Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex", and Jean-Paul Sartre

Author(s): Dorothy Kaufmann McCall

Source: Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 209-223
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex,
and Jean-Paul Sartre

Dorothy Kaufmann McCall

Published in 1949, when feminismwas no longer and not yeta live issue,
Le Deuxierne Sexe' has come to be accepted as a pioneering and uniquely
ambitiousattemptto explore, withina philosophical framework,all as-
pects of woman's situation. The primacy of Beauvoir's contribution,
however, seems to be undermined by the pervasive influence in The
SecondSex of Sartre and of Sartrean existentialism,a philosophywhich,
in the contextof feministtheory,is perceived as ideologicallysexist.2In
this essay I mean to develop these antagonisticclaims and mediate be-
tween them. The purpose of that mediation is to subvert both the
domesticationof The SecondSex as a generallyunread "classic" and the
dismissalof it as merelyan imitationof Sartre.Thereby I hope to revive
the problematicstatusof Beauvoir's textand open it forfurtherfeminist
analysis.As an enabling strategyfordelineatingthecomplex interplayof
Beauvoir's originalityand Sartre'sinfluence,I have woven into myessay
two verydifferentkindsof evidence, fromSartre'sphilosophyand from
Beauvoir's autobiography,as theyfindexpression in differentlevels of
discourse withinThe SecondSex.
From the outset of The SecondSex Beauvoir makes it clear that she
has adopted the ontologicaland ethicalclaimsof Sartreanexistentialism:
"There is no justificationfor presentexistenceother than itsexpansion
intoan indefinitely open future.Everytimetranscendencefallsback into
immanence, there is a degradation of existence into the en-soi-the
brutishlife of subjection to given conditions-and of libertyinto con-

1. A titlein the originalFrench is used to emphasize the firstdate of publicationor to

indicate that an accompanyingtranslationis my own.
2. See, e.g., Margery Collins and Christine Pierce, "Holes and Slime: Sexism in
Sartre's Psychoanalysis,"in Womenand Philosophy, ed. Carol C. Gould and Marx W. War-
tofsky(New York: Capricorn Books, 1976).
[Signs:Journalof Womenin Cultureand Society1979, vol. 5, no. 2]
? 1979 by The Universityof Chicago. 0097-9740/80/0502-0001$03.05

209

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210 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

straintand contingency.... Every individual concerned to justifyhis

existence feels that his existence involvesan undefined need to trans-
cend himself,to engage in freelychosen projects."3That is the language
of Being and Nothingness: Immanence, the en-soi,contingency-the part
of existence which is given, which is simplythere-is opposed to free-
dom and transcendence,to the project. It must be remembered that
Beingand Nothingness concerns not ethicsbut ontology,freedomnot as a
value but as a structureof human consciousness. It is preciselybecause
we are ontologicallyfree-we are condemned to be free,thatis, we lack
the plenitudeof objects-that we can, existentially, make ourselves free.
For Sartre there can be no human nature because there is no God to
conceive it. Human nature is a definitionof what we essentiallyare as
seen by an absolute subject.WithGod absent fromthe universe,thereis
no absolute subject; we are all both subject and object as we define and
are defined by other people. Following Hegel, Sartre sees the original
meaning of other people in the world as conflictratherthan Mitsein.
Startingfromthe Sartreanidea of originalconflict,Beauvoir argues
as a basic postulate of The SecondSex that man has always conceived of
himselfas the essential,the Self, and made of woman the Other. Beau-
voir'sdevelopmentof thatthesis,whichinformsthe entirebook, is com-
pletelyher own. If the factof the existenceof the Other is firstof all a
threat,then it is not surprisingthatman should pose himselfas Subject
and should relegatewoman to the statusof second sex. But in Beauvoir's
analysis,two factorsmake the oppressionof woman unique. First,unlike
the oppression of race and class, the oppression of woman is not a
contingenthistoricalfact,an event in time which has sometimesbeen
contested or reversed. Woman has always been subordinate to man.
Second, women have internalizedthe alien pointof viewthatman is the
essential,woman the inessential.
It followsfrom Beauvoir's analysis that she completelyrejects the
notionof a matriarchyin primitivetimes.AgainstBachofen and Engels,
Beauvoir argues the Levi-Straussianview that public and even social
authorityalwaysbelonged to men. In societieswherewoman was seen as
Mother or as Goddess, her power was affirmedbeyond and outside the
human realm. Political power remained in the hands of men. Since
woman's power was magical, defined by man out of his needs, he could
destroythatdefinitionwhen it no longer answered his needs. In all the
contradictorymythsof woman, woman as nature and as antinature,
woman adored and woman despised, woman as salvationand woman as
damnation, Beauvoir perceivesthe same pattern:man defininghimself
as Subject and woman, as Other, relativeto him. Even when the woman
was definedas superiorto the male, itwas the male who did the defining
and who thereforeheld the power.
3. Simone de Beauvoir, The SecondSex, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley (New York:
Vintage Books, 1974), p. xxxiii (hereaftercited parentheticallyby page number in text).

