Reading Order
The Second Sex Reading Order
The Second Sex (1949) by Simone de Beauvoir is the founding text of second-wave feminism and one of the most ambitious philosophical works of the twentieth century — a two-volume investigation of the situation of women under patriarchy, beginning with the famous assertion that 'one is not born, but becomes, a woman.' Beauvoir uses existentialist philosophy (the analysis of transcendence and immanence, the categories of subject and Other, the concept of bad faith) to argue that the situation of women is not determined by biology or nature but by a social system that has historically defined women as the Other — as the object of male consciousness rather than as subjects in their own right. The first volume ('Facts and Myths') investigates the biological, historical, and mythological arguments for female inferiority and refutes them; the second volume ('Lived Experience') investigates the actual lived experience of women under patriarchy — from childhood through marriage, motherhood, and old age — and argues for the possibility of women's liberation through the conditions of authentic existentialist choice.
Where to start
The Second Sex (1949) — the complete work in the H.M. Parshley or the 2010 Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier translation (the latter is more complete). The Borde and Malovany-Chevallier translation restores material that Parshley cut.
Complete The Second Sex Book List
- 1Buy
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir·1949·The complete work — both volumes. One of the most important philosophical texts of the twentieth century; published in France in 1949 and causing an immediate scandal; Parshley's English translation (1952) omitted substantial material, but the 2010 Borde/Malovany-Chevallier translation is now definitive - 2Buy
She Came to Stay
Simone de Beauvoir·1943·Beauvoir's companion first novel — Françoise, Pierre, and Xavière. The companion investigation of the same philosophical problem in fictional form: the relationship between female consciousness and the structures that define it as Other - 3Buy
The Mandarins
Simone de Beauvoir·1954·Beauvoir's companion novel — the Parisian intellectual left after the Liberation. The companion investigation of the same subject in fictional form: how intellectual women navigate the postwar French world in which their male colleagues define the terms - 4Buy
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Simone de Beauvoir·1958·Beauvoir's companion autobiography — her childhood and early development. The companion investigation of how a woman becomes a subject: Beauvoir's own account of her escape from the bourgeois Catholic world that defined her as the future-wife and future-mother that The Second Sex argues she was not born to be - 5Buy
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre·1943·Sartre's companion philosophical masterwork. The companion philosophical text: The Second Sex applies Sartrean existentialism (transcendence and immanence, the subject and the Other, bad faith) to the situation of women, but in doing so also reveals the limits of Sartre's analysis by showing that the philosophical categories he developed are already gendered in ways he did not acknowledge - 6Buy
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft·1792·Wollstonecraft's companion — the founding text of feminist philosophy. The companion as the predecessor: Wollstonecraft argues against the same 'nature' arguments for female inferiority that Beauvoir refutes in The Second Sex's first volume, and both are organized around the argument that women's apparent incapacity is the product of their education, not their nature - 7Buy
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf·1929·Woolf's companion essay — the material conditions for women's intellectual freedom. The companion investigation of the same subject in a different register: where Beauvoir uses philosophical analysis, Woolf uses the essay-as-fiction; but both are organized around the same question: what would women's intellectual life look like if they had the same material and social conditions as men? - 8Buy
The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan·1963·Friedan's companion — the American feminist text that The Second Sex made possible. The companion as the American application of Beauvoir's analysis: where Beauvoir provides the philosophical framework, Friedan provides the sociological investigation of how the mystique of femininity operates in postwar American suburbia
The Second Sex — Frequently Asked Questions
What does 'one is not born, but becomes, a woman' mean?
'One is not born, but becomes, a woman' is the opening sentence of the second volume of The Second Sex and the most famous sentence Beauvoir wrote. It means that the category 'woman' is not a biological given — not determined by the fact of having a female body — but a social construction: a role, a set of behaviors, expectations, and prohibitions that are imposed on people with female bodies by the social system they are born into. The sentence is a philosophical argument against biological determinism: being female (a biological fact) is not the same as being a woman (a social category). The implication is that the social category can be changed: if 'woman' is not natural but socially constructed, then the conditions of being a woman can be transformed. The sentence became the founding claim of second-wave feminism and is still the most concise statement of the social constructionist position in gender theory.
Is The Second Sex still relevant?
The Second Sex is still one of the most important philosophical texts in feminist theory, though its relationship to contemporary feminism is complicated. Its existentialist framework (transcendence and immanence, the subject and the Other) has been criticized by subsequent feminist philosophers for taking male experience as the norm of human existence and for treating women's situation as a deviation from it; its treatment of race and class is limited by its focus on white bourgeois women; and its position on transgender women has been contested in contemporary gender theory. But its foundational claim — that women's situation is not determined by nature but by social systems that define them as Other — remains the basis of feminist analysis; its investigation of lived female experience in the second volume is still unmatched in its comprehensiveness; and its philosophical ambition (the most thorough application of existentialist philosophy to the question of gender) remains extraordinary.
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