The Second Sex (84 page)
Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
It is a crisis that pushes the young girl from childhood to adolescence; an even more acute crisis thrusts her into adult life. The anxieties inherent in all passages from one condition to another are superimposed on those that a somewhat brusque sexual initiation provokes in a woman. Nietzsche writes:
And then to be hurled, as by a gruesome lightning bolt, into reality and knowledge, by marriage … To catch love and shame in a contradiction and to be forced to experience at the same time delight, surrender, duty, pity, terror, and who knows what else, in the face of the unexpected neighborliness of god and beast!… Thus a psychic knot has been tied that may have no equal.
*
The excitement that surrounded the traditional “honeymoon” was meant in part to hide this confusion: thrown outside her everyday world for a few weeks, all connections with society being temporarily broken, the young woman was no longer situated in space, in time, in reality.
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But sooner or later she has to take her place there again; and she finds herself in her new home, but never without apprehension. Her ties with her father’s home are much stronger than her ties with the young man’s. Tearing oneself away from one’s family is a definitive weaning: this is when she experiences the anguish of abandon and the giddiness of freedom. The break is more or less painful, depending on the case; if she has already broken the
ties connecting her to her father, brothers and sisters, and above all her mother, she can leave painlessly; if, still dominated by them, she can practically remain in their protection, she will be less affected by her change in condition; but ordinarily, even if she wanted to escape from the paternal household, she feels disconcerted when she is separated from the little society in which she was integrated, cut off from her past, her child’s universe with its familiar principles and unquestioned values. Only an ardent and full erotic life could make her bathe again in the peace of immanence; but usually she is at first more upset than fulfilled; that sexual initiation is more or less successful simply adds to her confusion. The day after her wedding finds many of the same reactions she had on her first menstruation: she often experiences disgust at this supreme revelation of her femininity, horror at the idea that this experience will be renewed. She also feels the bitter disappointment of the day after; once she began menstruating, the girl sadly realized she was not an adult; deflowered, now the young woman is an adult, and the last step is taken: Now what? This worrying disappointment is moreover linked as much to marriage itself as it is to defloration: a woman who had already “known” her fiancé, or who had “known” other men, but for whom marriage represents the full accession to adult life will often have the same reaction. Living the beginning of an enterprise is exalting; but nothing is more depressing than discovering a destiny over which one no longer has a hold. From this definitive, immutable background, freedom emerges with the most intolerable gratuitousness. Previously the girl, sheltered by her parents’ authority, made use of her freedom in revolt and hope; she used it to refuse and go beyond a condition in which she nevertheless found security; her own transcendence toward marriage took place from within the warmth of the family; now she
is
married, there is no
other
future in front of her. The doors of home are closed around her: of all the earth, this will be her portion. She knows exactly what tasks lie ahead of her: the same as her mother’s. Day after day, the same rites will be repeated. When she was a girl, her hands were empty: in hope, in dreams, she possessed everything. Now she has acquired a share of the world and she thinks in anguish: there is nothing more than this, forever. Forever this husband, this home. She has nothing more to expect, nothing more to want. However, she is afraid of her new responsibilities. Even if her husband is older and has authority, the fact that she has sexual relations with him removes some of his prestige: he cannot replace a father, and even less a mother, and he cannot give her her freedom. In the solitude of the new home, tied to a man who is more or less a stranger, no longer child but wife, and destined to become mother in turn, she feels numb; definitively
removed from her mother’s breast, lost in the middle of a world to which no aim calls her, abandoned in an icy present, she discovers the boredom and blandness of pure facticity. This is the distress so stunningly expressed in the young countess Tolstoy’s diary;
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she enthusiastically gave her hand to the great writer she admired; after the passionate embraces she submitted to on the wooden balcony at Yasnaya Polyana, she found herself disgusted by carnal love, far from her family, cut off from her past, at the side of a man to whom she had been engaged for one week, someone who was seventeen years her senior, with a totally foreign past and interests; everything seems empty, icy to her; her life is no more than an eternal sleep. Her diary account of the first years of her marriage must be quoted.
On September 23, 1862, Sophia gets married and leaves her family in the evening:
A difficult and painful feeling gripped my throat and held me tight. I then felt that the time had come to leave forever my family and all those I loved deeply and with whom I had always lived … The farewells began and were ghastly … Now the last minutes. I had intentionally reserved the farewells to my mother till the end … When I pulled myself from her embrace and without turning around I went to take my place in the car, she uttered a heart-rending cry I have never forgotten all my life. Autumn rain did not cease to fall … Huddled in my corner, overwhelmed with fatigue and sorrow, I let my tears flow. Leon Nikolaivitch seemed very surprised, even discontent … When we left the city, I felt in the depths a sentiment of fear … The darkness oppressed me. We barely said anything to each other until the first stop, Birioulev, if I am not mistaken. I remember that Leon Nikolaivitch was very tender and attentive to my every need. At Birioulev, we were given the rooms said to be for the tsar, big rooms with furniture upholstered in red rep that was not very welcoming. We were brought the samovar. Cuddled up in a corner of the couch, I kept silent as a condemned person. “Well!” said Leon Nikolaivitch to me, “if you did the honors.” I obeyed and served the tea. I was upset and could not free myself from a kind of fear. I did not dare address Leon Nikolaivitch in the familiar form and avoided calling him by his name. For a long time I continued to use the formal form.
