Being loved gives a woman justification for self-cherishing through the lover’s witness

Evidence

The woman feels endowed with a sure and high value; at last she has the right to cherish herself through the love she inspires. She is exhilarated at finding a witness in her lover. This is what Colette’s Vagabond admits: I must confess that, in allowing this man to return tomorrow, I was giving way to my desire to keep, not an admirer, not a friend, but an eager spectator of my life and my person. “One has to get terribly old,” said Margot to me one day, “before one can give up the vanity of living in the presence of someone else.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1851

Categorization

• XREF: The lover as witness/spectator parallels Sartre’s look (le regard) — the woman needs the Other’s gaze to constitute her own value. — connects to: Being loved transforms one’s facticity from contingent to justified — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 949; Women’s quest for reasons to live through mystification gives their destinies romantic glory; The other’s love reveals the self by exposing its own otherness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1884 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The other’s love reveals the self by exposing its own otherness #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1884