Instructions: After reading Simone de Beauvoir’s “Dependent Women in Love”write an essay answering the below questions.  Make sure that you support your responses by offering paraphrased corroboration from the text or examples from your own life. Your response should be no longer than 3 typewritten pages and should be submitted through the course website. Your essay should be a cohesive composition with complete paragraphs and sentences (not numerically organized answers), with proper spelling and punctuation, and satisfying all of the homework formatting requirements.

1.Explain why de Beauvoir believes that women are dependent but men are independent.  Make sure that your essay includes examples from her article that illustrate this view.

2.What problems does de Beauvoir identify with treating a man as a “fallen god”?  Why does she characterize women as “jailers”?

3.What does de Beauvoir think genuine love requires?  She remarks that one day it will be possible for women to love in her strength?  What does she mean by this comment?  Do you think this shift from the “second sex” is possible?  Why or why not?

(1) I have to observe, here at the onset of writing about Mme. Beauvoir's essay, that this was a very difficult read, almost physically painful to get through. Hopefully I will be able to be honest with myself and discern why that was the case. But the first impression is one of disgust that women would subjugate themselves to such a degree. I know some history, I know the struggles of women; I've read The Feminine Mystique and other feminist manifestos‒ so why does this particular work offend me so deeply?

I think it is the tone Beauvoir sets; portraying women as these historically helpless creatures that hang all their hopes and dreams on the love of a man. While there may be some elements of truth in her observations, I consider them too universally applied, creating a stereotype. Male-dominated societies helped create and encourage this mindset of a woman's role‒ where she puts him at the center of her personal universe, and like a satellite revolves around him and depends on his energy. I do understand that Beauvoir is only reporting these views, rather than endorsing them. That eases the pain a little.

The reason that Beauvoir believes women to be so dependent: a quite stark division in the autonomy that males and females have enjoyed historically. She writes (of men): “The individual who is a subject, who is himself... endeavors to extend his grasp on the world: he is ambitious, he acts”. She then contrasts woman as “an inessential creature... incapable of sensing the absolute at the heart of her subjectivity... There is no other way out for her than to lose herself, body and soul, in him who is represented to her as the absolute, as the essential.” Even given the era (1949) of this writing, and her reputation and influence as a pioneer feminist‒ it's hard to imagine a modern woman not laughing, or perhaps cursing, as she reads such. Maybe this explains my distaste for the essay; the fact that it seems so dated and apologetic through a modern lens. I don't think most modern women feel inessential.

(2) To deem a man as a “fallen god” is to deify him, and thereby create impossibly demanding expectations regarding his character and actions. Beauvoir states it somewhat poetically with “In virtue of that glory with which she has haloed the brow of her beloved, the woman in love forbids him any weakness; she is disappointed and vexed if he does not live up to the image she has put in his place.” It's a recipe for strife; no man can live up to some idyllic and romanticized, super-human perception of him carried by his lover or wife. It puts too much pressure on him; she in turn will be perpetually let down and disillusioned by such unrealistic notions of love.

In what I consider one of her most astute observations, Beauvoir explains how women, by surrendering themselves completely to a man, ironically become both imprisoned and the “jailer” or warden of that same confinement. Here is her analysis at its most concise: “Having become identified with another, she wants to make up for her loss; she must take possession of that other person who has captured her. She gives herself to him entirely; but he must be completely available to receive this gift.”

Selflessness becomes selfishness; submission becomes dominance. A woman makes the man she loves into a “god”, but then expects to be His only subject.

(3)   Genuine love, for Beauvoir, would require equality between the sexes; something she obviously did not believe existed in her time. As long as societies, and women themselves, perpetuate their totally subordinate role, no true love, which should be a mutual admiration and compromise, can exist. It instead becomes a dependency and a delusion that is doomed to fail. This is the “strength” Beauvoir's remark refers to‒ women leading as independent lives as men do, and allowing those lives to intersect as equal partners. Not only do I personally believe that this shift is possible, but that it has occurred to a considerable degree since the writing of this essay. There is still inequality; certainly yet examples of unrealistic relationships. They are no longer, however, quite so pervasive. Progress has been made...