclose her in the relations she sustains with man, but not to deny them; while she posits herself for herself, she will nonetheless continue to exist for him as well: recognizing each other as subject, each will remain an other for the other; reciprocity in their relations will not do away with the miracles that the division of human beings into two separate categories engenders: desire, possession, love, dreams, adventure; and the words that move us: “to give,” “to conquer,” and “to unite” will keep their meaning; on the contrary, it is when the slavery of half of humanity is abolished and with it the whole hypocritical system it implies that the “division” of humanity will reveal its authentic meaning and the human couple will discover its true form.

  “The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman,” said Marx.4 From the character of this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behavior has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence—the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him.

  This could not be better said. Within the given world, it is up to man to make the reign of freedom triumph; to carry off this supreme victory, men and women must, among other things and beyond their natural differentiations, unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.

  * Bold Chronicle of a Strange Marriage.—TRANS.

  1. In Vino Veritas. He also says: “Gallantry is essentially woman’s due; and the fact that she unconsciously accepts it may be explained by the solicitude of nature for the weak and the disadvantaged, those who feel more than recompensed by an illusion. But this illusion is precisely fatal … Is it not an even worse mockery to feel freed from misery—thanks to one’s imagination, to be the dupe of imagination? Woman certainly is far from being verwahrlost [abandoned]; but inasmuch as she never can free herself from the illusion with which nature consoles her, she is.”

  2. That some arduous professions are prohibited to them does not contradict this idea: even men are seeking professional training more and more; their physical and intellectual capacities limit their choices; in any case, what is demanded is that no boundaries of sex or caste be drawn.

  3. I know a little boy of eight who lives with a mother, aunt, and grandmother, all three independent and active, and a grandfather who is half-senile. He has a crushing inferiority complex in relation to the female sex, though his mother tries to combat it. In his lycée he scorns his friends and professors because they are poor males.

  4. Philosophical Works, Volume 6. Marx’s italics. [Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Volume 6. —TRANS.]

  Selected Sources

  The works listed below are the published English translations that the translators consulted for Simone de Beauvoir’s French quotes, as well as the English-language books and publications to which she makes reference. In some instances, the translators translated Beauvoir’s citations themselves, for example, when she paraphrases an author. But the works are also included here as “selected sources.”

/>   Abrantès, Laure Junot. Memoirs of the Duchess d’Abrantès (Madame Junot). J. & J. Harper, 1832.

  Aeschylus. Eumenides. Translated by Richard Lattimore. University of Chicago Press, 1969.

  Angela of Foligno. Complete Works. Paulist Press, 1993.

  Bachelard, Gaston. Earth and Reveries of Repose. Translated by Kenneth Haltman. Unpublished.

  ———. Earth and Reveries of Will. Translated by Kenneth Haltman. Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2002.

  Bâlint, Alice. The Psychoanalysis of the Nursery. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953.

  Balzac, Honoré de. Letters of Two Brides. Translated by R. S. Scott. Hard Press, 2006.

  ———. The Lily in the Valley. Translated by Lucienne Hill. Carroll & Graf, 1997.

  ———. The Physiology of Marriage. With an introduction by Sharon Marcus. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

  Bashkirtseff, Marie. I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff. Translated by Phyllis Howard Kernberger and Katherine Kernberger. Chronicle Books, 1997.

  Bazin, Hervé. Viper in the Fist. Translated by W. J. Strachan. Prentice-Hall, 1951.

  Bloch, Jean-Richard. A Night in Kurdistan. Translated by Stephen Haden Guest. Victor Gollancz, 1930.

  Bourdouxhe, Madeleine. Marie. Translated by Faith Evans. Bloomsbury, 1997.

  Breton, André. Arcanum 17. Translated by Zack Rogow. Green Integer, 2004.

  ———. Communicating Vessels. Translated by Mary Ann Caws and Geoffrey Harris. Nebraska University Press, 1990.

  ———. Mad Love. Translated by Mary Ann Caws. Bison Books, 1988.

  ———. Nadja. Translated by Richard Howard. Grove Press, 1994.

  ———. Poems of André Breton: A Bilingual Anthology. Translated by Mary Ann Caws. University of Texas Press, 1982.

  Colette. Break of Day. Translated by Enid McLeod. Limited Editions Club, 1983.

  ———. Claudine at School. Translated by Antonia White. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

  ———. Claudine’s House. Translated by Andrew Brown. Hesperus Press Limited, 2006.

  ———. The Evening Star: Recollections. Translated by David Le Vay. Bobbs-Merrill, 1973.

  ———. Green Wheat. Translated by Zack Rogow. Sarabande Books, 2004.

  ———. The Innocent Libertine. Translated by Antonia White. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.

  ———. The Kepi. Translated by Antonia White. Secker and Warburg, 1984.

  ———. My Apprenticeships & Music-Hall Sidelights. Translated by Helen Beauclerk.

  Penguin Books, 1967.

  ———. The Pure and the Impure. Translated by Herma Briffault. New York Review of Books, 2000.

  ———. Sido. Translated by Una Vicenzo Troubridge and Enid McLeod. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

  ———. The Tender Shoot. Translated by Antonia White. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.

  ———. The Vagabond. Translated by Enid McLeod. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955.

  Dalbiez, Roland. Psychoanalytical Method and the Doctrine of Freud. Longmans, Green, 1941.

  Deutsch, Helene. The Psychology of Women. Bantam Books, 1973.

