Simone de beauvoir against the power of phallocentrism.

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir has been considered as one of the first few feminists many others follow, but reading through The Second Sex leaves one to wonder why: the way she writes is incongruent with the ideas she seems to portray and the language she uses betrays this. Beauvoir has tried to answer 'the woman question' in The Second Sex, but in her attempt to do so, she loses her ground and ironically reveals her conflicting notions as well as the influence which the patriarchy had on her instead. In exploring the ways in which she reveals her conflicting notions (e.g. essentialist in comparison to existentialist ideas) which coexist throughout the book, as well as through a brief illustration of her life, Beauvoir proves to be thoroughly influenced by the patriarchal culture, and unable to escape what she has defined as “Woman’s lot”.