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Signs Winter1979 211

If itis not difficultto understandthatman should want to dominate

woman, the question becomes,What male advantagesoriginallyenabled
him to succeed? Beauvoir answers with two facts,decisive in primitive
societies and up to the present day: (1) Women tend to be physically
weakerthan men and (2) even more crucially,it is the woman who bears
children. Like Shulamith Firestone after her, Beauvoir insiststhat in-
equality between the sexes is firstbiological. She stressesthe biological
facts in order to question their significance.In common with Sartre,
Beauvoir sees the human body not as an object but as a situation,a given
which takes on meaning only in relation to an individual and social
context.Biological considerationscan be decisive or irrelevant;it is soci-
etythatdecides the bondage imposed on woman by her maternalfunc-
tions.Beauvoir's argumentforthe relativity of biologicalconsiderations
is confirmedby recenthistory.The inventionof the birthcontrolpill,in
spiteof itscontinuingproblems,has enabled women to begin to separate
heterosexual relations from childbearing.Once that binding link has
been broken, the male's biological advantage no longer remains intact.
In that sense, anatomywas a kind of destiny.With the advent of birth
controltechnology,the significanceof anatomical data changes.
Throughout Beauvoir's analysisshe emphasizes her primarythesis,
consistentwithSartreanexistentialism,thatman's oppression of woman
is an expression of the universal imperialismof human consciousness.
Man's biological advantage has given him, historically,the power to act
out thisdesire to dominate. Beauvoir's viewin thisrespecthas oftenbeen
misunderstood.Thus, in his book on Simonede Beauvoir,RobertCottrell
contends: "Not for a momentdoes she imagine that opposites can sus-
tain and complement each other. In order to assert itself,each con-
sciousness must strive for the destruction, the annihilation of the
other."4Cottrell'sdescriptionof what he calls Beauvoir's "dialecticsof
aggression"distortsbothTheSecondSex and the existentialistphilosophy
fromwhich it proceeds by confusingan ontological statementwith an
ethical one. Beauvoir's assumption of an original conflictbetween Self
and Other does not negate the possibilitythat"oppositescan sustainand
complement each other." For Beauvoir, however, as for Sartre, such
reciprocityis not a given but an achievement.
With the opening paragraph of "L'Experience vecue,"book 2 of The
SecondSex, Beauvoir introducesher othercentralargument:"One is not
born but ratherbecomes a woman. No biological,psychological,or eco-
nomic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in
society; it is civilizationas a whole that produces this creature, inter-
mediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine"(p.
301). Beauvoir's definitionof woman in this passage corresponds to
Sartre's idea, developed in Anti-Semite and Jew, that the Jew, like any
4. Robert Cottrell,Simonede Beauvoir (New York: Frederick Ungar PublishingCo.,
1975).

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212 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

oppressed group, is firstof all a productof the societywhichdefineshim

as a Jew.5 But all of "L'Experiencevecue" (translated in the American
version as "Woman's Life Today") evokes Beauvoir's autobiography
more directlythan Sartre'sphilosophy.Paradoxically,her thesisthatit is
societythatproduces "woman" findsitsconfirmationin the datedness of
many of her observations;theywere true then,theyare much less true
now. For instance, it is no longer common for the adolescent girl in
France to experience the transformation of her body fromchild to adult
woman withthe kindof terrorBeauvoir citesfromnumerous novels and
case studies of the period. These chapters of The Second Sex-
"Childhood," "The Young Girl," "Sexual Initiation," "The Married
Woman," "The Mother"-often read like a collective prefiguringof
Beauvoir's memoirs.Together they have the imaginativecredibilityof
an old-fashionednovel. Beauvoir conveysthe textureof thatworld; as in
her own story,she makes us understandwhat it was like to grow up as a
dutifulCatholicdaughterof Frenchmiddle-classparentsduring the first
part of this century.In so doing, she demonstratesinadvertentlythe
extent to which it is true that woman has no nature, only a history.
Beauvoir describes the painfuldifficulties of the wedding night,"which
deliver the virgin to the tender mercies of a man whom, commonly
enough, she has not reallychosen, and whichis supposed to accomplish
in a few hours-or minutes-her entire sexual initiation"(p. 424). In
America and in France as well,onlythe phrase "wedding night"remains
intact,a symbolicreminderof the ritede passage it used to describe.
In developing the thesisthatone is not born but, rather,becomes a
woman, Beauvoir shows how women collaboratewithmen to make that
becomingtake place: "Man wantswoman to be object; she makes herself
object; at the verymoment when she does that,she is exercisinga free
activity.Therein is her original treason" (p. 684). Her statementgives
ironicconfirmationto Freud's paradox thatfemininity is the activepur-
suitof a passive function.Whereas Freud presentsfemininity as goal and
value pointingthe wayto woman's fulfillment of her essentialnature,for
Beauvoir femininity defineswhat women are and should not be; it is an
accusation of complicityand self-deception.In Beauvoir's analysis the
real problem, as she notes in her chapter on "The Lesbian," is not to
understand why some women reject the limitationsplaced upon them,
but, rather,to understand why most women accept them.
If men findin women more complicitythan the oppressor usually
findsin the oppressed, it is because women,fromearliestchildhood, are
offered more enticinginducementsto play the role assigned to them.
Beauvoir studies thatcomplicitywithinthe Sartrean perspectiveof the
5. This does not implythatwoman,or theJew,is reduced to thatsituation.For Sartre,
as for Beauvoir, "what is importantis not what people make of us but what we ourselves
make of what they have made of us" (see Saint Genet,trans. Bernard Frechtman [New
York: George Braziller,Inc., 1963], p. 49).

