The Second Sex (3 page)

We have spent the past three years researching
Le deuxième sexe
and translating it into English—into
The Second Sex
. It has been a daunting task and a splendid learning experience during which this monumental work entered our personal lives and changed the way we see the world. Questions naturally arose about the act of translating itself, about ourselves and our roles, and about our responsibilities to both Simone de Beauvoir and her readers.

Translation has always been fraught with such questions, and different times have produced different conceptions of translating. Perhaps this is why, while great works of art seldom age, translations do. The job of the translator is not to simplify or readapt the text for a modern or foreign audience but to find the true voice of the original work, as it was written for its time and with its original intent. Seeking signification in another’s words transports the translator into the mind of the writer. When the text is an opus like
The Second Sex
, whose impact on society was so decisive, the task of bringing into English the closest version possible of Simone de Beauvoir’s voice, expression, and mind is greater still.

This is not the first translation of
Le deuxième sexe
into English, but it is the first complete one. H. M. Parshley translated it in 1953, but he abridged and edited passages and simplified some of the complex philosophical language. We have translated
Le deuxième sexe
as it was written, unabridged and unsimplified, maintaining Beauvoir’s philosophical language. The long and dense paragraphs that were changed in the 1953 translation to conform to more traditional styles of punctuation—or even eliminated—have now been translated as she wrote them, all within the confines of English. Long paragraphs (sometimes going on for pages) are a stylistic aspect of her writing that is essential, integral to the development of her arguments. Cutting her sentences, cutting her paragraphs, and using a more traditional and conventional punctuation do not render Simone de
Beauvoir’s voice. Beauvoir’s style expresses her reasoning. Her prose has its own consistent grammar, and that grammar follows a logic.

We did not modernize the language Beauvoir used and had access to in 1949. This decision precluded the use of the word “gender,” for example, as applied today. We also stayed close to Beauvoir’s complicated syntax and punctuation as well as to certain usages of language that to us felt a bit awkward at first. One of the difficulties was her extensive use of the semicolon, a punctuation mark that has suffered setbacks over the past decades in English and French and has somewhat fallen into disuse.

Nor did we modernize structures such as “If the subject attempts to assert himself, the other is nonetheless necessary for him.” Today we would say, “If the subject attempts to assert her or himself …” There are examples where the word “individual” clearly refers to a woman, but Beauvoir, because of French rules of grammar, uses the masculine pronoun. We therefore do the same in English.

The reader will see some inconsistent punctuation and style, most evident in quotations. Indeed, while we were tempted to standardize it, we carried Beauvoir’s style and formatting into English as much as possible. In addition, we used the same chapter headings and numbers that she did in the original two-volume Gallimard edition. We also made the decision to keep close to Beauvoir’s tense usage, most noticeably regarding the French use of the present tense for the historical past.

One particularly complex and compelling issue was how to translate
la femme
. In
Le deuxième sexe
, the term has at least two meanings: “the woman” and “woman.” At times it can also mean “women,” depending on the context. “Woman” in English used alone without an article captures woman as an institution, a concept, femininity as determined and defined by society, culture, history. Thus in a French sentence such as
Le problème de la femme a toujours été un problème d’hommes
, we have used “woman” without an article: “The problem of woman has always been a problem of men.”

Beauvoir occasionally—but rarely—uses
femme
without an article to signify woman as determined by society as just described. In such cases, of course, we do the same. The famous sentence,
On ne naît pas femme: on le devient
, reads, in our translation: “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” The original translation by H. M. Parshley read, “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.”

Another notable change we made was in the translation of
la jeune fille
. This is the title of an important chapter in Volume II dealing with the period in a female’s life between childhood and adulthood. While it is often translated as “the young girl” (by Parshley and other translators of French works), we think it clearly means “girl.”

We have included all of Beauvoir’s footnotes, and we have added notes of our own when we felt an explanation was necessary. Among other things, they indicate errors in Beauvoir’s text and discrepancies such as erroneous dates. We corrected misspellings of names without noting them. Beauvoir sometimes puts into quotes passages that she is partially or completely paraphrasing. We generally left them that way. The reader will notice that titles of the French books she cites are given in French, followed by their translation in English. The translation is in italics if it is in a published English-language edition; it is in roman if it is our translation. We supply the sources of the English translations of the authors Beauvoir cites at the end of the book.

We did not, however, facilitate the reading by explaining arcane references or difficult philosophical language. As an example of the former, in Part Three of Volume II, “Justifications,” there is a reference to Cécile Sorel breaking the glass of a picture frame holding a caricature of her by an artist named Bib. The reference might have been as obscure in 1949 as it is today.

