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PARTISAN REVIEW
The claim of
The Second Sex
is that what we call the feminine
character is an illusion and so is feminine "psychology," both in
its
vapid meaning and in the psychoanalytical view. None of these female
traits are "given"-the qualities and incapacities women have shown
rather consistently in human history are simply the result of their "sit–
uation." This situation is largely the work of men, seeking their own
convenience with undeviating purpose throughout history. It does not
derive, at least not sufficiently to explain it, from women's natural phy–
sical and psychological difference, but has much of its origin in econom–
ics. When man developed the idea of private property, woman's destiny
was "sealed." At this time women were cut off from the more adven–
turous activities of war, forays, explorations, to stay at home to
protect
and
maintain
what men had achieved by their far-reaching pursuits.
The woman was reduced to a state of
immanence:
stagnation, the do–
ing of repetitive tasks, concerned with the given, with maintaining, keep–
ing, mere functioning. Man, however, is a free being, an
existent
who
makes choices, decisions, has projects which are not confined to securing
the present but point to the unknown future; he dares, fails, wanders,
grabs, insists. By means of his activities he
transcends
his mere animal
nature. What a man gives, the woman accepts; she decides nothing,
changes nothing; she polishes, mends, cleans what he has invented and
shaped. The man risks life, the woman merely produces it as an un–
avoidable function. "That is why superiority has been accorded in hu–
manity not to the sex that brings forth but that which kills." The man
imagines, discovers religions; the women worship. He has changed the
earth; she arises each morning to an expectation of stove, nursing,
scrubbing which has remained nearly as fixed as the course of our
planets. Women continue in immanence not out of desire, but from "com–
plicity." Having been robbed of economic independence, experience,
substance, she clings unhappily because she has not been "allowed" to
prepare for a different life.
Naturally, it is clear many women do not fit this theory and those
who may be said to do so would not describe it in the words of
Simone de Beauvoir. These creatures' claims are admitted quite fully
throughout the book, but always with the suggestion that those women
who seem to be "existents" really aren't and those who insist they find
fulfillment in the inferior role are guilty of "bad faith."
That is as it may be, but what, one asks at the beginning, about
the man who, almost without exception
in
this work, is a creature of
the greatest imagination, love of liberty, devotion to projects; ambitious,
potent and disciplined he scorns a life of mere "love," refuses to
im-