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Signs Winter1979 213

self's ambivalentrelationto freedom,both desired and feared. Against

the difficultassertionof self,woman is beguiled witha promise of secu-
ritynotofferedto the male. She is led to believe thatshe does not need to
create her futurethroughher own actions in the present;her vocation,
in the form of marriage and motherhood,will happen to her. If she
accepts the femininerole of Other, she denies herselfthe opportunities
of transcendence,but she also feelssafe fromitshazards. Her femininity
is the mirage that she will be taken care of, not only economicallybut
absolutely.All the elementsof woman's situationencourage her to pre-
ferthe pleasures of passivityand the repose of definitionto the risksand
uncertaintiesof freedom.6
Depending on whichSartre one decides to emphasize, Sartre'sphi-
losophy of existencecan be seen as either feministor antifeminist.The
idea-the passion-that underliesall his workis thatof freedom.Sartre's
philosophical project, fromBeing and Nothingness to the Critiqueof Di-
alecticalReason,has been to constructa philosophyof freedom.From the
beginning,freedom in Sartrean existentialismasserts itselfagainst na-
ture, both nature as essence and nature as the forceof growthin living
things.Sartre is hostileto nature in both these meaningsas theyapply to
human reality.He rejectsthe idea of human nature,whichmeans to him
a fixedessence, a group of qualities already defined.Withthatnegation,
the "eternal feminine"disappears along withhuman nature,in all their
contradictorymeanings. This freedom,withitsaccompanyingopenness
to the future,is the most affirmative,the most exhilaratingaspect of
Sartrean existentialism.In that perspective,existentialismis not only a
humanismbut a feminismas well.
There is another Sartre, more intimateand more disquieting,not
revealed in his edifyingessayExistentialism Is a Humanism.In a chapterof
Beingand Nothingness, "Qualityas a Revelationof Being," Sartreattempts
to definethe symbolicrelationshipbetweencertainphysicalqualities and
what he considers their moral counterparts.He undertakesan analysis
of the "slimy,"le visqueux,his image of antivalue: "The slimyis docile.
Only at the very moment when I believe that I possess it, behold by a
curious reversal,it possesses me. Here appears itsessentialcharacter:its
softnessis leech-like.... It is a soft,yieldingaction,a moistand feminine
sucking,it lives obscurelyunder my fingers,and I sense it like a dizzi-
ness; it draws me to it as the bottomof a precipice mightdraw me ....
Slime is the revenge of the In-itself.A sickly-sweet, femininerevenge."7

6. Beauvoir's analysisenables us to understand-as Kate Millett's,for instance,does

not-why so manywomen were staunchopponents of women's rightsin the past and are
now among the most effectiveadversariesof a reformas minimalas the ERA. For Beau-
voir,woman is accomplice as well as victimof her situation.Oppressed by the male, she is
also, and withinthe same system,protectedby him.
7. Jean-Paul Sartre,Beingand Nothingness,trans.Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosoph-
ical Library,1956), p. 608.

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214 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

The horrorin thispassage is a horrornot onlyof woman,but of the vital

itself,expressed in sexuality.Femininityfor Sartre is experienced and
refused as a symbolof the natural,sexuallycharged. It is an apparent
passivitywhich acts on man, threateningto draw him into itself.Pos-
sessed by the feminineen-soi-the forceof life-he fears he will be dis-
possessed of his freedom.
When Sartre evokes the femininein Being and Nothingness, his lan-
to
guage bears more resemblance the language of his obsessions in the
it
novels than does to the language of his philosophical discourse. The
power he seeks to exerton his reader in these passages is no longer that
of the philosopherwho, in Sartre'sown definition, "tries to communicate
thoughtsby signs"8but, rather,thatof the poet he describes in WhatIs
Literature?who groups words by magical associations. Sartre's descrip-
tions of "the slimy"and "holes" in Being and Nothingness do not derive
logicallyfrom his analysis of the en-soiand the pour-soi.They are not
inherentin either his ontologyor in existentialistthoughtin general;
theyare rootedin Sartre'sparticularsensibility. Obsessed withhis horror
of the vital in all its manifestations,Sartre the writertakes over from
Sartrethe philosopher,using words as a magical means to impose those
obsessions on his reader.
The verbal sorceryof Sartre's antisexual obsessions seems to have
exercised on Beauvoir its own kind of seduction. She notes in a single
guarded allusion her fascinationwith the imagery of Sartre's private
world, shortlyafter they have met: "How cramped my little world
seemed beside this exuberantlyabundant universe! Later, it was only
certain madmen who could inspire in me a similar sense of humility
when theydiscovered in a rose petal a tangleof murkyintrigues."9More
typically,eager to defend Sartre,she places thoseobsessionsin a rational
framework,as she does during an interviewabout Sartreforthe Ameri-
can public: "Sartre thinksthatnausea or revulsionin face of everything
thatis contingentand withoutsavour and, on the other hand, thejoy in
surmountingthe given and in existingas freedom are two phases of a
same experience."10In thisversion,nausea becomes neutralizedinto an
idea, againstthe powerfulcontraryevidence in both Sartre'sphilosophy
and his fiction.
Sartre'smostdisturbinginfluenceon TheSecondSex appears in Beau-
voir's acceptance, expressed in numerous passages throughout the
book, of his rejectionof nature, biological life,and the flesh,as a few
examples will show. On "Woman's History,the Nomads": "It is not in
8. Jean-Paul Sartre, "L'Ecrivain et sa langue," in Situations,IX (Paris: Editions Gal-
limard, 1970), p. 420.
9. Simone de Beauvoir,Memoirsofa DutifilDaughter,trans.James Kirkup (Cleveland
and New York: World PublishingCo., 1959), p. 475 (hereaftercited in textas MDD).
10. Quoted by MichelContatand Michel Rybalkain Les Ecritsde Sartre(Paris: Editions
Gallimard, 1970), p. 420.

