The Second Sex Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Simone de Beauvoir Page | Language: English | ISBN:
030727778X | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Review
"The effect of the new translation, which should be applauded, is to make Beauvoir more herself. . . still lively, still apropos." --Slate
“This is the edition Beauvoir herself would have wanted, one so true to the original that we can hear her voice in the text. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s new translation is long overdue, and it is a triumph.” —Margaret Simons, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita, Southern Illinois University
“[Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s translation] can be read with confidence, enlightenment, and pleasure. . . . A significant step forward and a remarkable achievement. So if you’re one of those people who always meant to read The Second Sex—why not now?” —Women’s Review of Books
“From Eve’s apple to Virginia Woolf’s room of her own, Beauvoir’s treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge.”
—Vogue
"[A] long-awaited achievement." –"Book Bench," newyorker.com
About the Author
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the
agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at lycées at Marseille and Rouen from 1931 to 1937, and in Paris from 1938 to 1943. After the war, she emerged as one of the leaders of the existentialist movement, working with Sartre on
Les Temps Modernes. The author of several books, including
The Mandarins (1957), which was awarded the Prix Goncourt, Beauvoir was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. She died in 1986.
Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, both American, are longtime residents of France and former teachers at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.
Judith Thurman, author of
Isak Dinesen and
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, is a staff writer at
The New Yorker.
See all Editorial Reviews
Direct download links available for Download The Second Sex
- Paperback: 832 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (May 3, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 030727778X
- ISBN-13: 978-0307277787
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir argues in her book Le deuxième sexe (1949:13) that gender is a social construct: "On ne na?t pas femme: on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique, économique ne définit la figure que rev?t au sein de la société la femelle humaine; c'est l'ensemble de la civilisation qui élabore ce produit intermédiaire entre le m?le et le castrat qu'on qualifie de féminin. ?[One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, pschological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine] [v].
De Beauvoir underscores the role played by prejudice in the oppression of women in contemporary societies. She points out that the key to understanding how girls develop as opposed to boys is to be found not in any "myth of the second sex" but in the manner of their upbringing in a society geared toward male supremacy. In other words, women consider themselves inferior because men regard them as such. Beauvoir offers her views on the subtle ways in which matrimony has often been made to work to the detriment of women. She perceives marriage as a male contraption to perpetuate gender inequality when she notes:? Le mariage s'est toujours présenté de manière radicalement différente pour l'homme et pour la femme.
Those who read The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir are really reading one of two versions. In 1953, H. M. Parshley translated from the French for an American audience. He did a perfectly wretched job as his mastery of French was pedantic at best. Much of the essence of de Beauvoir's original thought was either mistranslated or simply excised. The publishing company Alfred Knopf insisted that there was nothing wrong with Parshley's version and that, despite De Beauvoir's pleading for a competent translation, there was no need for a revision. It was not until 2009 that a fresh re-translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany Chevalier made available to a long awaiting reading audience the howl of gender pain that Simone de Beauvoir had unleashed after a lifetime of suffering under an oppressive patriarchal hegemony.
Once one reads The Second Sex (hopefully the latter revision), then one can trace the historical causes of a male bashing of women that is rooted in a myriad of discrete sectors of gender interaction: patrimony, menstruation, pregnancy, abortion, reproductive rights, and economic disequilibrium just to name a few. The methodology that de Beauvoir uses is the broad historical and sociological sweep, one that begins with what she terms "Facts and Myths." Here she examines a triangular vortex of biology, history and myth, all of which intersect and coalesce over three millennia to produce the current sad state of depressed feminism against which she railed following the Second World War. In the book's second volume "Lived Experiences," de Beauvoir outlines the genesis of a patriarchal imprinting on young and impressionable feminine minds that leads them down a path that encourages them to accept the status quo of women forcefully designated as The Other.
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