THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN
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by the fact that for the male quite an opposite vocabulary has dug
into this mind like a tick: "free, busy, active, proud, arrogant, master,
existent, liberty, adventure, daring, strength, courage . .."
Things being as they are, it is only fair to say that Simone de
Beauvoir, in spite of her absorbing tum of phrase, miraculously does
not
give the impression of being a masochist, a Lesbian, a termigant, a
man-hater, frustrated, frigid, and this book is not "the self-pitying cry
of one who resents being born a woman," as one American housewife–
reviewer said. There is a nervous, fluent, rare aliveness on every page
and the writer's more "earnest" qualities, her discipline, learning and
doggedness, amount not only to themselves, that is, qualities which cer–
tainly help one to write long books, but to a kind of "charm" that ought
to impress the most contented woman. This book is an accomplishment;
on the other hand, if one is expecting something truly splendid and
unique like
The Origins of Totalitarianism
by Hannah Arendt, to men–
tion another woman, he will be disappointed.
The Second Sex
begins with biological material showing that in
nature there are not always two sexes and reproduction may take place
asexually. I have noticed in the past that many books strongly presenting
feminine claims begin in this manner, as if under a compulsion to veil
the whole idea of sexual differentiation with a buzzing, watery mist of
insect habits and unicellular forms of life. This is dramaturgy, meant to
put one, after a heavy meal, in a receptive frame of mind. It is the
dissonant, ambiguous music as the curtain rises on the all too familiar
scene of the man at the hunt and the woman at the steaming pot; the
scene looks clear enough, but the music suggests things may not be as
they appear. That woman may not have to carry those screaming
brats in her womb, after all, but will, if you don't watch out, simply
"divide"! And the man: it is possible in the atomic age that a pin
prick may fertilize the egg and then where will he be? This material
is followed by curiosities from anthropology: some primitive societies
thought the woman did it all alone and the man was no more important
than a dish of herbs or a draft of beet juice.
These biological and anthropological matters are of enormous fas–
cination, but often, and a bit in this present work too, a false and dra–
matic use is made of them: they carry a weight of mystification and
intensity quite unjustified when the subject is the modem woman. They
would seem to want to throw doubt upon what is not yet doubtful: the
bisexual nature of human reproduction. We are relieved when the
dividing amoebas and budding sponges swim out of view.