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signs Winter1979 215

givinglife but in riskinglifethatman is raised above the animal; thatis

whysuperiorityhas been accorded in humanitynot to the sex thatbrings
forthbut to that which kills"(p. 72). And in the chapter on myths:

The contingencyof all fleshis man's own to sufferin his abandon-

ment,in his unjustifiableneedlessness. It also dooms him to death.
This quiveringjelly which is elaborated in the womb (the womb,
secretand sealed like the tomb) evokes too clearlythe softviscosity
of carrion for him not to turnshuddering away. Whereverlifeis in
the making-germination,fermentation-itarouses disgustbecause
itis made onlyin being destroyed;the slimyembryobegins the cycle
that is completed in the putrefactionof death. Because he is hor-
rifiedby needlessness and death, man feels horror at having been
engendered; he would fain deny his animal ties; throughthe factof
his birth,murderous Nature has a hold upon him. [P. 164]

The point of view in both these passages is the same as Sartre's.Life, or

even the nurturingof life,has no special value. Riskinglifeis paralleled
withthe act of killing.Life is radicallyseparated fromspirit,body from
mind. The act of writingThe SecondSex affirmsBeauvoir's belief that
what she calls the "necessarystage" of devaluatingwoman is over. Within
Beauvoir's context, however, the only justificationfor this change in
values is woman's newlyeffectiveabilityto refuse the female principle
she is supposed to embody. Beauvoir alludes to woman's "positivevalue"
but she gives us no example of it. In the passage on the contingencyof
flesh,we recognize the language of Nausea and Being and Nothingness.
Nature, Beauvoir writes,is "murderous,"dooming us to death; we are
given no sense of the opposing truth.
Reading the earlyvolumes of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography,
we find a verydifferentsensibilityemerging. She evokes the "multiple
splendorsof life"1'and notes: "Sartrehad an unqualifiedfaithin Beauty
which he did not separate fromArt; I gave supreme value to Life" (FA,
p. 30). A word that appears frequentlyin Beauvoir's writingis happi-
ness: "In all mylife I've met no one as giftedas I was forhappiness, and
no one who pursued it so stubbornly"(FA, p. 32). Such evidence from
Beauvoir's autobiographical work seems to support the contentionof
Suzanne Lilar in Le Malentendudu deuxieme sexethat Beauvoir is divided
in The SecondSex between two fundamentallydifferentattitudestoward
life,"her own conception,resolutelyoptimistic,her love of the world,of
life,of nature, her love of love, and Sartre'sconception of life,imbued
with the tragic quality of gnosticism."12Lilar's opposition between the
twowriters,however,does not take intoaccount the divisionin Beauvoir
11. Simone de Beauvoir, La Forcede l'aige(Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1960), p. 19
(hereaftercited in textas FA).
12. Suzanne Lilar, Le Malentendudu deuxiemesexe (Paris: Presses Universitairesde
France, 1969), p. 85.

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216 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

herself,between her optimismand what Elaine Marks has called "the

crucialelementof [Beauvoir's] sensibility:encounterswithdeath."'3 Nor
does Lilar consider Beauvoir's own puritanism,datingback to her child-
hood. Like Sartre'sin this respect,Beauvoir's education was permeated
with a Christian,middle-classhostilityto the flesh,expressed in both
families by an attempt to ignore it out of existence. Throughout Le
MalentenduLilar reduces Beauvoir's text not only to Sartre's influence
but, more specifically,to the influenceof what she calls Sartre's gnosti-
cism. Sartre's influenceon The SecondSex becomes a fatalflaw:Nothing
of value is leftalive.
Lilar manages to ignorenot onlyBeauvoir's own ambivalentrelation
to the body, apparent in her autobiography,but also the more lyrical
pages of The Second Sex. For all Beauvoir's demystifying energy, it is
strikingthat she chooses to conclude her textwithan extended exalta-
tion of the couple in a world of equality between the sexes: "When we
abolish the slaveryof half of humanity,togetherwiththe whole system
of hypocrisythatit implies,then the 'division'of humanitywillreveal its
genuine significanceand the human couple willfinditstrue form"(pp.
813-14).
In Beauvoir's chapter, "The Woman in Love" (under pt. 6, "Jus-
we finda problematiccounterpointto her utopian visionof
tifications"),
the couple whichconcludes TheSecondSex. A passionatelyreasoned essay
against woman's love-religion,"The Woman in Love" is also the most
powerfuland original analysisin The SecondSex of woman's complicity
with her situation.The entire essay, suffused in religious vocabulary,
partakesof a mysticalfervoritsetsout to denounce. It is the onlychapter
of The SecondSex in which Beauvoir's project of demystification is op-
posed, and dialecticallyenriched, through her own strugglewith the
femininemythshe describes.Her prose embodies thatstruggle.In con-
trastto the dispassionate criticwhose presence controlsThe SecondSex,
we encounter in "The Woman in Love" Beauvoir's ambivalentinvolve-
ment withthe phenomenon she evokes.
Beauvoir's amoureuseyearnsto be "necessaryto a being who is abso-
lute necessity"(p. 725), whose love willjustifyher existence. If every
man, for Malraux and for Sartre after him, dreams of being God,
woman, as Beauvoir portraysher in this chapter, dreams of being His
Beloved. For Beauvoir it is the woman most avidly seeking transcen-
dence who is often most vulnerable to the religionof love. Denied the
transcendenceof action and adventure offered to the male, she seeks
transcendenceby losing herselfin-a man who representsthe essential
which she cannot be for herself.
A passage in Beauvoir's critiqueof psychoanalysisgives us a key to