Twenty-four hours later, they arrive at Yasnaya Polyana. She resumes her diary again on October 8. She feels anxious. She suffers from the fact that her husband has a past:
I always dreamt of the man I would love as a completely whole, new
pure
, person … in these childish dreams, which I still find hard to give up … When he kisses me I am always thinking, “I am not the first woman he has loved.”
The following day she notes:
I feel downcast all the same. I had such a depressing dream last night, and it is weighing on me, although I do not remember it in detail. I thought of Maman today and grew dreadfully sad … I seem to be asleep all the time and unable to wake up … Something is weighing on me. I keep thinking that at any moment I might die. It is so strange to be thinking such things now that I have a husband. I can hear him in there sleeping. I am frightened of being on my own. He will not let me go into his room, which makes me very sad. All physical things disgust him.
October 11: I am terribly, terribly sad, and withdrawing further and further into myself. My husband is ill and out of sorts and doesn’t love me. I expected this, yet I could never have imagined it would be so terrible. Why do people always think I am so happy? What no one seems to realize is that I cannot create happiness, either for him or for myself. Before when I was feeling miserable I would ask myself, “What is the use of living when you make others unhappy and yourself wretched?” This thought keeps recurring to me now, and I am terrified. He grows colder and colder every day, while I, on the contrary, love him more and more … I keep thinking of my own family and how happy my life was with them; now, my God, it breaks my heart to think that nobody loves me. Darling Mother, Tanya—what wonderful people they were, why did I ever leave them?… it gnaws at my conscience … Lyovochka is a wonderful man … Now I have lost everything I once possessed, all my energy for work, life, and household tasks has been wasted. Now I want only to sit in silence all day, doing nothing but think bitter thoughts. I wanted to do some work, but could not; … I long to play the piano but it is so awkward in this place … He suggested today that I stay at home while he went off to Nikolskoe. I should have agreed and set him free from my presence, but I simply could not … Poor
man, he is always looking for something to divert him and take him away from me. What is the point of living?
November 13: It is true, I cannot find anything to occupy me. He is fortunate because he is talented and clever. I am neither … It is not difficult to find work, there is plenty to do, but first you have to enjoy such petty household tasks as breeding hens, tinkling on the piano, reading a lot of fourth-rate books and precious good ones, and pickling cucumbers. I am asleep now, since nothing brings me any excitement or joy—neither the trip to Moscow nor the thought of the baby. I wish I could take some remedy to refresh me and wake me up …
It is terrible to be alone. I am not used to it. There was so much life and love at home, and it’s so lifeless here without him. He is almost always on his own … He … finds pleasure not in the company of those close to him, as I do, but in his work … he never had a family.
November 23: … Of course I am idle at present, but I am not so by nature; I simply have not discovered anything I could do … Sometimes I long to break free of his rather oppressive influence and stop worrying about him, but I cannot. I find his influence oppressive because I have begun thinking his thoughts and seeing with his eyes, trying to become like him, and losing myself. And I have changed too, which makes it even harder for me.
April 1: I have a very great misfortune: I have no inner resources to draw on … Lyova has his work and the estate to think about while I have nothing … What am I good for? I would like to
do
more, something
real
. At this wonderful time of year, I always used to long for things, aspire to things, dream about God knows what. But I no longer need anything, no longer have those foolish aspirations, for I know instinctively that I have all I need now and there is nothing left to strive for … Everything seems stupid now and I get irritable.
April 20:
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… Lyova ignores me more and more. The physical side of love is very important for him. This is terrible, for me it is quite the opposite.
It is clear, during these first six months, that the young woman is suffering from her separation from her family, from solitude, and from the
definitive turn her destiny has taken; she detests her physical relations with her husband, and she is bored. This is the same ennui Colette’s mother feels to the point of tears after the first marriage her brothers imposed on her:
So she left the cosy Belgian house, the cellar-kitchen that smelled of gas, warm bread and coffee; she left her piano, her violin, the big Salvator Rosa she had inherited from her father, the tobacco jar and the fine long-stemmed clay pipes, the coke braziers, the books that lay open and the crumpled newspapers, and as a new bride entered the house with its flight of steps, isolated by the harsh winter of the forest lands all around … Here she found, to her surprise, a white and gold living room on the ground floor, but a first floor with barely even rough-cast walls, as abandoned as a loft … the bedrooms were icy-cold and prompted no thoughts of either love or sweet sleep … Sido, who longed for friends and an innocent and cheerful social life, found on her estate only servants, cunning farmers … She filled the big house with flowers, had the dark kitchen whitewashed, oversaw in person the preparation of the Flemish dishes, kneaded cakes with raisins and looked forward to having her first child. The savage would smile at her between two outings and then set off once more … When she had exhausted her tasty recipes, her patience and her furniture polish, Sido—who had grown thin with loneliness—started to cry.
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In
Lettres à Françoise mariée
(Letters to Françoise, Married), Marcel Prévost describes the young woman’s dismay upon her return from her honeymoon:
She thinks of her mother’s apartment with its Napoleon III and MacMahon furniture, its plush velvet, its wardrobes in black plum wood, everything she judged so old-fashioned, so ridiculous … In one instant all of that is evoked in her memory as a real haven, a true
nest
, the nest where she was watched over with disinterested tenderness, sheltered from all storms and danger. This apartment with its new-carpet smell, its unadorned windows, the chairs in disarray, its whole air of improvisation and haste, no; it is not a nest. It is only
the place of the nest that has to be built … she suddenly felt horribly sad, as if she had been abandoned in a desert.
