Simone de Beauvoir — "Woman is not a fixed reality, but a becoming."
Woman is not a fixed reality, but a becoming.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity."
"The problem with love is that it is a choice, not a feeling."
"It is in the knowledge of the human heart that we find the true measure of man."
"The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength."
"Every man has a right to be free, and every woman has a right to be free."
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.