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simone
de beauvoir
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simone de beauvoir | existentialism | (the cry)
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If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through 'the eternal feminine', and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question "what is a woman"? |
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| Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile 'others' out of all the rest of the passengers on the train. In small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are 'strangers' and suspect; to the native of a country all who inhabit other countries are 'foreigners'; Jews are 'different' for the anti-Semite, Negroes are 'inferior' for American racists, aborigines are 'natives' for colonists, proletarians are the 'lower class' for the privileged. | |
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The parallel drawn by Bebel between women and the proletariat is valid in that neither ever formed a minority or a separate collective unit of mankind. And instead of a single historical event it is in both cases a historical development that explains their status as a class and accounts for the membership of particular individuals in that class. But proletarians have not always existed, whereas there have always been women. They are women in virtue of their anatomy and physiology. Throughout history they have always been subordinated to men, and hence their dependency is not the result of a historical event or a social change - it was not something that occurred. The reason why otherness in this case seems to be an absolute is in part that it lacks the contingent or incidental nature of historical facts. |
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| Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth. The religions invented by men reflect this wish for domination. In the legends of Eve and Pandora men have taken up arms against women. They have made use of philosophy and theology, as the quotations from Aristotle and St Thomas have shown. | |
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...à gauche, mais non communistes, et même fort mal vus du P.C., nous n'étions pas "bohèmes"; on me reprochait d'habiter l'hôtel et à Sartre, de vivre avec sa mère; |
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.... yesterday night, I felt I was falling in the bottom of a dark deadly pit and I struggled for two hours in fever and anguish and a kind of dispair... |
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Le fait est que je suis écrivain: une femme écrivain, ce n'est pas une femme d'intérieur qui écrit mais quelqu'un dont toute l'existence est commandée par l'écriture. ( Pour l'écrivain, il s'agit de communiquer "le sens de l'être dans le monde"). Cette vie en vaut bien une autre. Elle a ses raisons, son ordre, ses fins auxquels il faut ne rien comprendre pour la juger extravagante." (La force des choses) |
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| "la sincérité littéraire n'est pas ce qu'on imagine d'ordinaire: il ne s'agit pas de transcrire les émotions, les pensées, qui instant par instant vous traversent, mais d'indiquer les horizons que nous ne touchons pas, que nous apercevons à peine, et qui pourtant sont là; c'est pourquoi, pour comprendre d'après son oeuvre le personnalité vivante d'un auteur, il faut se donner beaucoup de peine." (La force de l'âge) | |
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| On a forgé de moi
deux images. Je suis une folle, une demi-folle, une excentrique. (la force des choses) |
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Woman's brain is smaller; yes, but it is relatively larger. Christ was made a man; yes, but perhaps for his greater humility. Each argument at once suggests its opposite, and both are often fallacious.(the second sex) |