Our notes do not make for an annotated version of the translation, yet we understand the value such a guide would have for both the teacher and the individual reading it on their own. We hope one can be written now that this more precise translation exists.

These are but a few of the issues we dealt with. We had instructive discussions with generous experts about these points and listened to many (sometimes contradictory) opinions; but in the end, the final decisions as to how to treat the translation were ours.

It is generally agreed that one of the most serious absences in the first translation was Simone de Beauvoir the philosopher. Much work has been done on reclaiming, valorizing, and expanding upon her role as philosopher since the 1953 publication, thanks to the scholarship of Margaret Simons, Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, Michèle Le Doeuff, Elizabeth Fallaize, Emily Grosholz, Sonia Kruks, and Ingrid Galster, to mention only a few. We were keenly aware of the need to put the philosopher back into her text. To transpose her philosophical style and voice into English was the most crucial task we faced.

The first English-language translation did not always recognize the philosophical terminology in
The Second Sex
. Take the crucial word “authentic,” meaning “to be in good faith.” As Toril Moi points out, Parshley changed it into “real, genuine, and true.” The distinctive existentialist term
pour-soi
, usually translated as “for-itself” (
pour-soi
referring to human consciousness), became “her true nature in itself.” Thus, Parshley’s “being-in-itself” (
en-soi
, lacking human consciousness) is a reversal of
Simone de Beauvoir’s meaning. Margaret Simons and Toril Moi have unearthed and brought to light many other examples, such as the use of “alienation,” “alterity,” “subject,” and the verb “to posit,” which are by now well documented. One particularly striking example is the title of Volume II;
“L’expérience vécue”
(“Lived Experience”) was translated as “Woman’s Life Today,” weakening the philosophical tenor of the French.

The Second Sex
is a philosophical treatise and one of the most important books of the twentieth century, upon which much of the modern feminist movement was built. Beauvoir the philosopher is present right from the start of the book, building on the ideas of Hegel, Marx, Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, and others. She developed, shared, and appropriated these concepts alongside her equally brilliant contemporaries Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Lévi-Strauss, who were redefining philosophy to fit the times. Before it was published, Beauvoir read Lévi-Strauss’s
Elementary Structures of Kinship
and learned from and used those ideas in
The Second Sex
. Although the ideas and concepts are challenging, the book was immediately accepted by a general readership. Our goal in this translation has been to conform to the same ideal in English: to say what Simone de Beauvoir said as close to the way she said it, in a text both readable and challenging.

Throughout our work, we were given the most generous help from the many experts we consulted. In every area Simone de Beauvoir delved into, whether in psychoanalysis, biology, anthropology, or philosophy, they helped us to produce the most authentic English version of her work. We thank them profusely.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the indomitable Anne-Solange Noble of Editions Gallimard, who for years believed in this retranslation project. Anne-Solange begged, badgered, and persuaded (“I shall never surrender!”) until she found the editor who was willing to take on the monumental task. That exceptional person is Ellah Allfrey of Jonathan Cape, a patient and superb editor who astutely worked with us step-by-step for three years, strongly supported by LuAnn Walther of Knopf. Anne-Solange introduced us to Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Simone de Beauvoir’s adopted daughter, and our relationship has been a very special one ever since that first lunch on the rue du Bac, where we four toasted the moment with
“Vive le point-virgule!
” (“Long live the semicolon!”)

The feminist scholar Ann Shteir, our Douglass College friend and classmate, and now professor of humanities and women’s studies at York University, Toronto, Canada, was always available to provide source material and to solve problematic issues, often many times a week. She, like we, felt that no task was too great to repay the debt women—and the world—owe
to Simone de Beauvoir. Michael Mosher and Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz were extremely helpful with philosophical language and concepts. Gabrielle Spiegel and her generous colleagues took on the esoteric research required for the “History” chapters, notably the passages on the French Middle Ages, on which Gaby is a leading expert. James Lawler, the distinguished professor, merits our heartfelt gratitude for retranslating, specially for this edition, the Paul Claudel extracts with such elegance and grace. Our thanks to Beverley Bie Brahic for her translations of Francis Ponge, Michel Leiris, and Cécile Sauvage; Kenneth Haltman for Gaston Bachelard; Raymond MacKenzie for François Mauriac and others; Zack Rogow and Mary Ann Caws for Breton; Gillian Spraggs for Renée Vivien. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky allowed us the special privilege of using parts of their magnificent translation of
War and Peace
before the edition appeared in 2008; their views on translation were an inspiration to us. Donald Fanger helped us with Sophia Tolstoy’s diaries.

