The Second Sex (66 page)

The richness and strength of their nature and fortunate circumstances have enabled some women to continue in their adult lives their passionate projects from adolescence. But these are exceptions. George Eliot had Maggie Tulliver and Margaret Kennedy had Tessa die for good reason. It was a bitter destiny that the Brontë sisters had. The girl is touching because she rises up against the world, weak and alone; but the world is too powerful; she persists in refusing it, she is broken. Belle de Zuylen, who overwhelmed all of Europe with her mind’s originality and caustic power, frightened all her suitors: her refusal to make concessions condemned her to long years of celibacy that weighed on her since she declared that the expression “virgin and martyr” was a pleonasm. This stubbornness is rare. In the immense majority of cases, the girl is aware that the fight is much too unequal, and she ends up yielding. “You will all die at fifteen,” writes Diderot to Sophie Volland. When the fight has only been—as happens most often—a symbolic revolt, defeat is certain. Demanding in dreams, full of hope but passive, the girl makes adults smile with pity; they doom her to resignation. And in fact, the rebellious and eccentric girl that we left is found two years later, calmer, ready to consent to her woman’s life. This is the future Colette predicted for Vinca; this is how the heroines of Mauriac’s early novels appear. The adolescent crisis is a type of “work” similar to what Dr. Lagache calls “the work of mourning.” The girl buries her childhood slowly—this autonomous and imperious individual she has been—and she enters adult existence submissively.

Of course, it is not possible to establish defined categories based on age alone. Some women remain infantile their whole lives; the behaviors we have described are sometimes perpetuated to an advanced age. Nevertheless, on the whole, there is a big difference between the girlish fifteen-year-old and an older girl. The latter is adapted to reality; she scarcely advances on the imaginary level; she is less divided within herself than before. At about eighteen, Marie Bashkirtseff writes:

Irène Reweliotty comments:

And further along:

Approximately the same sound comes from these secrets of a nineteen-year-old girl:

The girl—unless she is particularly graceless—accepts her femininity in the end; and she is often happy to enjoy gratuitously the pleasures and triumphs she gets from settling definitively into her destiny; as she is not yet bound to any duty, irresponsible, available, for her the present seems neither empty nor disappointing since it is just one step; dressing and flirting still have the lightness of a game, and her dreams of the future disguise their futility. This is how Virginia Woolf describes the impressions of a young coquette during a party:

But the more the girl matures, the more maternal authority weighs on her. If she leads a housekeeper’s life at home, she suffers from being only an assistant; she would like to devote her work to her own home, to her own children. Often the rivalry with her mother worsens: in particular, the older daughter is irritated if younger brothers and sisters are born; she
feels her mother “has done her time,” and it is up to her now to bear children, to reign. If she works outside the house, she suffers when she returns home from still being treated as a simple member of the family and not as an autonomous individual.

Less romantic than before, she begins to think much more of marriage than love. She no longer embellishes her future spouse with a prestigious halo: what she wishes for is to have a stable position in this world and to begin to lead her life as a woman. This is how Virginia Woolf describes the imaginings of a rich country girl:

For most older girls, whether they have a laborious or frivolous life, whether they be confined to the paternal household or partially get away from it, the conquest of a husband—or at the least a serious lover—turns into a more and more pressing enterprise. This concern is often harmful for feminine friendships. The “best friend” loses her privileged place. The
girl sees rivals more than partners in her companions. I knew one such girl, intelligent and talented but who had chosen to think herself a “faraway princess”: this is how she described herself in poems and literary essays; she sincerely admitted she did not remain attached to her childhood friends: if they were ugly and stupid, she did not like them; if seductive, she feared them. The impatient wait for a man, often involving maneuvers, ruses, and humiliations, blocks the girl’s horizon; she becomes egotistical and hard. And if Prince Charming takes his time appearing, disgust and bitterness set in.

The girl’s character and behavior express her situation: if it changes, the adolescent girl’s attitude also changes. Today, it is becoming possible for her to take her future in her hands, instead of putting it in those of the man. If she is absorbed by studies, sports, a professional training, or a social and political activity, she frees herself from the male obsession; she is less preoccupied by love and sexual conflicts. However, she has a harder time than the young man in accomplishing herself as an autonomous individual. I have said that neither her family nor customs assist her attempts. Besides, even if she chooses independence, she still makes a place in her life for the man, for love. She will often be afraid of missing her destiny as a woman if she gives herself over entirely to any undertaking. She does not admit this feeling to herself: but it is there, it distorts all her best efforts, it sets up limits. In any case, the woman who works wants to reconcile her success with purely feminine successes; that not only requires devoting considerable time to her appearance and beauty but also, what is more serious, implies that her vital interests are divided. Outside of his regular studies, the male student amuses himself by freely exercising his mind, and from there emerge his best discoveries; the woman’s daydreams are oriented in a different direction: she will think of her physical appearance, of man, of love, she will give the bare minimum to her studies to her career, whereas in these areas nothing is as necessary as the superfluous. It is not a question of mental weakness, of a lack of concentration, but of a split in her interests that do not coincide well. A vicious circle is knotted here: people are often surprised to see how easily a woman gives up music, studies, or a job as soon as she has found a husband; this is because she had committed too little of herself to her projects to derive benefit from their accomplishment. Everything converges to hold back her personal ambition while enormous social pressure encourages her to find a social position and justification in marriage. It is natural that she should not seek to create her place in this world by and for herself or that she should seek it timidly. As long as perfect economic equality is not realized in society and as long as customs
allow the woman to profit as wife and mistress from the privileges held by certain men, the dream of passive success will be maintained in her and will hold back her own accomplishments.

However the girl approaches her existence as an adult, her apprenticeship is not yet over. By small increments or bluntly, she has to undergo her sexual initiation. There are girls who refuse. If sexually difficult incidents marked their childhood, if an awkward upbringing has gradually rooted a horror of sexuality in them, they carry over their adolescent repugnance of men. There are also circumstances that cause some women to have an extended virginity in spite of themselves. But in most cases, the girl accomplishes her sexual destiny at a more or less advanced age. How she braves it is obviously closely linked to her whole past. But this is also a novel experience that presents itself in unforeseen circumstances and to which she freely reacts. This is the new stage we must now consider.

In a sense, woman’s sexual initiation, like man’s, begins in infancy. There is a theoretical and practical initiation period that follows continuously from the oral, anal, and genital phases up to adulthood. But the young girl’s erotic experiences are not a simple extension of her previous sexual activities; they are very often unexpected and brutal; they always constitute a new occurrence that creates a rupture with the past. While she is going through them, all the problems the young girl faces are concentrated in an urgent and acute form. In some cases, the crisis is easily resolved; there are tragic situations where the crisis can only be resolved through suicide or madness. In any case, the way woman reacts to the experiences strongly affects her destiny. All psychiatrists agree on the extreme importance her erotic beginnings have for her: their repercussions will be felt for the rest of her life.