A woman’s self-enslavement in love is itself a strategy of subjugation

Evidence

At first, the woman in love is delighted to satisfy her lover’s desire; then—like the legendary fireman who out of love for his job lights fires everywhere—she works at awakening this desire so as to have to satisfy it; if she does not succeed, she feels humiliated, useless to such an extent that the lover will feign passion he does not feel. In making herself a slave, she has found the surest means of subjugating him. This is another lie of love that many men—Lawrence, Montherlant—have resentfully denounced: he takes himself for a gift when he is a tyranny. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1872

Categorization

• XREF: The dialectic of slave-subjugation echoes Hegel’s master-slave inversion which Beauvoir draws on throughout; also connects to her later argument that immanence traps both parties. — connects to: Love is the surface where domination logic punishes the lover who loves too much; A woman’s performed liberation can mask a hidden internalized bondage — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 991; Woman’s love-religion seeks possession while paradoxically preserving the lover’s freedom. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1882 (+2 more)
• SEED: The ‘tyranny of the submissive lover’ is a sharp essay angle on how self-abnegation can be a form of control — reverse the usual power-analysis of romantic self-sacrifice.

Broader Connections

• Female self-abandonment in love is actually an avid will to be #complicates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1849