Many writers, translators, researchers, friends, colleagues, and strangers who became friends unfailingly contributed their expertise: Eliane Lecarme-Tabone, Mireille Perche, Claire Brisset, Mathilde Ferrer, David Tepfer, Marie-Victoire Louis, Virginia Larner, Nina de Voogd Fuller, Stephanie Baumann, Jane Couchman, Catherine Legault, Robert Lerner, Richard Sieburth, Sandra Bermann, Gérard Bonal, Lia Poorvu, Leila May-Landy, Karen Offen, Sybil Pollet, Janet Bodner, our copy editors, Beth Humphries and Ingrid Sterner, and our indexer, Cohen Carruth, Inc.

Our husbands, Bill Chevallier and Dominique Borde, were among our staunchest and most reliable partners, living out the difficult passages with us, helping us overcome obstacles (and exhaustion), and also sharing the joy and elation of the life-changing discoveries the text held for us.

Very special thanks go to our expert readers. Our official reader, Mary Beth Mader, authority par excellence in French and the philosophical language of Simone de Beauvoir, enriched our text with her insights and corrections; Margaret Simons, showing no end to her boundless generosity, “tested” our texts on her students and came back to us with meticulous perceptions and corrections; Marilyn Yalom, Susan Suleiman, and Elizabeth Fallaize, with all of the discernment for which they are renowned, explored chapters with a fine-tooth comb and gave us a heightened understanding of
The Second Sex
for which we will ever be grateful.

And now it is for English readers to discover, learn, and live Simone de Beauvoir’s message of freedom and independence.

I hesitated a long time before writing a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially for women; and it is not new. Enough ink has flowed over the quarrel about feminism; it is now almost over: let’s not talk about it anymore. Yet it is still being talked about. And the volumes of idiocies churned out over this past century do not seem to have clarified the problem. Besides, is there a problem? And what is it? Are there even women? True, the theory of the eternal feminine still has its followers; they whisper, “Even in Russia,
women
are still very much women”; but other well-informed people—and also at times those same ones—lament, “Woman is losing herself, woman is lost.” It is hard to know any longer if women still exist, if they will always exist, if there should be women at all, what place they hold in this world, what place they should hold. “Where are the women?” asked a short-lived magazine recently.
¹
But first, what is a woman? “
Tota mulier in utero:
she is a womb,” some say. Yet speaking of certain women, the experts proclaim, “They are not women,” even though they have a uterus like the others. Everyone agrees there are females in the human species; today, as in the past, they make up about half of humanity; and yet we are told that “femininity is in jeopardy”; we are urged, “Be women, stay women, become women.” So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as femininity. Is femininity secreted by the ovaries? Is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven? Is a frilly petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women zealously strive to embody it, the model has never been patented. It is typically described in vague and shimmering terms borrowed from a clairvoyant’s vocabulary. In Saint Thomas’s time it was an essence defined with as much certainty as the sedative
quality of a poppy. But conceptualism has lost ground: biological and social sciences no longer believe there are immutably determined entities that define given characteristics like those of the woman, the Jew, or the black; science considers characteristics as secondary reactions to a
situation
. If there is no such thing today as femininity, it is because there never was. Does the word “woman,” then, have no content? It is what advocates of Enlightenment philosophy, rationalism, or nominalism vigorously assert: women are, among human beings, merely those who are arbitrarily designated by the word “woman”; American women in particular are inclined to think that woman as such no longer exists. If some backward individual still takes herself for a woman, her friends advise her to undergo psychoanalysis to get rid of this obsession. Referring to a book—a very irritating one at that—
Modern Woman: The Lost Sex
, Dorothy Parker wrote: “I cannot be fair about books that treat women as women. My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, whoever we are, should be considered as human beings.” But nominalism is a doctrine that falls a bit short; and it is easy for antifeminists to show that women
are
not men. Certainly woman like man is a human being; but such an assertion is abstract; the fact is that every concrete human being is always uniquely situated. To reject the notions of the eternal feminine, the black soul, or the Jewish character is not to deny that there are today Jews, blacks, or women: this denial is not a liberation for those concerned but an inauthentic flight. Clearly, no woman can claim without bad faith to be situated beyond her sex. A few years ago, a well-known woman writer refused to have her portrait appear in a series of photographs devoted specifically to women writers. She wanted to be included in the men’s category; but to get this privilege, she used her husband’s influence. Women who assert they are men still claim masculine consideration and respect. I also remember a young Trotskyite standing on a platform during a stormy meeting, about to come to blows in spite of her obvious fragility. She was denying her feminine frailty; but it was for the love of a militant man she wanted to be equal to. The defiant position that American women occupy proves they are haunted by the feeling of their own femininity. And the truth is that anyone can clearly see that humanity is split into two categories of individuals with manifestly different clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, movements, interests, and occupations; these differences are perhaps superficial; perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that for the moment they exist in a strikingly obvious way.