Simone de Beauvoir — "What is an adult? A child blown up by age."
What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility."
"The more she is in love, the more she loses herself; the more he is in love, the more he finds himself."
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth was undoubtedly at the bottom of my search for an autonomous existence."
"I am going to die, and I don't know what to do with myself."
"For a woman to be a full human being, she must be entirely autonomous, entirely responsible for her own existence."
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.