A confined woman reshapes her own life story into destiny through inner dialogue

Evidence

The girl is secretive, tormented, in the throes of difficult conflicts. This complexity enriches her; her interior life develops more deeply than her brothers’; she is more attentive to her heart’s desires that thus become more subtle, more varied; she has more psychological sense than boys turned toward external goals. She is able to give weight to these revolts that oppose her to the world. She avoids the traps of seriousness and conformism. The concerted lies of her circle meet with her irony and clearsightedness. She tests her situation’s ambiguity on a daily basis: beyond sterile protest, she can have the courage to throw into question established optimism, preconceived values, and hypocritical and reassuring morality. Such is Maggie, the moving example given in The Mill on the Floss, in which George Eliot embodied the doubts and courageous rebellions of her youth against Victorian England; the heroes—particularly Tom, Maggie’s brother—stubbornly affirm conventional wisdom, immobilizing morality in formal rules: Maggie tries to reintroduce a breath of life, she overturns them, she goes to the limits of her solitude and emerges as a pure freedom beyond the fossilized male universe. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 904 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Miss G.S.… had given herself to a man while waiting for him to marry her, while insisting on the fact “that she did not care about marriage,” that she did not want “to be attached.” She played the free woman. In truth, she was a slave to morality like her whole family. But her lover believed her and never spoke of marriage. Her stubbornness increased more and more until she became apathetic. When he finally did ask her to marry him, she took her revenge by admitting her numbness and no longer wanting to hear anything about a union. She no longer wanted to be happy. She had waited too long … She was consumed by jealousy and waited anxiously for the day he proposed so she could refuse it proudly. Then she wanted to commit suicide just to punish her lover in style. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 991 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The girl’s marginalized situation deepens her interior life and critical clarity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 904; A woman’s performed liberation can mask a hidden internalized bondage — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 991; The narcissist stages her entire life as sacred drama under destiny — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1809 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The girl’s marginalized situation deepens her interior life and critical clarity #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 904
• Blocked from action, women turn to self-expression as a means of self-assertion #expands (0.80)
• A woman’s performed liberation can mask a hidden internalized bondage #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 991
• The narcissist stages her entire life as sacred drama under destiny #qualifies (0.76) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1809
• Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64