The Second Sex [Kindle Edition] Author: Simone De Beauvoir Constance Borde Sheila Malovany-Chevallier | Language: English | ISBN:
B007357B0W | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was sixty years ago, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.
Books with free ebook downloads available Download The Second Sex [Kindle Edition]
- File Size: 1869 KB
- Print Length: 836 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: B009BV8FKQ
- Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (February 15, 2012)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B007357B0W
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,271 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #16
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Existentialism - #39
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Feminist Theory - #61
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies
- #16
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Existentialism - #39
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Feminist Theory - #61
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies
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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