Simone de Beauvoir — "The most important task for women is to free themselves from the chains of tradi…"
The most important task for women is to free themselves from the chains of tradition and men's expectations.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The future is open, and it is up to us to create it."
"She was not born to be a wife, nor a mother, nor anything but herself."
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
"The most marvelous thing about love is that it makes the future possible."
"I wish that every human life might be an acceptable poem."
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.