13. Elaine Marks, Simonede Beauvoir: EncounterswithDeath (New Brunswick,N.J.:

RutgersUniversityPress, 1973), p. 4.

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Signs Winter1979 217

understand her sense of the differencein the meaning of love for men
and for women: "What deifies the fatheris by no means the feminine
libido (nor is the motherdeifiedby the desire she arouses in the son); on
the contrary,the fact that the femininedesire (in the daughter) is di-
rected toward a sovereign being gives it a special character" (p. 47).
Beauvoir's quarrel with Freud here would seem to be that he an-
thropomorphizesthe fatherand does not take into account his symbolic
role, of social origin, as sovereign being. For Beauvoir, as for Sartre,
everyhuman existentfeels a need to go beyond the limitsof the human
condition,to escape fromcontingencyinto an impossiblenecessity.Un-
like man, woman's greatesttemptationis to seek that necessitythrough
the love of a male on whom she conferssupremacy.
But whateverhis dream or hers,man is not God. Moreover,unlike
God, he is present. Beauvoir's woman in love finds herself inevitably
caught in a maze of contradictions.When idolatrypainfullycollides with
the realityof her idol's limitations,I'amoureusefeels betrayed, for "A
fallengod is not a man: he is a fraud" (p. 727). If,on the other hand, his
prestige remains intactand she abdicates her freedom to his superior
reality,she is likelyto lose both her self and his love. Impossibly,she
wants to possess his freedom; he must be completelyhers and yet in-
finitelybeyond possession. If l'amoureuseis abandoned by the man she
loves, not only is she leftwith nothing; in her own eyes she is nothing.
The conclusion to Beauvoir's chapter makes clear that her warning to
women is not against love but against love as an absolute, a promise of
salvation.When woman, fullythe equal of man, can love in her strength
and not in her weakness,"love willbecome forher as forman a source of
life and not of mortaldanger" (p. 743).
There is littleindicationin her chapter on "The Woman in Love"
that Beauvoir has been more than peripherallyinfluencedby Sartre's
analysis of love in Being and Nothingness.The influence of her re-
lationshipwithSartre,however,is of primarysignificancein understand-
ing her vision of a specificallyfemale experience of love as it relates to
woman's situation.An attentivereading of Beauvoir's four-volumeau-
tobiographysuggests,oftenexplicitly,thatthe love-religionhas been her
most intimateand powerfultemptation.In "The Woman in Love" she
isolates that temptationand gives expression to its most extreme form.
In Memoirsofa DutifulDaughterBeauvoir describes her firstexperi-
ence, outside the prescribed definitionsof familyand friendship,to
which she gives the name "love." At the age of ten, she becomes ac-
quainted with a new classmate,Elizabeth Mabille, called Zaza by those
close to her; Simone and Zaza quickly become good friends.About a
year later,aftera shortabsence, Zaza's unexpected reappearance over-
whelmsSimone witha new sensation:"All at once, conventions,routines,
and the careful categorizingof emotions were swept away and I was
overwhelmedbya floodof feelingthathad no place in any code. I found

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218 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

