Simone de Beauvoir — "She has been taught that she is a plaything, and she has learned to play."
She has been taught that she is a plaything, and she has learned to play.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society must be changed so that women can earn their living and children are cared for by appropriate services."
"The only way to be truly free is to accept the responsibility of one's own freedom."
"If you want to be happy, you must be free."
"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
"The root of all evil is the belief that one is separate from the rest of humanity."
About Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
French existentialist philosopher whose The Second Sex (1949) is the foundational text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre (lifetime partner and existentialist co-founder) and Albert Camus (existentialist contemporary in Paris). For an intellectual contrast, see Camille Paglia, American cultural critic and Sexual Personae author — Paglia argues for biological-essentialist roots of gender that Beauvoir's social-construction view — 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' — explicitly rejects. The two are the cleanest constructed-vs-essentialist poles in feminist theory.
The standard scholarly entry points to Simone de Beauvoir's work: Toril Moi (Duke, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor) — Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1994); Margaret A. Simons (Southern Illinois University, Emerita) — Beauvoir and The Second Sex (1999); Kate Kirkpatrick (Oxford, Regent's Park College) — Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (2019). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Simone de Beauvoir.