The Second Sex: Complete and Unabridged Edition

Hardcover
from $0.00

Author: Simone de Beauvoir

ISBN-10: 0307265560

ISBN-13: 9780307265562

Category: Feminism

Search in google:

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, and brilliantly introduced by Judith Thurman, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to explore the power of sexuality.Sixty years after its initial publication, The Second Sex is still as eye-opening and pertinent as ever. This triumphant and genuinely revolutionary book began as an exceptional woman’s attempt to find out who and what she was. Drawing on extensive interviews with women of every age and station of life, masterfully synthesizing research about women’s bodies and psyches as well as their historic and economic roles, The Second Sex is an encyclopedic and cogently argued document about inequality and enforced “otherness.”This long-awaited new translation pays particular attention to the existentialist terms and French nuances that may have been misconstrued in the first English edition; restores Beauvoir’s phrasing, rhythms, and tone; and reinstates significant portions of the “Myths” and “History” chapters that were originally cut due to length, including accounts of more than seventy female figures. A vital and life-changing work that has dramatically revised the way women talk and think about themselves, Beauvoir’s magisterial treatise continues to provoke and inspire. The Barnes & Noble Review Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the most important feminist book ever written, and yet English readers have never known precisely what it says. The 1953 English translation of the book by H. M. Parshley, which cemented its international reputation, was an abridged version, with cuts made at the insistence of its American publisher, Alfred Knopf. As feminists often note derisively, Parshley was a zoologist who lacked grounding in the existentialist philosophy that gave de Beauvoir much of her vocabulary. But until now, his translation has been the standard one, and no complete English version of The Second Sex has existed. So the arrival of Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier's new, unedited edition, which comes out just over sixty years after the book's first appearance in France, is an important literary event.

Introduction to the Vintage EditionBook One: Facts and MythsPart One: Destiny1. The Data of Biology2. The Psychoanalytic Point of View3. The Point of View of Historical MaterialismPart Two: History4. The Nomads5. Early Tillers of the Soil6. Patriarchal Times and Classical Antiquity7. Through the Middle Ages to 18th Century France8. Since the French Revolution: the Job and the VotePart Three: Myths9. Dreams, Fears, Idols10. The Myth of Woman in Five Authors      a. Montherlant or the Bread of Disgust      b. D.H. Lawrence or Phallic Pride      c. Claudel and the Handmaid of the Lord      d. Breton or Poetry      e. Stendhal or the Romantic of Reality      f. Summary11. Myth and RealityBook Two: Woman's Life TodayPart Four: The Formative Years12. Childhood13. The Young Girl14. Sexual Initiation15. The LesbianPart Five: Situation16. The Married Woman17. The Mother18. Social Life19. Prostitutes and Hetairas20. From Maturity to Old Age21. Woman's Situation and CharacterPart Six: Justifications22. The Narcissist23. The Woman in Love24. The MysticPart Seven: Toward Liberation25. The Independent WomanConclusion