The Second Sex By Simone De Beauvoir Summary

Throughout history, women have constantly been objectified and forced into submission by the male dominated society. Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical work, The Second Sex, echoes the intense oppression of women and reflects the first wave feminist movement. Her existentialist decoding of genders resulted in the idea of the Other, which explores the phenomenon of women forced into the role of an object, while men are the subject. In the second chapter, “The Girl”, Beauvoir further studies the idea of this oppression during one’s transition from a girl into a woman. Beauvoir states that no matter how much freedom and sense of self a girl holds, she is always forced into the role of the Other in society. Beauvoir 's idea of the Other held

In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan defines “The Problem That Has No Name” to be the dissatisfaction and longing in suburban housewives which was not caused by a lack of femininity but an excess of education and awareness. Society defined the suburban housewife as “the dream image of the young American woman and the envy…of women all over the world” (Friedan 60). Women were expected to make a “career” out of being housewives, which Friedan found to be ridiculous. Women should not be confined to the home when they have the same capabilities as men. By failing to speak out, these women allowed this idea of the ideal housewife to become engraved into every American’s mind, and this image of the ideal housewife did not benefit women at all

This book exposes hidden cultural assumptions about the nature of reality. Martin has produced a powerful study of the dialectic between metaphors for women reproductive processes and women’s own views of those processes.

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex suggests that to resolve the tension between bad faith and authenticity, people must regard women as subjects and not objects. They must also collectively fight against the idea of womanhood in order to remain authentic to themselves.

“In the history of feminism Universalism has played a crucial role. The revolutionary promise to realize the individual human rights of liberty, equality, and political participation has been the basis for women’s claim for citizenship in Western democracies since the eighteenth century” (Scott). The problem, of course, could be that feminism is often difficult to define, a problem noted by bell hooks and Carmen Vasquez. Vasquez argues that feminism, unfortunately, "has come to mean anything you like […] There are as many definitions of Feminism as there are feminists" (Vasquez qtd. in hooks 17 qtd. in Brunnemer). Women fought long and hard to achieve equal right with men, but in the 1870s that equality was just a dream. Ibsen’s play “A Doll House” shows just how unequal women were compared to men during this period of time. “The play was deemed so daring that, when performed in many countries, the ending was changed so that Nora returns home, finding she cannot leave Torvald or her three children so great is her love and devotion to them” (Brunnemer). There were two roads that could have been taken by women in this era. Road one was being a wife and a stay at home mom. The second road was being a low paid labor worker. Nora and her childhood friend Kristen represent the two choices that women had to choose from.

In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir commenced the development of second-wave feminism. The publication of her theoretical work, The Second Sex, issued a fervent response to gender-based oppression during the twentieth century. However, the philosophy that de Beauvoir espoused in The Second Sex still proves relevant to contemporary women. In the United States, conservative politicians have sought to eliminate legalized abortion, thereby limiting the reproductive freedom of women. The enforcement of the gender pay-gap has led to economic inequality. Additionally, a practice of sexual shaming, known as "slut-shaming", has originated within popular culture to denounce women for their sexual choices. Ultimately, The Second Sex uncovers the timeless "myth de la femme", through an analysis of the economic and social liberation of women. Through her analysis, de Beauvoir highlights the importance of reproductive freedom, economic liberation, and sexual freedom.

Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 text The Second Sex, examines the problems faced by women in Western society. She argues that women are subjugated, oppressed, and made to be inferior to males – simply by virtue of the fact that they are women. She notes that men define their own world, and women are merely meant to live in it. She sees women as unable to change the world like men can, unable to live their lives freely as men can, and, tragically, mostly unaware of their own oppression. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes the subjugation of woman, defines a method for her liberation, and recommends strategies for this liberation that still have not been implemented today.

Struggling to fulfill societal expectations in a domestic role is a problem countless women face. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Tulips”, Adrienne Rich’s poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”, Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, Doris Lessing’s short story “To Room Nineteen”, Sophocles’s play Antigone, and Patty Jenkins’s film Monster all contain women who are unable to cope with the role society has forced upon them. Each of these stories showcase a woman who chooses to stop being complacent with her place in world, but each woman ends up dead or completely isolated. This draws the conclusion that true feminism does not exist; in order to reject the patriarchal values that society holds, one must sacrifice everything.

