Just as in America there is no Negro problem, but rather a white problem just as anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, it is our problem so the woman problem has always been a man problem.” “The whole of feminine history has been man-made. “Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.” “That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.” Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: An Existential Love Story “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.” “If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male’s arrogance made it “a discussion” “But women do not say ‘We’, except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration men say ‘women’, and women use the same word in referring to themselves.” A man never begins by positing himself as an individual of a certain sex: that he is a man is obvious.” “If I want to define myself, I first have to say, “I am a woman” all other assertions will arise from this basic truth. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.” “It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. Famously, she and Sarte had a committed open relationship that lasted until his death.Įspousing ideas that were considered radical when it was published, The Second Sex made Simone de Beauvoir an intellectual force to be reckoned with, and inspired a generation of women to shake up the status quo. She was accepted into Jean-Paul Sartre’s intellectual circle which included other noted existentialists including Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. She also studied Greek, logic, ethics, sociology, and psychology. In addition to this nonfiction masterwork, she was also the author of memoirs, essay collections, and novels, all drawing on her sharp observations of human nature and reflecting her particular philosophical views.Īlways curious and academically inclined, de Beauvoir majored in philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. The sampling of quotes from The Second Sex that follow will make you question how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go. Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) was a French author, existential philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Her most enduring work, The Second Sex(1949), is still read and studied as an essential manifesto on women’s oppression and liberation.
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