The Second Sex (70 page)
Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
In other cases the illness triggered is less serious. Here is an example where regret for lost virginity plays the main role in the problems following the first coitus:
A young twenty-three-year-old girl suffers from various phobias. The illness began at Franzensbad out of fear of catching a pregnancy by a kiss or a contact in a toilet … Perhaps a man had left some sperm in the water after masturbation; she insisted that the bathtub be cleaned three times in her presence and did not dare to move her bowels in the normal position. Some time afterwards she developed a phobia of tearing her hymen, she did not dare to dance, jump, cross a fence, or even walk except with very little steps; if she saw a post, she feared being deflowered by a clumsy movement and went around it, trembling all the way. Another of her phobias in a train or in the middle of a crowd was that a man could introduce his member from behind, deflower her, and provoke a pregnancy … During the last phase of the illness, she feared finding pins in her bed or on her shirt that could enter her vagina. Each evening the sick girl stayed naked in the middle of her room while her unfortunate mother was forced to go through a difficult examination of the bedclothes … She had always affirmed her love for her fiancé. An examination revealed that she was no longer a virgin and was putting off marriage because she feared her fiance’s disastrous observations. She admitted to him that she had been seduced by a tenor, married him, and was cured.
12
In another case, remorse—uncompensated by voluptuous satisfaction—provoked psychic troubles:
Miss H.B., twenty years old, after a trip to Italy with a girl friend, went into a serious depression. She refused to leave her room and did not utter one word. She was taken to a nursing home, where her situation got worse. She heard voices that were insulting her, everyone made fun of her, etc. She was brought back to her parents’ where she stayed in a corner without moving. She asked the doctor: “Why didn’t I come before the crime was committed?” She was dead. Everything was killed, destroyed. She was dirty. She could not
sing one note, bridges with the world were burnt … The fiancé admitted having followed her to Rome where she gave herself to him after resisting a long time; she had crying fits … She admitted never having pleasure with her fiancé. She was cured when she found a lover who satisfied her and married her.
The “sweet Viennese girl” whose childish confessions I summarized also gave a detailed and gripping account of her first adult experiences. It will be noticed that—in spite of the very advanced nature of her previous adventures—her “initiation” still has an absolutely new character:
“At sixteen, I began working in an office. At seventeen and a half, I had my first holiday; it was a great period for me. I was courted on all sides … I was in love with a young office colleague … We went to the park. It was 15 April 1909. He made me sit next to him on a bench. He kissed me, begging me: open your lips; but I closed them convulsively. Then he began to unbutton my jacket. I would have let him when I remembered that I did not have any breasts; I gave up the voluptuous sensation I would have had if he had touched me … On 7 April a married colleague invited me to go to an exhibition with him. We drank wine at dinner. I lost some of my reserve and began telling him some ambiguous jokes. In spite of my begging, he hailed a cab, pushed me into it, and hardly had the horses started than he kissed me. He became more and more intimate, he pushed his hand farther and farther; I defended myself with all my strength and I do not remember if he got his way. The next day I went to the office rather flustered. He showed me his hands covered with the scratches I had given him … He asked me to come see him more often … I yielded, not very comfortable but still full of curiosity … As soon as he came near my sex I pulled away and returned to my place; but once, more clever than I, he overcame me and probably put his finger into my vagina. I cried with pain. It was June 1909 and I left on vacation. I took a trip with my girl friend. Two tourists arrived. They invited us to accompany them. My companion wanted to kiss my friend, she punched him. He came towards, grabbed me from behind, bent me to him, and kissed me. I did not resist … He invited me to come with him. I gave him my hand and we went into the middle of the forest. He kissed me … he kissed my sex, to my great indignation. I said to him: ‘How can you do such a disgusting thing?’ He put his penis in my hand … I
caressed it … all of a sudden he pulled away my hand and threw a handkerchief over it to keep me from seeing what was happening … Two days later we went to Liesing. All of a sudden in a deserted field he took off his coat and put it on the grass … he threw me down in such a way that one of his legs was placed between mine. I still did not think how serious the situation was. I begged him to kill me rather than deprive me of ‘my most beautiful finery.’ He became very rough, swore at me, and threatened me with the police. He covered my mouth with his hand and introduced his penis. I thought my last hour had arrived. I had the feeling my stomach was turning. When he was finally finished, I began to be able to put up with him. He had to pick me up because I was still stretched out. He covered my eyes and face with kisses. I did not see or hear anything. If he had not held me back, I would have fallen blindly in front of the traffic … We were alone in a second-class compartment; he opened his trousers again to come towards me. I screamed and ran quickly through the whole train until the last running board … Finally he left me with a vulgar and strident laugh that I will never forget, calling me a stupid goose who does not know what is good. He let me return to Vienna alone. I went quickly to the bathroom because I had felt something warm running along my thigh. Frightened, I saw traces of blood. How could I hide this at home? I went to bed as early as possible and cried for hours. I still felt the pressure on my stomach caused by the pushing of his penis. My strange attitude and lack of appetite told my mother something had happened. I admitted everything to her. She did not see anything so terrible in it … My colleague did what he could to console me. He took advantage of dark evenings to take walks with me in the park and caress me under my skirts. I let him; but as soon as I felt my vagina become wet I pulled myself away because I was terribly ashamed.”
