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PARTISAN REVIEW
one. (This touching remark did not refer to the time spent in com–
position, but to the wrinkling weight of the task.)
I quote a sentence about the
promises
the Soviet Union made to
women: "... pregnancy leaves were to be paid for by the State, which
would assume charge of the children, signifying not that they would
be
taken away
from their parents, but that they would not be
abandoned
to them." There is majesty here and the consolations of philosophy,
perhaps also, in this instance, a bit of willful obfuscation; but that kind
of strangeness occurs endlessly, showing, for purposes of argument at
least, an oversensitivity to difficulties. A devastating dialogue goes on at
this author's desk. After she has written, "the State, which would as–
sume charge of the children," there is a comma pause. In that briefest
of grammatical rests, voices assault this vigorous intelligence saying,
"But suppose people don't want their children taken away by the State?"
If
all these disputing voices are admitted, one on top of the other, you
are soon lost in incoherence and fantasy. Another instance: "It is un–
derstandable, in this perspective, that woman takes exception to mascu–
line logic. Not only is it inapplicable to her experience, but in his hands,
as she knows, masculine reasoning becomes an underhanded form of
force." A few pages on: "One can bank on her credulity. Woman takes
an attitude of respect and faith toward the masculine universe ..."
I take up the bewildering inclusiveness of this book, because there
is hardly a thing I would want to say contrary to her thesis that Simone
de Beauvoir has not said herself, including the fact, mentioned in the
preface, that problems peculiar to women are not particularly pressing
at the moment and that, by and large, "we have won." These acknowl–
edgments would seem of tremendous importance, but they are a mere
batting of the eye in this eternity of "oppression."
In spite of all positions being taken simultaneously, there is an un–
mistakable
drift
to the book. Like woman's life,
The Second Sex
is ex–
tremely repetitious and some things are repeated more often than others,
although nearly every idea is repeated more than once. One is justified,
then, in assuming what is repeated most often is most profoundly felt.
The diction alone is startling and stabs the heart with its vigor in
finding phrases of abjection and debasement. It is as though one had
lived forever in that intense, shady, wretched world of
W ozzeck,
where
the humor draws tears, the gaiety is fearful and children skip rope
neither knowing nor caring their mother has been murdered. "Conjugal
slavery, annihilation, servant, devaluation, tyranny, passive, forbidden,
doomed, abused, trapped, prey, domineer, helpless, imprisoned," and
so on. This immediately suggests a masochistic view of life, reinforced
