Page 522-523, Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’

Chapter Five of Part Two of The Second Sex is titled “The Married Woman”; at 86 pages it is the longest chapter in the 766 page long book.

This is one of 25 chapters, exploring what becomes of the woman who is married. 

Below is an excerpt of the last two pages of this chapter:

“It is commonplace to say that in modern households, and especially in the United States, the wife has reduced the husband to slavery. The fact is not new. Since the Greeks, males have complained of Xanthippe’s tyranny; what is true is that the wife intervenes in ares that previously were forbidden to her; I know, for example, of students’ wives who organize their schedules, their diet, they watch over their work; they cut out all distractions, and almost keep them under lock and key. It is also true that man is more defenseless than previously against this despotism; he recognizes his wife’s abstract rights, and he understands that she can concretize them only through him: it is at his own expense that he will compensate for the powerlessness and the sterility the wife is condemned to; to realize an apparent equality in their association, he has to give her more because he possesses more. But precisely because she receives, takes, and demands, she is the poorer. The dialect of the master and slave has most concrete application here: in oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Males are in chains by their very sovereignty; it is because they alone embody transcendence that the wife wants to steal it from them by taking over their projects and successes. And inversely, the tyranny wielded by the woman only manifests her dependence: she knows the success of the couple, its future, its happiness, and its justification, resides in the hands of the other; if she bitterly seeks to subjugate him to her will, it is because she is alienated in him. She makes a weapon of her weakness; but the fact is she is weak. Conjugal slavery is ordinary and irritating for the husband; but it is deeper for the wife; the wife who keeps her husband near her for hours out of boredom irritates him and weighs on him; but in the end, he can do without her more easily than she him; if he leaves her; it is she whose life will be ruined. The big difference is that for the wife, dependence is interiorized; she is a slave even when she conducts herself with apparent freedom, while the husband is essentially autonomous and enchained from the outside. If he has the impression he is the victim, it is because the burdens he bears are more obvious: the wife feeds on him like a parasite; but a parasite is not a triumphant master. In reality, just as biologically males and females are never victims of each other but all together of the species, the spouses together submit to the oppression of an institution they have not created. If it is said men oppress women, the husband reacts indignantly; he feels oppressed: he is; but in fact, it is the masculine code, the society developed by males and in their interest, that has defined the feminine condition in a form that is now for both sexes a source of distress.

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‍ ‍The situation has to be changed in their common interest by prohibiting marriage as a “career” for the woman. Men who declare themselves antifeminist with the excuse that “women are already annoying enough as it is” are not very logical:it is precisely because marriage makes them “praying mantises”, “bloodsuckers”, and “poison” that marriage has to be changed and, as a consequence, the feminine condition in general. Woman weighs so heavily on man because she is forbidden to rely on herself; he will free himself by freeing her, that is, by giving her something to do in this world.

There are young women who are already trying to win this positive freedom; but seldom do they persevere in their studies or their jobs for long: they know the interests of their work will most often be sacrificed to their husband’s career; their salary will only “help out” at home; they hesitate to commit themselves to undertakings that do not pull them away from conjugal enslavement. Those who do have a serious profession will not draw the same social advantages as men: lawyers’ wives, for example, are entitled to a pension on their husbands’ death; women lawyers are prohibited from paying a corresponding pension to their husbands in case of death. This shows that the woman who works cannot keep the couple at the same level as the man. There are women who find real independence in their profession; but many discover that work “outside” only represents another source of fatigue within the framework of marriage. Moreover and most often, the birth of a child forces them to confine themselves to their role of matron; it is still very difficult to reconcile work and motherhood.

(this next paragraph acts as a lead in for Chapter 6)

According to tradition, it is the child who should ensure the wife a concrete autonomy that dispenses her from devoting herself to any other aim. If she is not a complete individual as a wife, she becomes it as a mother: the child is her joy and justification. She reaches sexual and social self-realization through him; it is thus through him that the institution of marriage has meaning and reaches its aim. Let us examine this ultimate step in woman’s development.

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*My personal emphasis is in bold. The italics are Simone’s. My intention is to give the text tent poles to base analysis and understanding of the text around. I present this excerpt as a sort of " tip of the iceberg”; these points illustrate what is made of a woman who becomes a wife.

This excerpt is from the complete and unabridged version of The Second Sex, translated by Constance Borde and Shelia Malovany-Chevallier, 2011, published by Vintage Books.

Le Deuxième Sexe was first published in 1949.

It was first translated into English in 1953 by Howard M. Parshley, a zoology professor… His version was heavily abridged, leaving out large sections of de Beauvoir’s writing, even going so far to alter some of her philosophic terminology.