Elizabeth Hardwick
THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN
Vassal, slave, inferior, other, thing, victim, dependent, para–
site, prisoner-oh, bitter, raped, child-swollen flesh doomed to im–
manence! Sisyphean goddess of the dust pile! Demeter, Xantippe,
Ninon de Lenclos, Marie Bashkirtsev, and "a friend of mine ..." Cave
to cafe, boudoir to microscope, from the knitting needles to the short
story, this potency of pages, this foreshortened and exaggerated, mys–
terious and too clear relief, this eloquent lament and governessy warning,
this poem and doctoral thesis-I suppose there is bound to
be
a little
laughter in the wings at the mere thought of this madly sensible and
brilliantly confused tome on women by Simone de Beauvoir,
The
Second Sex.
1
Still the more one sinks into this very long book, turning page
after page, the more clear it becomes that it lacks a subject-that is,
a subject with reasonable limitations, concreteness, on which offered
illustrations may wear some air of finality and conviction. The theme
of the work is that women are not simply "women," but are like men
in the fullest sense human beings. Yet one cannot easily write the history
of people! This point may appear trivial; nevertheless, to take on this
glorious and fantastic book is not like reading at all-from the first
sentence to the last one has the sensation of playing some dreadfully
exciting and utterly exhausting game. Gasping, straining, remembering,
trying to remember, pointing out, denying, agreeing with qualification,
the reader collapses at last, still muttering, "Yes, but ..." and "Where
are we?" What is so unbearably whirling is that the author too goes
through this mad effort to include nearly every woman and attitude that
have ever existed. There is no difference of opinion, unless it be based
upon a fact of which she may be ignorant, she has not thought of also.
She makes her own points and all one's objections too, often in the
same sentence. The effort of this thing must have been killing. No dis–
credit to the donkey-load undertaking is meant when one imagines
Simone de Beauvoir at the end may have felt like George Eliot when
she said she began
Romola
as a young woman and finished it an old
1
Knopf.
$10