myselfmoved by a wave of joy which went on mountinginside me, as

violentand freshas a waterfall,as naked, beautiful,and bare as a granite
cliff" (MDD, p. 100). It is Zaza's "vivacityand independence" which
"subjugates"Simone; itis Zaza's apparent irreverenceand rebelliousness
to which she takes joy in submitting.During their adolescent years,
Simone and Zaza graduallymove apart. Zaza becomes increasinglyim-
mersed in a pious Christianityand accepts,withmorbid obedience, her
family'soppression of her; slowly,long before her sudden illness and
death at the age of twenty-one,her familysucceeds in killingher spirit.
Simone begins to break away fromher parents' influenceat the age of
fourteen,rejecting,one afterthe other,both her mother'sreligiousbe-
liefsand, withgreaterdifficulty since he was endowed withmore pres-
tige, the secular right-wingvalues of her father.
In the summer of her fifteenthyear, Simone records her fantasy
image of the ideal relationshipshe seeks withher "futurehusband." Her
fantasyfocuses not on the man but on the kind of relationshipthere
would be betweenthem: "I would feel a passionate admirationfor him.
In this respect,as in all others, necessitymust govern the choice. My
chosen one must, like Zaza, impose himselfon me, prove he was the
right one; otherwise I should always be wondering: why he and not
another? Such a doubt was incompatiblewithtrue love. I should be in
love the day a man came along whose intelligence,culture,and authority
could bringme intosubjection."Questioningas an adult her insistenceat
fifteenthat the man she would choose must be superior to herself,she
reasons thatsince man belongs to a privilegedspecies, he benefitsat the
outset from a considerable advantage; only by perceiving him as
superiorwould she be able to respecthim as her equal. Justas important
in her fantasyis the need thatthe man she would love be like her, "my
equal, mydouble," so thattheywould be completelytransparentto each
other; everythingcould be shared, each would fulfillforthe other "the
role of exact observerwhichI had formerlyattributedto God" (MDD, p.
153).
At the age of fifteenBeauvoir had created an imaginaryrepresenta-
tionof the kindof relationshipwhichSartrewas explicitlyto embody for
her. As she herself emphasizes: "Certainlycircumstanceswere in my
favor: I might never have found perfect harmony with anyone. But
when mychance was offeredme, I took it withsuch passion and tenacity
because it answered a veryold need" (FA, p. 31). Those "circumstances"
were by no means entirelydue to coincidence. In 1929 when Beauvoir
and Sartre met, she had effectively broken away fromher parents; she
was on her way to achievingfinancialindependence, and she had almost
completed her studies in philosophyat the Sorbonne. Sartre, too, was
preparing for the agregation(which he had failed the previous year);
Beauvoir was intriguedby his reputationfor brillianceand subversive-
ness. She saw him as both her teacher and her fellowstudent.

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signs Winter1979 219

From the outset there seems to have existed between Beauvoir and
Sartrethe mutual recognitionof a special kind of kinship.They share by
temperamenta passionate need for absolutes and an equally passionate
disbeliefin them.They are both,to borrowIris Murdoch's descriptionof
Sartre, romantic rationalists.In Sartre and in Beauvoir the romantic
desire for everythingcreates a correspondingimpatiencewithlimitsin
any form. Beauvoir findsin Sartre a reinforcementof all her refusals.
Looking back to her childhood, she notes that she had always been
"headstrong,self-willed,a creatureof extremes,and proud of it" (MDD,
p. 229). In her adolescence she becomes increasinglyhostileto religion
and la bonnepensee,the oppressive mystifications whichshe sees enacted
withdevastatingeffectivenessin the destinyof Zaza. Sartre'sanarchistic
denunciationof bourgeois societyresponds and gives value to her rejec-
tion of the dutifuldaughter she used to be.
Early in theirrelationshipit is clear to Beauvoir that"Sartredid not
have the vocationformonogamy.""Between us," he explains to her with
typicalheadiness, "there is a necessarylove; we should also experience
contingentloves." Beauvoir adds, "We were two of a kind, and our
relationshipwould endure as long as we did: but it could not take the
place of fleetingrichesto be had fromencounterswithdifferentpeople.
How could we deliberately forego that gamut of emotions-
astonishment,regret,nostalgia,pleasure-which we were also capable of
feeling?"(FA, p. 26).
In spite of the plural pronoun, Beauvoir lets us know thatthe place
for "contingentloves" representsSartre's choice rather than her own.
They made another pact: They would never lie to one another, and
neitherwould conceal anythingfromthe other. For Beauvoir at least,
the idea of the openness of theirrelationshipdoes not workout quite so
neatlyin life. Her passionate reactionsto Sartre's more importantcon-
tingentloves at various periods of his life-with Camille, withOlga, and
with "M"-belie the widely held notion that Beauvoir and Sartre have
been essentiallypartners, friendlyassociates. She records in her au-
tobiographythe intensereactionprovoked in her by these verydifferent
relationships,her jealousy and her radical questioning,each time, of
herself and her relationship with Sartre. From Beauvoir's own tes-
timony,her love affairwithNelson Algren when she was thirty-five was
an eroticawakening,a new revelationin her lifeof the power of sexual
experience. Beauvoir's love for Sartre begins with a differentkind of
enthrallment.Aftertheirfirstfew monthstogether,she looks to Sartre
as a miraculous solution to opposing needs: "My trustin Sartre was so
completethathe provided me withthe definitivesecuritythatI had once
had frommy parents,and fromGod. When I threwmyselfinto a world
of freedom, I found an unbroken sky above my head. I was escaping
fromall constraints,and yeteach momentof my existence possessed a
kind of necessity.All my most remote and deep-feltlongingswere now

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220 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

fulfilled;there was nothingleftfor me to wish,except that this stateof

triumphantbliss mightcontinue unwaveringlyforever"(FA, p. 31).
Not long after this ecstaticbeginning,we hear in Beauvoir's au-
tobiography echoes of the language with which she condemns
l'amoureusein The SecondSex. When she was an adolescent, writinghad
become for Simone a recourse against her feelingof separateness from
others. Now that she joyfullyexperiences herselfas one withanother,
safelyenclosed in his reality,she discoversthat she no longer has any-
thingto writeabout. Fascinated withSartre,