She goes to a hotel with him sometimes but without sleeping with him. She makes the acquaintance of a very rich young man that she would like to marry. She sleeps with him but without feeling anything and with disgust. She resumes her relations with her colleague but she misses the other one and begins to be cross-eyed and to lose weight. She is sent to a sanitarium where she almost sleeps with a young Russian, but she chases him from her bed at the last minute. She begins affairs with a doctor and an officer but without consenting to complete sexual relations. Then she became mortally ill and
decided to go to a doctor. After her treatment she consented to give herself to a man who loved her and then married her. In marriage her frigidity disappeared.
In these few examples chosen from many similar ones, the partner’s brutality or at least the abruptness of the event is the determining factor in the traumatism or disgust. The best situation for sexual initiation is one in which the girl learns to overcome her modesty, to get to know her partner, and to enjoy his caresses without violence or surprise, without fixed rules or a precise time frame. In this respect, the freedom of behavior appreciated by young American girls and more and more by French girls today can only be endorsed: they slip almost without noticing from necking and petting to complete sexual relations. The less tabooed it is, the smoother the initiation, and the freer the girl feels with her partner and the more the domination aspect of the male fades; if her lover is also young, a novice, shy, and an equal, the girl’s defenses are not as strong; but her metamorphosis into a woman will also be less of a transformation. In
Green Wheat
, Colette’s Vinca, the day after a rather brutal defloration, displays surprising placidity to her friend Phil: she did not feel “possessed”; on the contrary, she took pride in freeing herself of her virginity; she did not feel an overwhelming mental turmoil; in truth, Phil is wrong to be surprised as his girlfriend did not really know the male. Claudine was less unaffected after a turn on the dance floor in Renaud’s arms. I was told of a French high school student still stuck in the “green fruit” stage who, having spent a night with a male school friend, ran to a girlfriend’s the next morning to announce: “I slept with C.… it was a lot of fun.” An American high school teacher told me his students stopped being virgins long before becoming women; their partners respect them too much to offend their modesty; the boys themselves are too young and too prudish to awaken any demon in the girls. There are girls who throw themselves into many erotic experiences in order to escape sexual anxiety; they hope to rid themselves of their curiosity and obsessions, but their acts often have a theoretical cast, rendering such behavior as unreal as the fantasies through which others anticipate the future. Giving oneself out of defiance, fear, or puritan rationalism is not achieving an authentic erotic experience: one merely reaches a pseudo-experience without danger and without much flavor; the sexual act is not accompanied by either anguish or shame, because arousal remains superficial and pleasure has not permeated the flesh. These deflowered virgins are still young girls; and it is likely that the day they find themselves in the grip of a sensual and imperious man, they will put up virginal resistance
to him. Meanwhile, they remain in a kind of awkward age; caresses tickle them, kisses sometimes make them laugh: they look on physical love as a game, and if they are not in the mood to have fun, the lover’s demands quickly seem importunate and abusive; they hold on to the disgusts, phobias, and prudishness of the adolescent girl. If they never go beyond this stage—which is, according to American males, the case with many American girls—they spend their lives in a state of semi-frigidity. Real sexual maturity for the woman who consents to becoming flesh can only occur in arousal and pleasure.
But it must not be thought that all difficulties subside in women with a passionate temperament. On the contrary, they sometimes worsen. Feminine arousal can reach an intensity unknown by man. Male desire is violent but localized, and he comes out of it—except perhaps in the instant of ejaculation—conscious of himself; woman, by contrast, undergoes a real alienation; for many, this metamorphosis is the most voluptuous and definitive moment of love; but it also has a magical and frightening side. The woman he is holding in his arms appears so absent from herself, so much in the throes of turmoil, that the man may feel afraid of her. The upheaval she feels is a far more radical transmutation than the male’s aggressive frenzy. This fever frees her from shame; but when she awakes, it in turn makes her feel ashamed and horrified; for her to accept it happily—or even proudly—she has at least to be sexually and sensually fulfilled; she can admit to her desires if she has gloriously satisfied them: if not, she repudiates them angrily.
