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The Second Sex
Paperback
Published May 1, 2011
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About the author
Simone de Beauvoir
420 books11.4k followersWorks of Simone de Beauvoir, French writer, existentialist, and feminist, include
The Second Sex
in 1949 and
The Coming of Age
, a study in 1970 of views of different cultures on the old.
Simone de Beauvoir, an author and philosopher, wrote novels, monographs, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. People now best know She Came to Stay and The Mandarins , her metaphysical novels. Her treatise, a foundational contemporary tract, of 1949 detailed analysis of oppression of women.
Simone de Beauvoir, an author and philosopher, wrote novels, monographs, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. People now best know She Came to Stay and The Mandarins , her metaphysical novels. Her treatise, a foundational contemporary tract, of 1949 detailed analysis of oppression of women.
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July 1, 2025
THE BOOK THAT LAUNCHED THE ‘SECOND WAVE’ WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (1908-1986), was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist, who was closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 814-page paperback edition by Vintage.]
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1948 book, “For a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman… we must face the question: what is a woman? To state the question is, to me, to suggest… a preliminary answer… A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion… In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for the man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of ‘man’ to designate human beings in general… Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but in relation to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.” (Pg. xv-xviii)
She continues, “she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute----She is the Other. The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies… one finds the expression of a duality---that of Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes…” (Pg. xix) She adds, “The very fact that woman is the Other tends to cast suspicion upon all the justifications that men have ever been able to provide for it.” (Pg. xxv)
She outlines, “I shall discuss first of all the light in which woman is viewed by biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Next I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the ‘truly feminine’ has been fashioned—why woman has been defined as the Other---and what have been the consequences from man’s point of view. Then from woman’s point of view I shall describe the world in which women must live; and thus we shall be able to envisage the difficulties in their way as, endeavoring to make their escape from the sphere hitherto assigned to them, they aspire to full membership in the human race.” (Pg. xxxiv)
She states, “The devaluation of woman represents a necessary stage in the development of humanity, for it is not upon her positive value but upon man’s weakness that her prestige is founded. In woman are incarnated the disturbing mysteries of nature, and man escapes from her hold when he frees himself from nature. It is the advance from stone to bronze that enables him through his labor to gain mastery of the soil and mastery of himself.” (Pg. 84)
She observes, “a great many women demand a new status… not that they be exalted in their femininity: they wish that in themselves, as in humanity in general, transcendence may prevail over immanence: they wish to be accorded at last the abstract rights and concrete possibilities without the concurrence of which liberty is only a mockery. This wish is on its way to fulfillment. But the period in which we live is a period of transition; this world, which has always belonged to men, is still in their hands; the institutions and values of the patriarchal civilization still survive in large part. Abstract rights are far from being completely granted everywhere to women…” (Pg. 149-150)
She states, “The privileged place held by men in economic life, their social usefulness, the prestige of marriage, the value of masculine backing, all this makes women wish ardently to please men. Women are still, for the most part, in a state of subjection. It follows that woman sees herself and makes her choices not in accordance with her true nature in itself, but as man defines her.” (Pg. 154-155)
She suggests, “Man has succeeded in enslaving woman; but in the same degree he has deprived her of what made her possession desirable. With woman integrated in the family and in society, her magic is dissipated rather than transformed; reduced to the condition of servant, she is no longer that unconquered prey incarnating all the treasures of nature.” (Pg. 211)
Book II begins with the book’s most-quoted statement, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.” (Pg. 301)
She asserts of marriage, “Save during the brief flare of an amorous passion, two individuals cannot constitute a world that protects each of them against the world: this is what they both realize the day after their marriage. Before long the wife, becoming familiar and submissive, does not mask from her husband his state of isolation; she is a charge, not a way of escape: she does not deliver him from the weight of his responsibilities but on the contrary increases them… The two are as yet strangers.” (Pg. 513)
She says of the mother, “The fusion sought in masculine arms---and no sooner granted than withdrawn---is realized by the mother when she feels her child heavy within her… She is no longer an object subservient to a subject… she is one with that unequivocal reality: life. Her body is at last her own, since it exists for the child that belongs to her. Society recognizes her right of possession and invests it, moreover, with a sacred character.” (Pg. 554) Later, she adds, “There is an extravagant fraudulence in the easy reconciliation made between the common attitude of contempt for women and the respect shown for mothers. It is outrageously paradoxical to deny woman all activity in public affairs… and then to entrust to her the most … serious undertaking of all: the molding of a human being.” (Pg. 584)
She contends, “Not accepting logical principles and moral imperatives… woman lacks the sense of the universal; to her the world seem a conglomeration of special cases… Within her sphere all is magic; outside, all is mystery. She is unfamiliar with the criterion of plausibility; only immediate experience carries conviction---her own experience, or that of others, if stated emphatically enough.” (Pg. 685)
She proposes, “On the day when it will be possible for her to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself---on that day will love become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.” (Pg. 742-743)
She concludes, “The free woman is just being born; when she has won possession of herself perhaps Rimbaud’s prophecy will be fulfilled: ‘When woman’s unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man… having let her go, she, too, will be poet!’ … What is certain is that hitherto women’s possibilities have been suppressed and lost to humanity, that it is high time she be permitted to take her chances in her own interest and in the interest of all.” (Pg. 795)
This book is absolutely ‘must reading’ for anyone studying women, whether historically, or in contemporary life.
