The Devil's Doorway
The Second Sex. By Simone de Beauvoir. (Cape. 50s.) MISS DE BEAUVOIR has written an enormous book about women and it is soon clear that she does not like them and does not 11c0 being a woman. But it is an interesting book, especially in what it reveals of the author's sentiments and methods. " In all civilisa* tions," she writes, " and still in our own day, women inspire 1[1'01 with horror." Covering a period from the Stone Age to present times, Miss de Beauvoir seeks support for this opinion—and finds it. Tertullian : " Woman, you are the devil's doorway ... . It /3 your fault that the Son of Man had to die." St. John of ChrysostoM: " Among all savage beasts none is found so harmful as woman. Kierkegaard : " What a misfortune to be a woman I And yet the misfortune, when one is a woman, is at bottom not to comprehend it is one." Certainly the Law and the Church have much to answer for in the oppression of women, and in non-Christian countries their lot has been even harder, and certainly men do seem, in their opinic na generally, to have been extremely neurotic about females. • But then how explain the happiness which men and women have found together, the creatures must feel affection for each other, must respect in each other a common humanity, or why should they nowadays, when each can manage very well alone, still get married ? Miss do Beauvoir does not explain this, she does not mention it. In these pages woman is seen through the eyes of misogynists, the odd-man- out who speaks in her favour being regarded as an anomaly. There is something simian about these haters, as the author points out, but if the higher apes are brutal in their approach to the female, they do not fear her. This fear, we are told, and indeed we knew it, rose originally from ignorance of physiology and anatomy. Why should ) it persist today when ignorance is no longer general ? Does it I persist ? The author's citations from present-day writers are int, ' esting. She disapproves of the unhappy Montherlant but evidently attaches some weight to his opinions, as also to those of D. 14. Lawrence, who was not at his happiest or most lucid in these matters. Among the few other English writers she quotes are, rather oddly. Miss Margaret Kennedy (The Constant Nymph) and Miss Rosamund Lehmann, that talented portrayer of feminine delinquency. She is however concerned chiefly with the situation, as it was and is, in France and to a lesser degree in the United States. This may account for the surprise English readers will feel, confronted with some of the author's pronouncements. Are little girls forbidden to climb trees ? Are their clothes, compared with their more tailored brothers', " restricting " ? Are they denied a scholar's education, forced early into tricks of sexual appeal ? Are so many of them deflowered by their grandfathers ? In fact, one must protest again, are there no kind mothers of little daughters, no good women at all ? Miss do Beauvoir's point of view, though always melancholy, is not always consistent. She seems to resent what Euripides called " the hard hating voices " and yet to be of one mind with the old Roman law which cited " the imbecility, the instability of the sex." Speaking of our own times she says that women doctors are always " stopping to see how far they have got," that women in executive positions are no good, whereas men in such positions always inspire confidence. She is particularly harsh about women writers. She tells us that they like to "play at working", that they seek salvation in literature to fill their empty [sic] days, that to please is a woman writer's first care and " as from infancy she has been taught trickery when learn- ing to please", she will practise tricks presenting as literature only a glorified picture of herself, begging people " to like her " and feeling she " should seek pardon " for venturing upon man's preserves. On these terms how on earth are we to account for, say, Miss Compton-Burnett or those hard-headed, hard-working ladies to whom we owe the best of our detective fiction, not to mention the travellers, economists and scholars, a,nd that steadiest of workmen, Miss Enid Blyton ? A great part of the book is devoted to clinical details of feminine physiology, for it is the author's opinion that herein lie women's '` essential weakness and inferiority." The details are repulsive and cannot be unfamiliar to adult readers. One might wonder, as horror piles on horror, pain being rendered more painful by contempt and denunciation from Church and State, that women should have survived at all, let alone have survived to be brave, happy, active and occupied. Allowing that the history of feminine oppression is dreadful, that producing children is painful, that some feminine functions are a nuisance (but so is shaving for men), it is still impossible to go all the way with Miss de Beauvoir, to see, for instance, in woman " the victim of the species," a creature during maturity " never in possession of herself," destined to physical squalor and spiritual absurdity. Such exaggerations sap one's confidence and there are too many of them. One is left with the regretful feeling—for the book has much useful if one-sided documentation in it and some humour as when the author speaks of an exemplary lion and lioness " sharing the duties of the den " (a mark of civilisation that should bring England top of the list)—that Miss de Beauvoir by and large lacks balance.
STEVIE SMITH
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