SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
(1908-1986)

THE SECOND SEX
(Le Deuxieme Sexe)

First published in 1949

English translation in 1953 by H.M. Parshley (New York: Knopf)
Vintage Books paperback edition 1989

Introduction and Conclusion

C.S. 204

AMERICAN UNIERSITY OF BEIRUT

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THE SECOND SEX
(Introduction and Conclusion)

INTRODUCTION
BOOK ONE:
Part I
Part II
Part III

FACTS AND MYTHS
DESTINY
HISTORY
MYTHS

BOOK TWO:
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VI

WOMAN'S LIFE TODAY
THE FORMATIVE YEARS
SITUATION
JUSTIFICATIONS
TOWARD LIBERATION

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION
FOR A LONG TIME I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been
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E. Levinas expresses this idea most explicitly in his essay Temps et I'Autre. "Is there not a case in which otherness, alterity [altérité], unquestionably marks the nature of a being, as its essence, an instance of otherness not consisting purely and simply in the opposition of two species of the same genus? I think that the feminine represents the contrary in its absolute sense, this contrariness being in no wise affected by any relation between it and its correlative and thus remaining absolutely other. Sex is not a specific difference
... no more is the sexual difference a mere contradiction. ... Nor does this difference lie in the duality of two complementary terms, for two complementary terms imply a preexisting whole. ... Otherness reaches its full flowering in the feminine, a term of the same rank as consciousness but of opposite meaning."
I suppose that Levinas does not forget that woman, too, is aware of her own consciousness, or ego. But it is striking that he deliberately takes a man's point of view, disregarding the reciprocity of subject and object. When he writes that woman is mystery, he implies that she is mystery for man. Thus his description, which is intended to be objective, is in fact an assertion of masculine privilege

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duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts.
It is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought