Aging women deny finitude and feel duped by a passively endured destiny

Evidence

Beyond this barrier she has unexpectedly struck, she has the feeling that she will do no more than survive; her body will be without promise; the dreams and desires she has not realized will forever remain unaccomplished; she will look back on the past from this new perspective; the time has come to draw the line, to take stock. And she is horrified by the narrow strictures inflicted on her life. Faced with this, her brief and disappointing story, she behaves like an adolescent girl on the threshold of a still inaccessible future: she denies her finitude; to the poverty of her existence she contrasts the nebulous treasures of her personality. Because as a woman she endured her destiny more or less passively, she feels that her chances were taken from her, that she was duped, that she slid from youth to maturity without being aware of it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710

Categorization

• DEFINE: Beauvoir’s account of the midlife crisis as a return to adolescent bad faith — denial of finitude she earlier applied to the girl on the threshold of the future.
• XREF: connects to: Women’s quest for reasons to live through mystification gives their destinies romantic glory; Woman’s aging shame stems from being an object for man’s mediation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1709; Woman’s life stages are sharply discontinuous while man’s aging is continuous — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1707 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Aging women exaggerate femininity to disavow their intimidating autonomy #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710
• Women who depend solely on erotic charm resist growing old ferociously #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1719
• Mystical fervor fails to redeem a woman from the inescapable passage of age. #corroborates (0.75)