The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir — Read

It has sometimes been asserted that narcissism is the fundamental attitude of all women; 1 but overextending this notion destroys it as La Rochefoucauld destroyed the notion of egotism. In fact, narcissism is a well-defined process of alienation: the self is posited as an absolute end, and the subject escapes itself in it. There are many other-authentic or inauthentic-attitudes found in woman: we have already studied some of them. What is true is that circumstances invite woman more than man to turn toward self and to dedicate her love to herself.

All love demands the duality of a subject and an object. Woman is led to narcissism by two convergent paths. As subject, she is frustrated; as a little girl, she was deprived of this alter ego that the penis is for the boy; later, her aggressive sexuality remained unsatisfied. Of far greater importance is that she is forbidden virile activities. She is busy, but she does not do anything; in her functions as wife, mother, and housewife, she is not recognized in her singularity. Man's truth is in the houses he builds, the forests he clears, the patients he cures: not being able to accomplish herself in projects and aims, woman attempts to grasp herself in the immanence of her person. Parodying Sieyès's words, Marie Bashkirtseff wrote: "Who am I? Nothing. What would I like to be? All. " It is because they are nothing that many women fiercely limit their interests to their self alone, that their self becomes hypertrophied so as to be confounded with All. "I am my own heroine," continues Marie Bashkirtseff. A man who acts necessarily confronts himself. Inefficient and separated, woman can neither situate nor assess herself; she gives herself sovereign importance because no important object is accessible to her.