Reading Order
Le Deuxième Sexe Reading Order
Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex, 1949) by Simone de Beauvoir is the foundational text of second-wave feminism and the most important feminist philosophical work of the twentieth century — a 900-page analysis of the condition of women that opens with the question 'What is a woman?' and proceeds to examine the answer through mythology, history, biology, psychoanalysis, literature, and the sociology of contemporary French life. Beauvoir's famous formulation 'On ne naît pas femme: on le devient' ('One is not born a woman: one becomes one') established the distinction between biological sex and social gender that would become fundamental to feminist theory for the next fifty years. The book was immediately controversial — the Vatican placed it on the Index — and immediately influential; Beauvoir sent copies to Richard Wright and Nelson Algren and received letters from women all over the world describing how it had changed their understanding of their lives. The Parshley translation (1953) was standard in English for decades but cut approximately one-fifth of the text; the Borde and Malovany-Chevallier translation (2010) is now the preferred complete version.
Where to start
Read the Introduction first — Beauvoir's statement of the problem of the 'second sex' and her famous formulation about becoming a woman. Then read the section 'Myths' (Part Two) before the historical and biological sections — it is the most literary and most immediately accessible part. The final section on women's lived experience ('Lived Experience,' Part Four) is the most directly applicable to contemporary life and can be read alongside or after the theoretical sections.
Complete Le Deuxième Sexe Book List
- 1Buy
Le Deuxième Sexe
Simone de Beauvoir·1949·Start with the Introduction and Part II (Myths) — the philosophical foundation; then the lived experience section - 2Buy
Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée
Simone de Beauvoir·1958·Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter — the autobiography of Beauvoir's own formation as a woman; the personal complement to the theoretical Second Sex - 3Buy
Les Mandarins
Simone de Beauvoir·1954·The Prix Goncourt novel — the fictional account of the postwar Parisian intellectual world; read after Le Deuxième Sexe for the creative complement - 4Buy
La Force de l'âge
Simone de Beauvoir·1960·The second volume of autobiography — the years with Sartre, the war, the Occupation; the fullest autobiographical account of Beauvoir's intellectual and personal development - 5Buy
Une mort très douce
Simone de Beauvoir·1964·A Very Easy Death — the account of her mother's dying; the most moving of Beauvoir's books; read last
Le Deuxième Sexe — Frequently Asked Questions
What does 'On ne naît pas femme: on le devient' mean?
The sentence — 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' — is the most quoted sentence in twentieth-century feminist theory and Beauvoir's fundamental claim. It means that what we call 'woman' — the social roles, behaviors, desires, limitations, and characteristics attributed to women — is not a biological given but a social and historical construction. Women are not born with feminine characteristics; they are socialized, shaped, constrained, and rewarded until they embody the role that society has constructed as 'woman.' This insight was the foundation for the later distinction between biological sex (a given of the body) and social gender (a cultural construction) that became fundamental to feminist theory from the 1970s onward.
What is the 'Other' in Le Deuxième Sexe?
Beauvoir uses Hegel's concept of the Other — developed through Sartre's existentialism — to describe the fundamental structure of women's oppression. In Hegel's dialectic, consciousness defines itself by constituting an Other against which it defines itself as Subject; the Subject is the essential, the Other the inessential. Beauvoir argues that in human history, men have constituted themselves as the Subject and humanity's universal representative, and have constituted women as the Other — as the inessential, the relative, the second. The Second Sex is the sex that is always seen in relation to the first; the woman is not a human being but a man's Other. This analysis is the theoretical core of the book.
Why was Le Deuxième Sexe controversial in 1949?
The controversy was immediate and violent. The Vatican placed it on the Index of Forbidden Books. François Mauriac, the Nobel laureate, wrote an indignant letter to Beauvoir's publisher. Male writers — including some on the left — accused Beauvoir of obscenity (partly because of the frank discussion of sexuality) and of betraying French women by claiming they were oppressed. The philosopher Emmanuel Mounier called it 'a 900-page insult to French women.' Beauvoir received hate mail accusing her of being unsatisfied, frigid, or unable to please a man. The violence of the reaction confirmed, for many readers, the accuracy of the analysis.
What is the relationship between Le Deuxième Sexe and existentialism?
Beauvoir was an existentialist philosopher before she wrote Le Deuxième Sexe, and the theoretical framework of the book is existentialist: the distinction between the Subject and the Other, the analysis of bad faith (women internalizing their own oppression), the concept of freedom and authenticity. But Beauvoir also departs from Sartre's existentialism: Sartre's account of freedom is individual and treats social conditions as largely irrelevant to the fundamental freedom of consciousness; Beauvoir's analysis of women's condition shows that social, economic, and historical conditions genuinely constrain freedom, that freedom is not simply a matter of choosing one's attitude toward one's situation. Le Deuxième Sexe is partly a critique of the limitations of existentialist freedom from within the existentialist framework.
Which English translation should I read?
The H.M. Parshley translation (1953, Cape/Knopf) was the standard English version for sixty years but is now recognized as seriously inadequate: Parshley cut approximately one-fifth of the original text (mostly the historical and philosophical sections), translated many philosophical terms incorrectly, and rendered Beauvoir's style less elegant than the original. The Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier translation (2010, Knopf/Jonathan Cape) is the first complete English translation and is now the standard version. It restores all the cut passages, translates the philosophical vocabulary accurately (using 'One is not born, but rather becomes, woman' rather than Parshley's 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'), and is much closer to Beauvoir's actual meaning.
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