A 1975 television interview, transcript by Gabrielle Dubois
#3
Question:
You say an amazing thing in your memoirs: you says you discovered, at 40, when you were writing The Second Sex, a situation which was as plain as day once you became fully aware of it. How is it
that you, an intellectual, well-educated, with a prestigious teaching degree, had not previously perceived the female condition you describe?
Simone de Beauvoir:
Because in my own condition as an intellectual, I was lucky not to have to compete with men, since teaching is open to both men and women. I had classmates at the Sorbonne University and
elsewhere who treated me as an equal intellectually and so I didn’t feel it. And since I didn’t want to marry or have children, I didn’t lead the life of a housewife which is the most oppressive
for women, and so avoided the servitude of their female condition. Later, when I began to look around me, to think, I saw the truth about the female condition. And I discovered a lot of it in
writing The Second Sex.
Question:
Because it didn’t start out as a work aimed at changing the condition of women, but as an intellectual study…
Simone de Beauvoir:
It was a theoretical work much more than a militant work. And I'm very happy, by the way, that it could later be taken up by activists, because now this book is playing an activist role. But at
the time, it was not conceived at all like that.
Question:
So you discovered a situation which, as you say, seemed obvious. How do you explain the fact that in the last centuries, let's say in the last 150 years, when there were many women who were
educated, who were able to access the same level and cultural skills as men, that something resembling this evidence was not formulated, which is to say that women have a secondary role in
humanity?
Simone de Beauvoir:
Because it wasn’t in men’s interest to formulate it…
Question:
But women could have done it!
Simone de Beauvoir:
There were women who did protest, who did cry out, who did write, in England, for example, but it wasn’t a cry of revolt that was heard, that was taken up by others. I think it’s because, in
general, women are not feminist either. A few of them cried out in revolt, but their cries weren’t heard by other women. There are certainly many reasons to explain this rather passive, resigned
attitude which held them back, which produced complaints and resentment, but which rarely led to outright rebellion. To begin with, as I said earlier, there is the way women are shaped since
childhood. Those structures that are instilled in them are very hard to totally eradicate later on.
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Link
Towards n°4# Simone de Beauvoir
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