:骤, THE SECOND SEⅩ SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY H.M. PARSHLEY DEIRDRE BAIR VINTAGE BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC. NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION TO THE VINTAGE EDITION BOOK ONE: FACTS AND MYTHS Part I D he Data of Biology 3 I The Psychoanalytic Point of View iiI The Point of view of Historical Materialism Part II HISTOrY Introduction copyright 1989 by Deirdre Bait Iv The Nomads opyright renewed 1980 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy. VI Patriarchal Times and Classical Antiquity blished in the United States by arough the Middle Ages to Eighted ry vn Since the French Revolution: the Job and the Vote 109 953; and in France by Librairie Gallimard in two vo Deuxieme Sexe: L Les Faits et Les Mythes, I L Experience Vecue. Part III MYths Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data IX Dreams, Fears, Idols x The Myth of Woman in Five Authors ANT or the Bread of Disgu 2. D. H. LAWRENce or Phallic Pride Translation of Le deuxieme LaudE and the handmaid of the lord Woman. 1. Title 旧HQl208B352197 ISBN0679724516(pbk) 5. STENDHAL or the Romantic of Reality 6. Summary Manufactured in the United States of America XI Myth and Reality 253 3579C8642
especially in certain of her quotations from other writers. Practically all such modifications have been made with the author's express per- mission, passage by passage; and in no case do the changes involve anything in the nature of censorship+or any intentional alteration or omission of the authors ideas In conclusion I must express my gratitude to all who have helped me in one way or another. I am indebted in particular to Professors Vincent Guilloton and Newton Arvin of Smith College, to Sabine Bass of Mount Holyoke College, to the publisher, and in less degree to still others, all of whom, I trust, are aware of my appreciation. In BOOK I spite of such assistance, errors will no doubt be found in my work, H. M. PaRSHLEY Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts Facts and Myths
DESTINY: The Data of Biology PART DESTINY CHAPTER The Data of Biology W OMAN? Very simple, say the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an ovary; she is a female-this word is sufficient to define her. In the mouth of a man the epithet female has the sound of an insult, yet he: is not ashamed of his animal nature; on the contrary, he is proud if someone says of him: "He is a maler"The term"female"is derogatory not because it emphasizes woman's animality, but because it imprisons her in her sex; and if this sex seems to man to be con temptable and inimical even in harmless dumb animals, it is evidently cause of the uneasy hostility stirred up in him by woman. Never- eless he wishes to find in biology a justification for this sentiment. The word female brings up in his mind a saraband of vast, round ovum engulfs and castrates the agile spermatozoon; the ale praying mantis and the spider, satiated with love, crush and ur their partners; the bitch in heat runs through the alleys, trail- ing behind her a wake of depraved odors; the she-monkey presents her posterior immodestly and then steals away with hypocritical co- query; and- the most superb wild beasts-the tigress, the lioness, the
THE SECOND SEX: Facts and Myths DESTINY: The Data of Biology panther-bed down slavishly under the imperial embrace of the male als. On this hypothesis sexuality might well appear to be an indis- Females sluggish, eager, artful, stupid, callous, lustful, ferocious, pensable function in the most complex forms of life; only the lower abased--man projects them all at once upon woman. And the fact is organisms could multiply without sexuality, and even here vitality that she is a female. But if we are willing to stop thinking in plati- tudes, two questions are immediately posed: what does the female largely abandoned; research has proved that under suitable conditions denote in the animal kingdom? And what particular kind of female asexual multiplication can go on indefinitely without noticeable de generation, a fact that is especially striking in the bacteria and Proto- nd daring experiments in parthen Males and females are two types of individuals which are being per and in many specie entiated within a species for the function of reproduction; fundamentally unnecessary. Besides, if the value of be defined only correlatively. But first it must be noted that even the change were demonstrated, that value would seem to stand as a division of a species into two sexes is not always clear-cut. sheer, unexplained fact. Biology certainly demonstrates the existence In nature it is not universally manifested. To cak only of animals, of sexual differentiation, but from the point of view of any end to be it is well known that among the microscopic one-celled forms-in attained the science could not infer such differentiation from the usoria, amoebae, sporozoans, and the like--multiplication is funda structure of the cell, nor from the laws of cellular multiplication, nor mentally distinct from sexuality. Each cell divides and subdivides by from any basic phe nomen itself. In many-celled animals or metazoans reproduction may take The production of two types of gametes, the sperm and the egg, does not necessarily imply the existence of two distinct sexes; as a mat- into two or more parts which become new individuals--or by blasto- ter of fact, egg and sperm-two highly differentiated types of repro- genesis-that is, by buds that separate and form new individuals. The ductive cells-may both be produced by the same individual. This phenomena of budding observed in the fresh-water hydra and other occurs in normally hermaphroditic species, which are common among coelenterates, in sponges, worms, and tunicates, are well-known ex- plants and are also to be found among the lower animals, such as A amples. In cases of parthenogenesis the egg of the virgin female de- annelid worms and mollusks. In them reproduction may be accom- lops into an embryo without fertilization by the male, which thus lished through self-fertilization or, more commonly, cross-fertiliza. may play no role at all. In the honeybee copulation takes place, but tion. Here again certain biologists have attempted to account for the the eggs may or may not be fertilized at the time of laying. The un- existing state of affairs. Some hold that the of the gonad fertilized eggs undergo development and produce the drones(males) (ovaries and testes)in two distinct individuals represents an evolu- are absent during a series of gene s in which in the aphids males fertilized and produce females. Parthenogenesis has the separate condition as primitive, and believe that hermaphroditism been induced artificially in the sea urchin, the starfish, the frog, and represents a degenerate state. These notions regarding the superiority one system or the other imply the most debatable evolutionary two cells may fuse, forming what is called a zygote; and in the honey theorizing. All that we can say for sure is that these two modes of re- bee fertilization is necessary if the eggs are to produce females. In the production coexist in nature, that they both succeed in accomplishing aphids both males and females appear in the autumn, and the ferti the survival of the species concerned, and that the differentiation of lized eggs then produced are adapted for overwintering the gametes, like that of the organisms producing them, appears to Certain biologists in the past concluded from these facts that even a In modern evolutionary the in species capable of asexual propagation occasional fertilization: is tant since necessary to renew the vigor of the race-to accomplish"rejuvena-t nstant supply of new combinations for natural selection to act upo nd sexual differentiation often plays an important part in sexual reproduc tion-through the mixing of hereditary material from two individ