For Descartes, the body was a mere physical envelope that needed to be transcended to achieve the full potential of one's intellectual abilities. As a result, pairs emerged to parallel the dichotomy between body and mind: corrupt versus moral, ungodly versus godly, feelings versus reason, and finally female versus male. In the patriarchal society, the body has always been associated with women, as women are able to give birth and have corporeal manifestations unknown to men, such as menstruations. Women are not only regarded as just bodies, they are also weak bodies, unreliable and unpredictable. Consequently, the body has always been regarded as inferior, and been used to make women inferior. The body has been removed from philosophical, sociological, historical and artistic discussions. And is it not a feminist problem for artists, that the body that the patriarchy debases and refuses to acknowlege in art, is associated with women? Philosophical dualism reduces women to their biology, alienates them and refuses them entry to the 'realm of the intellect'. It therefore seems to a necessity for feminist female artist to find a solution to this problem which affects women's lives so badly. Niki de Saint-Phalle has always claimed that her work was concerned with women's problems because she was herself a woman, and most of her oeuvre is centered around the female body. How she treated dualism in her Nanas series and more specifically in the work Nana Noire Upside-Down is what the next paragraph will be focused

The idea of feminism and women’s rights have been under attack for years. Women themselves have been under attack for their entire lives. Women always have to be doing things correctly or men attack their very being. Men have expected women to be submissive to them from the beginning of time, as life has always been a patriarchy. Feminism has always been buried under the dirt but in the last 50-100 years, it has been exhumed from the grave. In this time women have been fighting for rights, especially through literature. As Amanda J. Davis explains in her essay about feminism, “Authors deconstruct such concepts as home, safety, and shelter in their respective texts and reposition them in the context of social injustices born out of the volatile intersection of race, class, and gender oppression.” (Davis) There have been many women authors who have helped define feminism, one of the most famous being Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir taught herself philosophy and then began her own teaching career and authorship. Her novel Second Sex quickly became a beacon of the feminist movement in the 1950’s. She writes about the causes and effects of the oppression shown to women all around the world, especially in the United States. Simone de Beauvoir shows in The Second Sex that there are many sources of injustice toward women including biological, social and economic, and legal.

Theorist Simone de Beauvoir was a primary contributor to the feminist movement as she laid the path for scholars and women in general in the mid-1900s. The Second Sex (1949), a novel of women through time, including the controversial role of women at home as well as how women were treated as if they were the inferior sex. While this book did not directly contribute studies or articles towards the feminist theory, it did lay out the foundation, viewpoints, and attitudes towards women, revealing patriarchy and supposed subservience (Marshall, 2006). The radical view supporting women’s independence in The Second Sex (1949) was rare for its time and sparked an interest that would soon become second wave feminism and contributed significantly towards the feminist theory.

Many feminists feel women are particularly suppressed to the effects of ideology. The Second Sex was written by Simone De Beauvoir discuss the belief that women are missing their elusive sense of self whereas men are granted it through privilege, an idea essential to describe a social state that reinforces a society structured around the objectification of woman. Though both male and woman are subjected to common ideologies and stereotypes De Beauvoir discusses the influence of social customs ingrained within our actions and behavior. Men's general acceptance of oppression of woman greatly influences criticism and mockery of them. Feminist are fighting to create the equality of an androgynous world install unequal pay, child care, birth control, and abortion, equality in the workplace, a need for political involvement, education, unintelligent, etc.. It’s appalling how socially active a woman has to remain to correct these discriminatory acts. In Simone De Beauvoir's book, The Second Sex discusses a range of beliefs influenced by cultural traditions that objectify, oppressed and illustrate women as inferior that have still not been rectified today.

In the conversations about civil rights in America’s past, there is one minority that is often overlooked when considering the great achievements made in history. Women have become a powerful figure in society recently. In the past, women fought for their equal rights against all odds, starting the revolution with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848 at a women’s conference in Seneca Falls, New York. Women realized they could fight for the rights they were entitled to, this notion sparked the concept of feminism. Simone De Beauvoir references women as the ‘second sex’, saying that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman” (2382). By this statement, De Beauvoir argues that women are not born a women, but are taught from infancy to accept society’s role of ‘woman’. The idea that women are taught to accept their role by society is the concept that feminism fights.

Written and published first in 1949, La Deixieme Sexe (The Second Sex) is a book published by feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir. The time frame of this book is essential when considering its impact on the audience involved. In the preface, the author discusses the essential bridge that this book formed between first-wave and second-wave feminism (de Beauvoir, 1949, p. 674), and the wide and continuous impact that it has had on readers throughout time. In the historical context of its writing, people considered feminism dead, its impacts diminished and its need nonexistent. With the publication of The Second Sex, de Beauvoir changed the narrative, and highlighted the ways in which women have been produced to be the “Other”, valued and understood only in our relation to the male “subject”.

Women overall are raised believe that the only way to achieve happiness and gain success is through the acceptance of denying her true identity. Women all over are being deprived of their possibilities for fulfillment and opportunity because they are shaped based on their childhood where they learn to accept the dissatisfying life of work around the house, nurturing and raising children, and the sexual slavishness. While living the kind of adulthood, Beauvoir addresses the certain roles women live in a sexist society: wife, mother,