Views of women and men in the work of Simone de Beauvoir

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir occupies, and deservedly so, a central place in the history of feminism. The Second Sex, published in 1949, is a classic study of the status of women and the causes of their subordination in all aspects of social tile. Her other works, which include novels, essays on existential philosophy, a four-volume autobiography and a lengthy study of old age, demonstrate a capacity for intellectual breadth (and, one must add a quite monumental talent for documentation) which is comparable to that of her life long companion, Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet whilst any essay on de Beauvoir must note her considerable intellectual power and range, it is also important to examine her work more critically than has generally been the case. Accolades, particularly from feminists, have been so generously heaped on her work that some of its shortcomings have been obscured. I would like to suggest here that whilst de Beauvoir claims that much of her work is concerned with the overall condition of women, she turns away from many of the issues which are central to women's lives and in particular accords very little place in her epistemology to areas of human experience which are not immediately amenable to rational understanding. Thus in this paper I shall argue that a major weakness in de Beauvoir's work is a rejection of many of the problems which women (and indeed men) face and a failure to acknowledge that the actions of both sexes are often motivated by needs and desires which, although frequently explained and rationalized from the conscious mind, do not always derive from it. • In a relatively short space it is impossible to do more than summarize and indicate the work of a prolific writer whose career has now spanned almost 40 years° De Beauvoir was born in 1908, the elder daughter of a lawyer, whose fortunes became progressively worse during his daughter's childhood and adolescence. A limited secondary education at a Catholic girls' school was followed by the study of philosophy at the Sorbonne, where at the age of 21 she received her degree and almost immediately afterwards the agrdgation, the coveted qualification allowing her to teach in lyc6es and universities. De Beauvoir's earliest published works did not, however, follow rapidly upon her brilliant academic career: she graduated from the Sorbonne in 1929, but her first novel (She Came to Stay) did not appear until 1943. It was rapidly followed by other works: two more novels (The Blood of Others, published in 1945 and All Men are Mortal, published in 1947) and two essays on existential philosophy (Pyrrhus et Cindas and Pour Une Morale de 'l'Ambiguitg)o But t~e two works which brought her lasting, and international, fame were The Second Sex and The Mandarins (the latter published in 1954 and for which she won the Prix Goncourt). In the 1950s and 1960s she wrote further novels, but increasingly she turned away from fiction to non-fiction: four volumes