The Second Sex
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Simone de Beauvoir’s *The Second Sex*, originally published in French in 1949, is an examination of how women have been treated both in contemporary society and across history. Beauvoir, a French existentialist philosopher, researched and wrote the book over roughly fourteen months between 1946 and 1949. It appeared in two volumes: *Facts and Myths* and *Lived Experience*, with some chapters first published in the journal *Les Temps modernes*. One of Beauvoir’s most famous works, it is also among her most controversial—the Vatican even banned it. The book is considered a foundational text of feminist philosophy and is often cited as the spark that ignited second-wave feminism.
In the first volume, Beauvoir opens by asking, “What is woman?” She argues that man is treated as the default human, while woman is defined as the “Other.” Humanity, she writes, is male, and man defines woman not in her own right but in relation to him. She traces the relationship of ovum to sperm across various species—fish, insects, mammals—leading to humans, and describes how women’s reproductive role subordinates them to the species. Comparing male and female physiology, she concludes that values cannot be based on biology; instead, biological facts must be understood within ontological, economic, social, and physiological contexts.
Beauvoir rejects the views of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Friedrich Engels. She argues that Engels, in *The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State*, claimed that the invention of bronze and the rise of private property caused a “great historical defeat of the female sex,” but finds his claims unsupported. According to Beauvoir, two factors explain changes in women’s condition: participation in production and freedom from reproductive slavery. Motherhood, she writes, left women “riveted to her body” like an animal, enabling men to dominate both women and nature. She traces men’s gradual domination from a statue of a female Great Goddess found in Susa to the ancient Greek view that “men succeed in the world by transcendence, but immanence is the lot of women.” Men oppress women, she argues, when they seek to preserve the family and patrimony. Comparing ancient Greece and Rome, she notes that in Greece—except in Sparta, where women had more freedom—women were treated almost like slaves. In Rome, men remained masters, and women had more rights but only empty freedom, still discriminated against because of their sex.
Discussing Christianity, Beauvoir contends that, aside from the German tradition, the church and its clergy have helped subordinate women. She also examines prostitution and the shifts brought by courtly love around the twelfth century. From the early fifteenth century, she describes “great Italian ladies and courtesans” and singles out Teresa of Ávila as a woman who successfully raised herself to a man’s level. Through the nineteenth century, women’s legal status remained unchanged, though individuals like Marguerite de Navarre excelled through writing and acting. Some men aided women’s status through their works. Beauvoir criticizes the Napoleonic Code, faults Auguste Comte and Honoré de Balzac, and labels Pierre-Joseph Proudhon an anti-feminist. The Industrial Revolution gave women an escape from home, but they were paid little. She traces the growth of trade unions and women’s participation, examines the spread of birth control and the history of abortion, and recounts the history of women’s suffrage. Figures like Rosa Luxemburg and Marie Curie, she writes, “brilliantly demonstrate that it is not women’s inferiority that has determined their historical insignificance: It is their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.”
Beauvoir then presents the “everlasting disappointment” of women, largely from a male heterosexual perspective. She covers menstruation, virginity, female sexuality, copulation, marriage, motherhood, and prostitution. To illustrate man’s “horror of feminine fertility,” she quotes the *British Medical Journal* of 1878, where a member wrote, “It is an indisputable fact that meat goes bad when touched by menstruating women.” She quotes poetry by André Breton, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Michel Leiris, Paul Verlaine, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Valéry, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and William Shakespeare, along with other novels, philosophers, and films. She notes that sexual division persists in homosexuality.