I was, beyond any doubt, abdicating. Perhaps it is hard for anyone

to learn to coexist peacefully with someone else; certainlyI had
never been capable of it. Either I reigned supreme or sank into the
abyss. Subjugated by Zaza, I had plumbed the depths of humility;
now the same storywas repeating itself,except that I had fallen
froma greaterheight,and my self-confidencehad been more bru-
tallyannihilated.In both cases I kept myserenity:fascinatedby the
other. I forgotmyselfto the point that no part of me remained to
registerthe statement:I am nothing.Yet this voice did raise itself
fitfully;and then I realized that I had ceased to exist on my own
account, and was now livingas a parasite. [FA, p. 66]

In remorseand in terrorshe tellsherselfthat "to expect salvationfrom

someone other than oneself is the surestand quickest way to lose one-
self" (FA, p. 67). Her new happiness becomes an insidious temptation,
botha resolutionand a trap. Aftertheirhavingspenttwoyearstogether,
Beauvoir begins to exorcize thattemptationwhen she decides to accept a
teaching post in Marseille, acting against her strongdesire to staywith
Sartre. It is not until 1939, however,at the age of thirty,that she suc-
ceeds in actingon her vocationto write,creatingwithL'lnvitee,her first
published novel, a renewed sense of selfas well.
Beauvoir's relationshipwithSartrecrystallizesa themethatemerges
as a centralconcern in her life and in her writing:in general terms,the
conflictbetweenfreedomand love; in Beauvoir's specificexperience,the
conflictbetween her imperious need for autonomyand her equally im-
perious need to give herselfto another.We findin Beauvoir's sensibility,
as she communicatesit most directlyin the autobiography,the will to
assertherselfcounterbalancedand oftencontradictedby the desire to be
overwhelmed. In her novels, serving as a foil and a warning to her
heroines who live withinthat tension, Beauvoir creates a woman who
completelysacrificesher autonomyto love-Elizabeth inShe CametoStay,
Denise in TheBlood ofOthers,and Paule in The Mandarins,her mostfully
realized fictionalembodimentof l'amoureuse.In contrastto Monique in
The WomenDestroyed, whose dependence is expressed in the contextof a
traditionalmarriage,Beauvoir's amoureusesare women who in objective

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Signs Winter1979 221

termshave achieved independence; theyhave careers whichmake them

economicallyself-sufficient. But, as Beauvoir writesin her concluding
section on "The Independent Woman" in The Second Sex, "Through
twentyyears of waiting,dreaming,hoping, the young girlhas cherished
the mythof the liberatingsavior-hero,and hence the independence she
has won throughworkis not enough to abolish her desire fora glorious
abdication" (p. 773).
Characteristically,in Beauvoir's autobiographicaland fictionalrep-
resentationsof the difficultiesin her relationshipwith Sartre, she as-
sumes complete responsibilityfor the anguish she experiences.14Sartre
is a prioriabsolved of blame; communicatingher own instinctforsexual
fidelityas against Sartre'swish for diversity,she directsher moral cen-
sure, when it appears, against herself. Beauvoir's refusal to include
Sartre as even partially responsible for her difficultiesin their re-
lationship reflectsa perverse kind of pride. Like Sartre, Beauvoir is
intoxicatedwiththe idea of freedom;unlikehim,she is temperamentally
divided in her need for it. As a result,her struggleforautonomyfrom
Sartreis alwaysa strugglewithherself.In her book on SimonedeBeauvoir
and Women,Jean Leighton notes Beauvoir's harsh criticismof woman's
dependence throughoutThe Second Sex and goes so far as to accuse
Beauvoir of "misogyny."'5But Beauvoir's critique of what she calls
woman's complicitywith her situation is in part a critique of herself.
Sartre'sinsistenceon Beauvoir's autonomyas well as his own makes her
temptationto abdicate to him, as she sees it, not only her problem but
her responsibility.
Beauvoir's relationto Sartre,then,emerges as a complex dialecticof
alienation and liberation.From the time they meet, she feels thatwhat
Sartre values in her is what she values in herself,"my love of personal
freedom, my passion for life, my curiosity,my determinationto be a
writer"(MDD, p. 361). Her early failureto carrythroughher desire to
write signifiesfor Beauvoir a loss of esteem in her own eyes and in
Sartre'sas well. Describingeach of her major writingprojects,she speaks
of Sartre's encouragement and the creative impetus he gives to her
thinking.In 1947, withL'Invitee,Le Sang desautres,and PyrrhusetCineas
14. In Beauvoir's firstnovel,She Came toStay,that anguish is played out to its imagi-
naryextreme. At the end of the novel, an exploration and exorcismof Sartre and Beau-
voir's experiment with the "trio," the Beauvoir heroine, Francoise, murders her rival.
Acknowledgingthe weakness of that ending froma literarypoint of view, Beauvoir ex-
plains in La Forcede Pl'ge its necessityfor her in personal terms: "Above all, by releasing
Francoise,througha crime,fromthe dependent positionin whichher love forPierrekept
her, I regained myown autonomy.... I needed to go to the limitof myfantasy,to embody
it withoutmitigatingit in any way in order to achieve formyselfthe solitude into which I
had precipitatedFrancoise" (p. 348).
15. Jean Leighton,Simonede Beauvoiron Woman(Cranbury,N.J.: Associated Univer-
sityPresses, 1975), p. 221.