Here we reach the crucial problem of feminine eroticism: at the beginning of her erotic life, woman’s abdication is not rewarded by a wild and confident sensual pleasure. She would readily sacrifice modesty and pride if it meant opening up the gates of paradise. But it has been seen that defloration is not a successful accomplishment of youthful eroticism; it is on the contrary an unusual phenomenon; vaginal pleasure is not attained immediately; according to Stekel’s statistics—confirmed by many sexologists and psychologists—barely 4 percent of women experience pleasure at the first coitus; 50 percent do not reach vaginal pleasure for weeks, months, or even years. Psychic factors play an essential role in this. Woman’s body is singularly “hysterical” in that there is often no distance between conscious facts and their organic expression; her moral inhibitions prevent the emergence of pleasure; as they are not counterbalanced by anything, they are often perpetuated and form a more and more powerful barrier. In many cases, a vicious circle is created: the lover’s first clumsiness—a word, an awkward gesture, or an arrogant smile—will resonate throughout the whole honeymoon
or even married life; disappointed by not experiencing pleasure immediately, the young woman feels a resentment that badly prepares her for a happier experience. It is true that if the man cannot give her normal satisfaction, he can always give her clitoral pleasure that, in spite of moralizing legends, can provide her with relaxation and contentment. But many women reject it because it seems to be
inflicted
even more than vaginal pleasure; because if women suffer from the egotism of men concerned only with their own satisfaction, they are also offended by too obvious a determination to give them pleasure. “Making the other come,” says Stekel, “means dominating him; giving oneself to someone is abdicating one’s will.” Woman will accept pleasure more easily if it seems to flow naturally from man’s own pleasure, as happens in normal and successful coitus. “Women submit themselves joyously as soon as they understand that the partner does not
want
to subjugate them,” continues Stekel; inversely, if they feel this desire, they resist. Many shy away from being caressed by the hand because it is an instrument that does not participate in the pleasure it gives, it is activity and not flesh; and if sex itself does not come across as flesh penetrated with desire but as a cleverly used tool, woman will feel the same repulsion. Besides, anything else will seem to confirm the woman’s failure to experience a normal woman’s feelings. Stekel notes, after many, many observations, that all the desire of so-called frigid women aims at the norm. “They want to reach orgasm like a normal woman; no other process satisfies them morally.”
Man’s attitude is thus of extreme importance. If his desire is violent and brutal, his partner feels changed into a mere thing in his arms; but if he is too self-controlled, too detached, he does not constitute himself as flesh; he asks woman to make herself object without her being able to have a hold on him in return. In both cases, her pride rebels; to reconcile her metamorphosis into a carnal object with the demands of her subjectivity, she must make him her prey as she makes herself his. This is often why the woman obstinately remains frigid. If the lover lacks seductive techniques, if he is cold, negligent, or clumsy, he fails to awaken her sexuality, or he leaves her unsatisfied; but if he is virile and skillful, he can provoke reactions of rejection; woman fears his domination: some can find pleasure only with timid, inept, or even almost impotent men, ones who do not scare them away. It is easy for a man to awaken hostility and resentment in his mistress. Resentment is the most common source of feminine frigidity; in bed, the woman makes the male pay for all the affronts she considers she has been subjected to by an insulting coldness; her attitude is often one of an aggressive inferiority complex: since you do not love me, since I have flaws preventing me from being liked, and since I am despicable, I will not surrender to love,
desire, and pleasure either. This is how she exacts vengeance both on him and on herself if he has humiliated her by his negligence, if he has aroused her jealousy, if he has declared himself too slowly, if he has made her his mistress when she desired marriage; the complaint can appear suddenly and set off this reaction even during a relationship that began happily. The man who caused this hostility can rarely succeed in undoing it: a persuasive testimony of love or appreciation may, however, sometimes modify the situation. It also happens that women who are defiant or stiff in their lovers’ arms can be transformed by a ring on their finger: happy, flattered, their conscience at peace, they let all their defenses fall. But a newcomer, respectful, in love, and delicate, can best transform the disenchanted woman into a happy mistress or wife; if he frees her from her inferiority complex, she will give herself to him ardently.