A woman’s performed liberation can mask a hidden internalized bondage

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: The G.S. case is a textbook illustration of Beauvoir’s bad faith concept from Sartre entwined with her ‘woman as Other’ thesis — the claimed free woman is actually enslaved to conventional morality. — connects to: A woman’s self-enslavement in love is itself a strategy of subjugation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1872; Granting woman freedom while denying her transcendence yields only negative freedom — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 406; Confined women can only find freedom by voluntarily embracing their prison — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1356 (+2 more)
• STORYSTEM: Narrative spark: a character whose self-deception about freedom drives her to self-destructive revenge — the desire to refuse happiness as the ultimate assertion of will.

Broader Connections

• A woman’s self-enslavement in love is itself a strategy of subjugation #expands (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1872
• Granting woman freedom while denying her transcendence yields only negative freedom #complicates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 406