Examining the work of Henry de Montherlant, D. H. Lawrence, Paul Claudel, André Breton, and Stendhal, Beauvoir writes that “these examples show that the great collective myths are reflected in each singular writer.” Feminine devotion, she says, is demanded as a duty by Montherlant and Lawrence, while Claudel, Breton, and Stendhal admire it as a generous choice. For each, the ideal woman embodies the Other in a way that reveals the self to the man. Montherlant seeks pure animality; Lawrence demands that she summarize the female gender in her femininity; Claudel calls her a soul-sister; Breton trusts the woman-child; Stendhal looks for an equal. Beauvoir concludes that woman is the “privileged Other,” defined by how the One chooses to posit himself, and that “the only earthly destiny reserved to the woman equal, child-woman, soul sister, woman-sex, and female animal is always man.” She adds that the absence or insignificance of the female element in a body of work is symptomatic.
- original_language
- French
- author
- Simone de Beauvoir
- field
- Feminist philosophy, existentialism
- nationality
- French
- known_for
- Groundbreaking work of feminist philosophy; starting inspiration point of second-wave feminism
Lore & Background
Published in 1949, *The Second Sex* is a foundational work of feminist philosophy by French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. The book is divided into two volumes: *Facts and Myths* and *Lived Experience*. Beauvoir researched and wrote the text over approximately 14 months, between 1946 and 1949, and portions first appeared in the journal *Les Temps modernes*. The work is one of Beauvoir’s best-known and most controversial, having been banned by the Vatican. It is widely regarded as a groundbreaking text that inspired second-wave feminism. In the first volume, Beauvoir examines the question “What is woman?” and argues that humanity is defined as male, with woman relegated to the role of the “Other.” She critiques biological determinism, comparing the reproductive roles of various species, and concludes that values cannot be derived from physiology alone. She rejects the views of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Friedrich Engels, finding Engels’ claims about the origins of female subordination unsupported. Beauvoir identifies two key factors in women’s evolution: participation in production and freedom from reproductive slavery. She traces women’s historical subordination through ancient Greece, Rome, and Christianity, and discusses the impact of the Industrial Revolution, birth control, abortion, and women’s suffrage. The second volume explores female sexuality, menstruation, virginity, marriage, motherhood, and prostitution, drawing on poetry, novels, and philosophy. Beauvoir analyzes the works of writers such as Henry de Montherlant, D. H. Lawrence, and Stendhal, arguing that each presents an ideal woman as the “Other” defined by man. She concludes that women’s historical insignificance, not inherent inferiority, has determined their subordinate status.
Reader's Guide
The Second Sex is significant as a foundational text of second-wave feminism. In Volume One, Beauvoir asks 'What is woman?' and argues that man is considered the default while woman is considered the 'Other.' She examines biological, historical, and literary evidence, rejecting the views of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Friedrich Engels. Beauvoir traces women's condition through history, from ancient Greece and Rome through Christianity and the Industrial Revolution, noting that participation in production and freedom from reproductive slavery are key factors in women's evolution. Volume Two presents a child's life from birth, contrasting a girl's upbringing with a boy's, and discusses female sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and abortion. Beauvoir argues that a girl's 'feminine' destiny is imposed by society, not innate. The book's legacy is as a controversial yet groundbreaking work that inspired second-wave feminism, though its claims about biology, history, and psychology remain subjects of debate.
Did You Know?
- The Second Sex was banned by the Vatican.
- Some chapters first appeared in the journal Les Temps modernes.
- Beauvoir argues that man is considered the default, while woman is considered the 'Other.'
Composition and Structure
Rather than releasing it as a single monolithic text, Beauvoir divided the finished work into two distinct volumes: Facts and Myths, and Lived Experience. This structural choice mirrors the book's dual ambition—to survey the historical and biological record while also probing the subjective, day-to-day reality of womanhood. Before the full volumes reached readers, select chapters were circulated through the journal Les Temps modernes, giving the ideas a preliminary public life and allowing Beauvoir to gauge and refine her arguments within the broader intellectual discourse of the era. The book emerged from a French existentialist philosophical tradition, yet its subject matter—systematic analysis of women's social position across all of history—distinguished it sharply from much of the contemporary philosophical output. The result was a work that functioned simultaneously as a philosophical treatise, a historical survey, and a cultural critique, all compressed into a single, ambitious project.
