Review: The Second Sex. By Simone de Beauvoir.

Citation

Darroch F (2008) Review: The Second Sex. By Simone de Beauvoir.. Literature and Theology, 22 (3), pp. 368-371. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frn030

Abstract
First paragraph: ‘WHAT IS a Woman?’ This is the question asked by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949 in what has become a classic feminist text, The Second Sex. It is this question, driven by Beauvoir's insight, passion and wit that has initiated decades of musing by feminist theorists on the relationship between the biological female body and gender. Returning to this text 61 years after it was first published, and on the 100th anniversary of Beauvoir's birth, is both a liberating and a sobering experience: liberating in the sense of celebrating the potential of ‘woman’; sobering when we ask the further question of whether the possibilities of equality have been realised in the years since Beauvoir said ‘the free woman is just being born’ (p. 723).

Notes
Output Type: Book Review

People

Dr Fiona Darroch

Lecturer, Literature and Languages - Division