Simone de Beauvoir and the demystification of woman

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) is one of the most famous and influential books of the twentieth century. It had a profound influence on the development of twentieth-century feminism, providing a key theoretical tool in the elaboration of the concept of the social construction of gender and offering a model of feminist enquiry for the theorists, literary critics, historians, philosophers, theologians and critics of scientific discourse who developed the new fields of study which her multidisciplinary essay opened up. Beauvoir's radical attack on the social institutions of motherhood and the family together with her frank discussion of female sexuality led to a public furore on the book's publication in France, a bare five years after De Gaulle at last conceded the right to vote to French women in 1944. The Pope put the book on the list of works which Roman Catholics are forbidden to read and Francois Mauriac, a leading French novelist and right-wing commentator, led a public campaign to have it banned. However, the media excitement also attracted the attention of the American publisher Knopf who, partly because of a misunderstanding about the book's actual content, commissioned an English translation from a zoologist, Howard Parshley. Parshley's work on the book was undoubtedly a labour of love, but he was obliged by the publisher to make very substantial cuts in the lengthy two-volume text, and was further hampered by the fact that he did not share Beauvoir's training in philosophy.