Busywork like needlework masks the idleness of the unoccupied woman without real purpose

Evidence

Here we touch upon the older woman’s tragedy: she realizes she is useless; all through her life, the bourgeois woman often has to resolve the derisory problem: How to kill time? … “Women’s handiwork” was invented to mask this horrible idleness; hands embroider, knit, they are busy hands, and they move; it is not a question here of real work, because the object produced is not the goal; it has little importance, and it is often a problem to know what to do with it: one gets rid of it by giving it to a friend or a charitable organization or by cluttering mantelpieces or coffee tables; neither is it a game that reveals the pure joy of existence in its gratuitousness; and it is hardly a diversion because the mind is vacant: it is an absurd distraction, as Pascal described it; with needle or hook, woman sadly weaves the very nothingness of her days. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1732

Categorization

• DEFINE: Beauvoir here concretizes ‘vanity of immanence’ — activity that does not open up the future slides into immanence.
• XREF: Connects to Pascal’s diverted distraction and to Mrs Dalloway, echoing DeLillo’s White Noise themes of busyness masking emptiness. — connects to: A woman invests her identity in domestic decor because she lacks other activity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1205; The idle woman substitutes social observation and gossip for genuine existence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1732; Housework functions as an endless escape from woman’s own self — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1237 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The idle woman substitutes social observation and gossip for genuine existence #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1732
• Housework functions as an endless escape from woman’s own self #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1237
• Dress lets the idle woman believe she is recreating her own self. #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1551