Man is the One, Woman is the Other: Interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

     Beavoir says that men represent both positive and neutral while women represent
only negative. She is asserting the idea that when men's manhood have influence over
something, it can only be of a positive nature, unless of course it is neutral. Women's
womanhood can have a negative influence. In conversation a man can say to a woman,
"You only think that because you are a woman," and have that mean that she is wrong.
The woman can not reasonably say, "You only think that because you are a man," at least
not with that same effect. Her best response would be to refute his belief by saying, "I
believe it because it is true." She cannot refute the statement that she thinks it because she
is a woman, nor can she accuse him of the same gender influenced incorrectness. The
effects of man's actions are either taken for granted as being from a man(and therefore
neutral), without it being specifically stated, or are said to be of a positive nature. If a
gender influence is pointed out in a woman's action, it can only be of a negative nature.
(p. xii)
     According to Beauvoir, man is "the one" and woman "the other." This is because,
"'Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.'"
(p.xiii) Woman is a nonessential creature because man is defined and differentiated with
reference to man. He is not defined in reference to woman because is the essential, the
Absolute, the One. She is simply the Other.
     She accepts this role as the other for several reasons. One is that this nature of
otherness appears to be absolute - "it lacks the contingent or incidental nature of historical
facts." (p.xv) If women could look back to a time when they were not inessential and see
when and how they came to be such, they would know that it was possible, even
precedented, that they not be the Other. A nature that was brought about by a certain set
of conditions could be abolished by some other set of conditions. There is not, however,
such a time for them to look back to. Because of this, "she herself fails to bring about this
change." (p.xvi)
     Beauvoir does however point other such instances where inessential beings were
able to overcome their role. She points out the cases of the proletariats in Russia,
American Negroes, and ghetto Jews. These peoples, however, all had something women
always lack: some sense of community. Women do not align with women. Black women
feel solidarity with black women, not with white women. Rich women congregate with
rich men, not poor women. This leads Beauvoir to say that, "The division between the
sexes is a biological fact, not even an event in human history"(p.xvi) and that, "women
cannot even dream of exterminating males. The bond that unites her to her oppressors is
not comparable to any other." (p. xvi) In all of this the author seems to be saying that
women are dependent on men, that "She is the Other in a totality of which two
components are necessary to one another."(p.xvii)
     A third reason offered by Beauvoir is that women are happy in their role - or at
least n ot so discontented to give up the positive aspects of being the Other because, "To
decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal-this would be for women to
renounce all of the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior
caste." (p. xvii) Because she associates with similar men, as opposed to other women, she
cannot easily leave the men and go with women of another race, class, or ethnicity. She
has chosen her role as the other over that of empowerment because they, "may fail to lay
claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feel s th
enecesarry bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often
very well pleased with her role."(p.xviii)
     One final reason that Beauvoir at least infers for women accepting their role as the
Other is because men advocate, if not mandate, that they do. In a quote from Poulain de la
Barre she says, "'Being men, those who have made and compiled the laws have favored
their own sex, and jurists have elevated these laws into principles,'"(p.xvii) because "the
males could not enjoy this privilege fully unless the believed it to be founded on the
absolute and eternal; they sought to make the fact of their supremacy into a right."(p.xvii)
     The text also speaks of the different situations of men and women. Beauvoir
writes, "And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning
to change."(p.xvii) But, here she is speaking of legal, political, and economic situations.
They are different because women have very few, when any, rights. Men of course have a
full range of privileges. She continues in this when she writes, "It is the difference in their
situations that is reflected in the difference men and women show in their conceptions of
love."(p.643) She has taken her statement about handicaps to a new level here by saying
that women have no choice but dependence on men because those handicaps translate into
a social inferiority. It is very clear when she writes,
     "There is no way out for her than to lose herself, body and soul, in him who is
     represented to her as the absolute, as the essential. Since she is anyway doomed
     to dependence, she will prefer to serve a god rather than obey tyrants...She
     chooses to desire her enslavement so ardently that it will seem to her the
     expression of her liberty."(p. 643)
Beauvoir then uses quotes from both Byron and Nietzsche to express the concept of
difference between men and women's conceptions of love. Each says that women feel that
love is the total and entire devotion of themselves to man - to the point of willingly
annihilating themselves. To men, on the other hand, "the beloved woman is only one value
among others; the wish to integrate her into their existence and not squander it entirely on
her." (p. 642)
     The mystic is Beauvoir's example of a woman in love, to the point of worshipping
man as god. It is a picture of how women love. She says that, "most women mystics are
not content with abandoning themselves passively to God: they apply themselves actively
to self-annihilation by the destruction of their flesh." (p.675) Of these mystics she says,
"All she can do is abandon herself to His fires without resistance." Because she has made
the choice to worship man, instead of simply obeying tyrants, her devotion to losing
herself in him makes him indistinguishable from god.

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