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (1908-1986), was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist, who was closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 814-page paperback edition by Vintage.]
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1948 book, “For a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman… we must face the question: what is a woman? To state the question is, to me, to suggest… a preliminary answer… A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion… In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for the man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of ‘man’ to designate human beings in general… Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but in relation to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.” (Pg. xv-xviii)
She continues, “she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute----She is the Other. The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies… one finds the expression of a duality---that of Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes…” (Pg. xix) She adds, “The very fact that woman is the Other tends to cast suspicion upon all the justifications that men have ever been able to provide for it.” (Pg. xxv)
She outlines, “I shall discuss first of all the light in which woman is viewed by biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Next I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the ‘truly feminine’ has been fashioned—why woman has been defined as the Other---and what have been the consequences from man’s point of view. Then from woman’s point of view I shall describe the world in which women must live; and thus we shall be able to envisage the difficulties in their way as, endeavoring to make their escape from the sphere hitherto assigned to them, they aspire to full membership in the human race.” (Pg. xxxiv)
She states, “The devaluation of woman represents a necessary stage in the development of humanity, for it is not upon her positive value but upon man’s weakness that her prestige is founded. In woman are incarnated the disturbing mysteries of nature, and man escapes from her hold when he frees himself from nature. It is the advance from stone to bronze that enables him through his labor to gain mastery of the soil and mastery of himself.” (Pg. 84)
She observes, “a great many women demand a new status… not that they be exalted in their femininity: they wish that in themselves, as in humanity in general, transcendence may prevail over immanence: they wish to be accorded at last the abstract rights and concrete possibilities without the concurrence of which liberty is only a mockery. This wish is on its way to fulfillment. But the period in which we live is a period of transition; this world, which has always belonged to men, is still in their hands; the institutions and values of the patriarchal civilization still survive in large part. Abstract rights are far from being completely granted everywhere to women…” (Pg. 149-150)
She states, “The privileged place held by men in economic life, their social usefulness, the prestige of marriage, the value of masculine backing, all this makes women wish ardently to please men. Women are still, for the most part, in a state of subjection. It follows that woman sees herself and makes her choices not in accordance with her true nature in itself, but as man defines her.” (Pg. 154-155)
She suggests, “Man has succeeded in enslaving woman; but in the same degree he has deprived her of what made her possession desirable. With woman integrated in the family and in society, her magic is dissipated rather than transformed; reduced to the condition of servant, she is no longer that unconquered prey incarnating all the treasures of nature.” (Pg. 211)
Book II begins with the book’s most-quoted statement, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.” (Pg. 301)
She asserts of marriage, “Save during the brief flare of an amorous passion, two individuals cannot constitute a world that protects each of them against the world: this is what they both realize the day after their marriage. Before long the wife, becoming familiar and submissive, does not mask from her husband his state of isolation; she is a charge, not a way of escape: she does not deliver him from the weight of his responsibilities but on the contrary increases them… The two are as yet strangers.” (Pg. 513)
She says of the mother, “The fusion sought in masculine arms---and no sooner granted than withdrawn---is realized by the mother when she feels her child heavy within her… She is no longer an object subservient to a subject… she is one with that unequivocal reality: life. Her body is at last her own, since it exists for the child that belongs to her. Society recognizes her right of possession and invests it, moreover, with a sacred character.” (Pg. 554) Later, she adds, “There is an extravagant fraudulence in the easy reconciliation made between the common attitude of contempt for women and the respect shown for mothers. It is outrageously paradoxical to deny woman all activity in public affairs… and then to entrust to her the most … serious undertaking of all: the molding of a human being.” (Pg. 584)
She contends, “Not accepting logical principles and moral imperatives… woman lacks the sense of the universal; to her the world seem a conglomeration of special cases… Within her sphere all is magic; outside, all is mystery. She is unfamiliar with the criterion of plausibility; only immediate experience carries conviction---her own experience, or that of others, if stated emphatically enough.” (Pg. 685)
She proposes, “On the day when it will be possible for her to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself---on that day will love become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.” (Pg. 742-743)
She concludes, “The free woman is just being born; when she has won possession of herself perhaps Rimbaud’s prophecy will be fulfilled: ‘When woman’s unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man… having let her go, she, too, will be poet!’ … What is certain is that hitherto women’s possibilities have been suppressed and lost to humanity, that it is high time she be permitted to take her chances in her own interest and in the interest of all.” (Pg. 795)
This book is absolutely ‘must reading’ for anyone studying women, whether historically, or in contemporary life.
Displaying 1 of 1 review