A woman passed from father to husband becomes an empty vessel of borrowed opinions.

Evidence

“When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it … I mean that I was simply transferred from papa’s hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as yours—or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other … You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1404

Categorization

• BMF: Nora’s confession of being ‘transferred from papa’s hands into yours’ — a woman as property passed between men — resonates obliquely with the transactional adoptions and custody arrangements in Parable of the Sower, where persons move between households with no will of their own.
• XREF: Nora’s speech is the exact literary articulation of Beauvoir’s claim that woman’s transcendence is stolen in marriage — connects to Helmer’s condescension in the next passage as the mirror image of the same dynamic. — connects to: A woman who exists only through love becomes nothing when love’s object departs. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1880; Traditional marriage confines woman to immanence and denies her transcendence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196

Broader Connections

• A woman who exists only through love becomes nothing when love’s object departs. #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1880
• Traditional marriage confines woman to immanence and denies her transcendence #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196