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222 McCall Simonede Beauvoir

behind her, Beauvoir feelsthe urge to writeabout herselfand discusses

it withSartre:

I realized thatthe firstquestion to come up was: What has it meant

to me to be a woman?At firstI thoughtI could dispose of thatpretty
quickly.I had never had any feelingof inferiority,no one had ever
said to me: "You thinkthatwaybecause you're a woman"; myfemi-
ninityhad never been irksometo me in any way. "For me," I said to
Sartre,"you mightalmost say itjust hasn't counted." "All the same,
you weren'tbroughtup in the same waya boywould have been; you
should look into it further."I looked and it was a revelation: this
world was a masculineworld,mychildhood had been nourished by
mythsforgedbymen, and I hadn't reacted to themin at all the same
way I should have done if I had been a boy. I was so interestedin
thisdiscoverythatI abandoned myprojectfora personal confession
in order to give all my attentionto findout about the conditionof
woman in its broadest terms.16

Beauvoir begins the textof The SecondSex, in 1947, by apologizing

for her "irritating"subject,and hastens to disassociateherselffromthe
"quarrelingover feminism,now practicallyover" (p. xv). Not until 1972
did Beauvoir publiclydeclare that she had "become a feminist."Her
statementgivesa politicallyactivistdefinitionof feminismand expresses
her changed relationto it: "In The SecondSex I meant by being feminist
to fightfor specificallyfeminine demands independent of the class
struggle.Today I hold the same definition:I call feministthose women
or even men who are fightingto change woman's condition,linked of
course to the class strugglebut neverthelessoutside it, withouttotally
subordinatingthatchange to a change of society.And today I would say
I am that kind of feminist."17
Beauvoir's new feminismis expressed,first,in a change of language.
She indicates, for instance, "two things we have to fight: one is
capitalism,the other patriarchalattitudes."18It strikesthe reader that
"patriarchy,"now an underlyingconcept in feministtheory,is a word
conspicuouslyabsent fromThe SecondSex. In her introductionBeauvoir
writes:"It is significantthat books by women on women are in general
animated in our day less bya wishto demand our rightsthan byan effort
toward clarityand understanding.As we emerge froman era of exces-
sive controversy,this book is offered as one attemptamong others to
confirmthat statement"(p. xxxii). Three decades later, the spiral of

16. Simone de Beauvoir,Forceof Circumstance, trans.Richard Howard (New York: G.

P. Putnam's Sons, 1963), p. 94 (hereaftercited in textas FC).
17. Simone de Beauvoir, "La Femme revoltee,"Le Nouvel Observateur (February 14,
1972), p. 48.
18. Quoted in Caroline Moorehead, "A Talk with Simone de Beauvoir," New York
TimesMagazine (June 2, 1974), p. 94.

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Signs Winter1979 223

historyhas taken us once again into an era in which women are indeed
animatedby "a wishto demand our rights."The women's movementhas
politicized the implicationsof Beauvoir's analysis, as the existentialist
philosophy underlying the book has itself become increasingly
politicizedsince 1949. Beauvoir has statedthatif she were to rewriteThe
SecondSex, she would give the notionof the Other an economic basis in
the phenomenon of scarcityand need-exactly analogous, it happens, to
the change in Sartre's thinkingbetweenBeing and Nothingness and The
CritiqueofDialecticalReason.
Just as crucial an influencein Beauvoir's present thinkingas the
politicalchange in Sartre's philosophy,and compatiblewithit,has been
the emergence in 1970 of a radical Mouvement de liberation des
femmes,in whichBeauvoir has played an activerole. AlthoughBeauvoir
has become increasinglypolitical,her autobiographical works and her
interviewspublished since The SecondSex show that her thinkingabout
women has not changed fundamentally.The politicaldevelopment of
Beauvoir's feminismin no way implies a repudiation of The SecondSex.
On the contrary,of all her books, she tellsus, TheSecondSex remainsher
favorite,theone whichhas broughther "the greatestsatisfaction"(FC, p.
191). With the same conviction,she notes that "there has been one un-
doubted success in my life: my relationshipwithSartre" (FC, p. 672).
Since the women's movement, The Second Sex has taken on re-
spectability. New, it was shocking and misunderstood; now it is
domesticatedand misunderstood.A monumentalwork,it has become a
monument,to be regarded withthe distantrespectappropriate forven-
erable ancestors.Beauvoir herselfhas furtheredthatkind of respectby
her insistencethatTheSecondSex was writtenfroma privilegedsituation
of independence whichallowed her serenityof expression. Her claim of
privilegedindependence is both true and misleading.She has been eco-
nomicallyself-sufficient all her adult life; she has not known the ties of
marriage or motherhood. Her ties to Sartre, however, have been as
knotted and difficultin meaning as any tie to husband or family.In
delineatingSartre'sinfluenceon Beauvoir and his presence in the textof
The SecondSex, I have shown that influenceas both a creative and an
inhibitingforce. Beauvoir's studyof woman's oppression, and woman's
complicityin thatoppression,involvesitsauthor in more subjectiveways
than she acknowledges. Sartre's particular understandingof freedom
has both nourished and contaminated hers. Underneath its explicit
philosophicaltheory,the contradictionsof TheSecondSex ironicallyenact
Beauvoir's own unresolved struggle for liberation from the status of
second sex.

ofForeignLanguagesand Literatures
Department
Clark University

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