The Philosophy of the Other
At the heart of The Second Sex lies a deceptively simple question—What is woman?—that Beauvoir uses to dismantle centuries of unexamined assumption. Her central claim is that humanity has been coded as male, with woman positioned not as an autonomous subject but as the Other, defined exclusively in relation to man. She traces this dynamic from the biological level, examining the relationship between ovum and sperm across fish, insects, and mammals, to the social and economic structures that have kept women in a state of immanence while men pursued transcendence. Crucially, Beauvoir insists that physiological differences cannot serve as the foundation for value judgments; biology must always be read within ontological, economic, and social context. She identifies two levers for changing women's condition: meaningful participation in production and liberation from what she calls reproductive slavery. Motherhood, in her analysis, pins woman to her body in a way that enables male domination over both woman and nature. This framework rejects the deterministic explanations offered by Freud, Adler, and even Engels, whose theory of private property as the root of female subordination she finds historically unsupported.
A History Written Against the Grain
What distinguishes The Second Sex in scope is its refusal to treat women's history as a footnote to a male narrative. Beauvoir moves from the female Great Goddess statue found at Susa through the constrained lives of women in classical Athens (noting Sparta as a rare exception where restraints were absent), the more formal but still hollow freedoms of Roman women, and the subordination reinforced by Christian clergy and doctrine. She examines the twelfth-century shift brought by courtly love, the fifteenth-century Italian courtesans, and the Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila, whom she credits with elevating herself to a man's level. The nineteenth century receives particular scrutiny: Beauvoir criticizes the Napoleonic Code, dismisses the anti-feminist positions of Proudhon, Comte, and Balzac, and documents how the Industrial Revolution offered women a partial escape from the home while paying them pittance wages. She tracks the slow growth of trade unions, the spread of birth control methods, the contested history of abortion, and the long struggle for suffrage. Throughout, she marshals the work of writers like Montherlant, Lawrence, Claudel, Breton, and Stendhal to show how collective myths about feminine devotion, animality, and soul-sisterhood are projected onto individual women by male authors.
Controversy and Lasting Influence
Few works in the twentieth century have provoked as intense a reaction as The Second Sex. The Vatican banned the book, a move that underscored how directly Beauvoir's analysis threatened established religious and social hierarchies. Yet the very controversy cemented the book's reputation as a landmark of feminist philosophy. Scholars and activists in subsequent decades have pointed to it as the starting inspiration for second-wave feminism, the broad movement that would push for a fundamental rethinking of gender roles in Western societies. Beauvoir's insistence that woman is defined by man as the Other rather than as an autonomous subject, and that the facts of biology must be viewed in light of social and economic context, gave a generation of thinkers a shared analytical vocabulary. The book's reach extended well beyond academic philosophy; it entered popular consciousness, sparked public debate, and became a reference point for political and cultural campaigns. Even critics who challenged specific arguments acknowledged that no one could discuss the status of women without first engaging with the framework Beauvoir had laid out. In that sense, The Second Sex did not merely join the conversation about gender—it redefined the terms of the conversation itself.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Second Sex?
It is a 1949 philosophical work by Simone de Beauvoir that examines how women have been cast as 'the Other' throughout human history and in modern society. It is widely regarded as a foundational text of feminist philosophy.
Who wrote The Second Sex and what tradition does it belong to?
French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir authored the book, originally in French. It sits at the crossroads of existentialism and feminist philosophy, drawing on both traditions to analyze gender.
What is The Second Sex's central argument?
Beauvoir contends that womanhood is not a fixed biological fate but a social construction imposed by patriarchal structures. She traces how this dynamic has operated across all of human history up to the present day.
Why is The Second Sex considered so important?
It is credited as the intellectual spark that helped launch second-wave feminism. Its analysis of gender as a social rather than natural category reshaped philosophical and political discourse on women's rights.
In what language was The Second Sex originally published?
The book was first written and published in French. It later gained a massive international following through translations into many other languages.
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