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Le deuxieme sexe (The Second Sex) was originally published as a two-volume book in France in
1949. These works were very quickly published in America as The Second Sex, due to the quick
translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche KnopI, wiIe oI publisher AlIred A.
KnopI. Because Parshley had only a basic Iamiliarity with the French language, and a minimal
understanding oI philosophy (he was a proIessor oI biology at Smith College), much oI
Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message.
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Nevertheless, to this day, KnopI has prevented the introduction oI a more accurate retranslation
oI Beauvoir's work, having declined all proposals despite the eIIorts oI existentialist scholars.
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In her own way, Beauvoir anticipated the sexually charged Ieminism oI Erica Jong and
Germaine Greer. Algren, no example oI restraint, was outraged by the Irank way Beauvoir later
described her American sexual experiences in The Mandarins (dedicated to Algren, on whom the
character Lewis Brogan was based) and in her autobiographies. He vented his outrage when
reviewing American translations oI her work. Much material bearing on this episode in
Beauvoir's liIe, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only aIter her
death.
In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" oI The Second Sex, Beauvoir argued that men had
made women the "Other" in society by putting a Ialse aura oI "mystery" around them. She
argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to
help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the
hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that this also happened on the basis oI
other categories oI identity, such as race, class, and religion. But she said that it was nowhere
more true than with sex in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize
society into a patriarchy.
The Second Sex, published in French, sets out a Ieminist existentialism which prescribes a moral
revolution. As an existentialist, Beauvoir accepted Sartre's precept that existence precedes
essence; hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis Iocuses on the Hegelian
concept oI the Other. It is the (social) construction oI Woman as the quintessential Other that
Beauvoir identiIies as Iundamental to women's oppression. The capitalized 'O' in "other indicates
wholly other.
Beauvoir argued that women have historically been considered deviant, abnormal. She said that
even Mary WollstonecraIt considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire.
Beauvoir said that this attitude limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they
were a deviation Irom the normal, and were always outsiders attempting to emulate "normality".
She believed that Ior Ieminism to move Iorward, this assumption must be set aside.
Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable oI choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate
themselves, moving beyond the 'immanence' to which they were previously resigned and
reaching 'transcendence', a position in which one takes responsibility Ior oneselI and the world,
where one chooses one's Ireedom.