  Diderot, Denis. “On Women.” In Dialogues. Translated by Francis Birrell. Routledge, 1927.

  Duncan, Isadora. My Life. Boni & Liveright, 1955.

  Ellis, Havelock. Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Inversion. University Press of the Pacific, 2001.

  Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Translated by Alick West and Dona Torr. Marxist-Leninist Library, 1942.

  Flaubert, Gustave. Sentimental Education. Translated by Robert Baldich. Penguin Books, 1964.

  Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism. Translated by Katherine Jones. Knopf, 1939.

  Gide, André. The Coiners. Translated by Dorothy Bussy. Cassell, 1950.

  ———. The Journals of André Gide. Translated by Justin O’Brien. Penguin Modern Classics, 1967.

  Halbwachs, Maurice. The Causes of Suicide. Translated by Harold Goldblatt. Free Press, 1978.

  Halévy, Daniel. Jules Michelet. Hachette, 1928 and 1947.

  Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. Wordsworth Editions, 2005.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977.

  ———. The Philosophy of Nature. Translated by J. N. Findlay and A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1979.

  Huart, Clément. Ancient Persia and Iranian Civilization. Knopf, 1927.

  Hughes, Richard. A High Wind in Jamaica. Harper & Brothers, 1929.

  Hurst, Fannie. Back Street. Grosset, 1931.

  Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. In Eleven Plays of Henrik Ibsen. Modern Library, 1935.

  Jouhandeau, Marcel. Marcel and Élise: The Bold Chronicle of a Strange Marriage. Translated by Martin Turnell. Pantheon Books, 1953.

  Jung, Carl. The Development of Personality. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton University Press, 1970.

  ———. Symbols of Transformation. (Originally published as Metamorphoses and Symbols of the Libido.) Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Pantheon Books, 1956.

  Kennedy, Margaret. The Constant Nymph. Doubleday, Page,1925.

  Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life’s Way. Translated by H. V. and E. H. Hong. Princeton University Press, 2009.

  Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis. Rebman Kessinger, 1906.

  Landau, Rom. Sex, Life, and Faith. Faber and Faber, 1946.

  Lawrence, D. H. Fantasia of the Unconscious. Dover Publications, 2006.

  ———. Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Modern Library, 2003.

  ———. Sons and Lovers. Modern Library, 1999.

  ———. The Plumed Serpent. Vintage, 1992.

  Lehmann, Rosamond. Dusty Answer. Virago, 2008.

  ———. Invitation to the Waltz. Virago, 2006.

  ———. The Weather in the Street. Virago, 1981.

  Levinas, Emmanuel. Time and the Other. Translated by Richard Cohen. Duquesne University Press, 1987.

  Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Translated by James Harle Bell, Rodney Needham, and John Richard von Sturmer. Beacon Press, 1969.

  Luhan, Mabel Dodge. Lorenzo in Taos. Knopf, 1932.

  Malinowski, Bronislaw. “The Bachelors’ House.” In The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia. Horace Liveright, 1929.

  Malraux, André. Man’s Fate. Translated by Haakon M. Chevalier. Modern Library, 1934.

  Mansfield, Katherine. “Prelude.” In The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield. Knopf, 1937.

  Marx, Karl, and Friederich Engels. Collected Works. Vol. 6. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm.

  Mauriac, François. A Kiss for the Leper and Genetrix. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. Eyre and Spottiswood, 1950.

  ———. Thérèse Desqueyroux. Translated by Raymond MacKenzie. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

  McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. Penguin Classics, 1962.

  Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. Routledge, 2005.

  Michaux, Henri. “Bridal Night.” In Selected Writings. New Directions, 1968.

  Michelet, Jules. The Mountain. Translated by W. H. Davenport Adams. T. Nelson & Sons, 1872.

  Mill, John Stuart. “The Subjection of Women,” as reprinted in Philosophy of Women, edited by Mary Briody Mahowald. Hackett, 1994.

  Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Translated by Donald M. Frame. Stanford University Press, 1965.

  Montherlant, Henry de. The Bachelors. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. Greenwood Press, 1977.

  ———. The Dream. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. Macmillan, 1963.

  ———. The Girls. Translated by Terence Kilmartin. Harper & Row, 1968.

  ———. The Master of Santiago. Translated by Jonathan Griffin. Knopf, 1951.

  ———. La Petite Infante de Castil
le. French & European Publications, 1973.

  Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Vintage, 1974.

  ———. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Penguin Classics, 1961.

  Parker, Dorothy. “Too Bad” and “The Lovely Leave.” In The Portable Dorothy Parker. Penguin Books, 1944.

  Rabelais, François. The Complete Works. Translated by Donald M. Frame. University of California Press, 1991.

  Rimbaud, Arthur. Illuminations. Translated by Helen Rootham. New Directions, 1943.

  ———. A Season in Hell. Translated by Delmore Schwartz. New Directions, 1939.

  Rougemont, Denis de. The Devil’s Share. Translated by Haakon M. Chevalier. Pantheon Books, 1944.

  Sachs, Maurice. Witches’ Sabbath. Translated by Richard Howard. Jonathan Cape, 1965.

  Sade, Marquis de. Philosophy in the Boudoir. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. Penguin Classics, 2006.

  Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. Translated by George J. Becker. Schocken, 1948.

  ———. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel Barnes. Citadel Press, 2001.

  ———. Dirty Hands. In Three Plays. Translated by Lionel Abel. Knopf, 1949.

  Scott, Geoffrey. The Portrait of Zélide. Turtle Point Press, 1997.