“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finitude. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.”
— Simone de Beauvoir
Biography
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. Initially raised Catholic, Beauvoir had a crisis of faith at the age of fourteen and would, for the rest of her life, remain an atheist.
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Introduction
The Second Sex argues that woman has historically been oppressed by man. More specifically, woman has been relegated to the status of object, or “Other,” and so lacks independence. Man, by contrast, is a “Self.” Beauvoir thought that the process of becoming a “Self” or “Subject” requires an element of “Other” as well as “Self,” and that, thus far, woman has been only “the incidental, the inessential, as opposed to the essential.”
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Featured Works
Featured Video
Interviewed on French television in her later years, Simone de Beauvoir discussed her ideas about feminism.