An overview on Simone de Beauvoir’s “The second sex”

“The Second sex” is a book written by Simone de Beauvoir which talks about how women are socially and culturally constructed and represented in the society. It attempts to answer the question as to why women are treated as inferior and secondary and as the “other”. She says that “one is not born woman but rather becomes woman”. According to Beauvoir, humanity is divided into two classes, one is man, the superior of all beings and the second class is the ‘other’ which includes women. One of the major aspects of her study is that there are no sociological, psychological or economic factors that determine the human female presence in the society but rather it is the civilisation that produces this “other” as an intermediate between a male and eunuch. According to Beauvoir, feminity is a false concept constructed by man, she calls it as an essence and a myth.
The serene calmness found in motherhood, the concept of virginity, the womb etc adds up to the various forms of this myth called femininity. She also points out that this “eternal feminine” is to describe all the terrifying processes of fertility and reproduction which are sugar coated with the myth of femininity.Therefore, by saying this simone de Beauvoir concludes that there is no such thing as feminine, it is only a “myth”. And that there can be no essence but only experience. She emphasizes on the concept of individuality of every human being, and this individuality cannot be trapped under the concepts called “femininity “. She uses the example of slavery. Slavery cannot be considered as a vocation of a slave, in the same way femininity is not the vocation of a female. It is only a concept used to suppress women through the ages. It is not something that is inherent but rather socially constructed to portray men as the dominant power.
De Beauvoir brings in a parallel between a doll and a woman by comparing the two. A doll is dressed up and is made to things the girl who is the owner of the doll desires of it. By which the doll by itself is objectified by the girl. Little does she know that she will be objectified the same way when she grows up to be a woman by her husband or any man because men belong to the superior category of all living beings. The doll is portrayed as submissive, listening to the words of her master, comforting her when she is lonely and lie at home when the she goes out. The doll does not have any agency of her own. In the same way, when a girl grows up, she will have to get the attention of her husband by attracting him with her beauty, she has to listen to him, and stay at home doing all the chores when he is busy with work. By which Simone de Beauvoir proves that a doll and woman are parallel to each other living as nothing but an accessory.
According to Beauvoir, Women are considered to be inferior to men for three reasons which is instilled in her by the society. The first one is that they are meant to fulfil a man’s need in order to exist in a correlation with them. The second one is to update themselves with the external factors such as makeup, dressing etc to seek validation and her third point was that women had very less legal rights because of which public influence was not really possible. For eg, in politics or law. What is to be noted is that this work was written five years after the French women were given the right to vote which shows that women were recognized only very late.Therefore to achieve liberation from being treated as this “doll” Beauvoir says that women need to understand that these beliefs of “femininity“ are just social constructs. And to make their individuality a priority they have to escape from these norms and determine their own destiny. These are some of the key points in Simone de Beauvoir’s work, “The Second sex”.