Judson M.R. Redpath

Chapter 5: 173-188

Chapter 5, "Existentialist Feminism," focuses on an examination of The Second Sex, by Simone De Beauvoir, who was perhaps the most prominent existentialist feminists of her time. However, before Tong delves into de Beauvoir's perspective, Tong gives the background of existentialism by examining Being and Nothingness, the work of de Beauvoir's partner, Jean-Paul Sartre. While analyzing Sartre's text, Tong defines some of the parameters of existentialism.

In her analysis, Tong uproots Sartre's understanding of the psyche, in which "Sartre made [a] distinction between the observer and the observed by dividing being into two parts: being-for-itself (pour-soi) and being-in-itself (en-soi). Being-in-itself refers to the repetitive, material existence…; being-for-itself refers to the moving, conscious existence…" (Tong 174). Basically, Sartre defined two basis of being. One is the physical realm we exist in, in which we can touch and feel and observe. The other is the realm of the psyche, in which we are able to consciously observe and think. Furthermore, Sartre further analyzes these states of being, by the relations we make with other beings. He observed when we make relations we turn others into objects to insure our "pour-soi's" existence.

According to de Beauvoir's analysis of "man" and "woman," historically "men named 'man' the self and 'woman' the other" (Tong 179). This became the institutional basis of women's oppression, in which women found themselves internalizing the ideological structure of the patriarchal system that placed women as "other." According to de Beauvoir's analysis, Freud's analysis of "repressed or sublimated sexual impulses" is too simplistic for explaining civilization, and Marx's ideology of deconstructing capitalism and replacing it with a socialist society would not deconstruct sexist agendas. She delves deeper into the roles of women within society and the internalizing of "other." First, she examines the "wife," in which marriage is an institution of slavery that "transforms freely given feelings into mandatory duties." Second, she examines the "mother," in which at first the child brings liberation from other, through the woman placing the same institution of "other" upon the child. However, this is only an illusion, because the child grows up and develops its own being. Next, she analyzes the "career woman." This institution of being, she argues, is narcissistic, in which a "woman" is supposed to keep up her "womanly" appearance, while fulfilling her duties at work. Next, she examines the "prostitute," in which the prostitute uses her status as "other," which correlates to her body, to institute her "self." In her final argument, de Beauvoir claims that each role a woman plays, or participates in, is not of her own making, but constructed within the patriarchal institution. So, no matter what a woman does to liberate herself from "otherness," she is confined within a system of patriarchy.