When I read The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir seemed to unroll my life experience like a map of the world, pointing out continents and oceans, showing how routes across this world of my life were somehow predictable. She showed me centuries of history and myth that made this inevitable. She gave me words to describe my experience, and a new way to own my experience.
The little pink book is a thin slice of The Second Sex, containing the Introduction, Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, and the Conclusion. Over several years now, it has kept me coming back, repeatedly pummelled my mind, made me sit up and take notice.
Chapter 14 holds the real challenge for me as a painter and writer. Her words about women and their creative work hurt. I wish they were less accurate. Here’s just one example out of nearly 50 pages:
extract from p63, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, 1949.
I am brought up abruptly by the truth and relevance of her words. They make me want to throw prudence to the wind and to try to emerge beyond the given world. I’d even like to claim a bit of the madness in talent called genius.
This kind of energising effect points to how we can respond to her words. Take this for example:
“She may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign. ”
One way I respond to her statements about what holds back women is to feel how they apply to my own art practice/life, then turn them around, and affirm the reversal:
i stand up in front of the world, unique and sovereign.
I have found reversed statements like this both bracing and encouraging. They have given me courage on days when being an artist feels so hard, such a waste of effort and precious time.
i throw prudence to the wind and
try to emerge beyond the given world
I can even try:
i have this madness in talent called genius
and if that sounds too much, I can still ‘try on’ the statement or ‘hold it against me to see how it might fit’.
This OWN-TURN-OWN practice of working with de Beauvoir’s words has been very formative for me. It has given me energy to continue on bad days, and to place my work in a larger perspective. It moves beyond a reprimand into spine-strengthening encouragement.
Next time: Themes and metaphors in Chapter 14, all the words