Childhood’s imagined future collapses when girls confront their mothers’ repetitive domestic labor

Evidence

The child thinks of the future as an indefinite ascent toward some unidentified summit. Suddenly in the kitchen, where her mother is washing dishes, the little girl realizes that over the years, every afternoon at the same time, these hands have plunged into greasy water and wiped the china with a rough dish towel. And until death they will be subjected to these rites. Eat, sleep, clean … the years no longer reach toward the sky, they spread out identical and gray as a horizontal tablecloth; every day looks like the previous one; the present is eternal, useless, and hopeless. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1221

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s broader thesis that woman’s situation forecloses transcendence — the child sees transcendence as ascent, then discovers immanence as horizontal repetition. — connects to: Young girls perceive the world as a matriarchy governed by mother; Puberty converts the girl’s imagined future passivity into a settled bodily fate of waiting — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 832; Marriage converts a girl’s open-ended future into a closed destiny of repetition — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1258

Broader Connections

• Marriage converts a girl’s open-ended future into a closed destiny of repetition #exemplifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1258
• Puberty converts the girl’s imagined future passivity into a settled bodily fate of waiting #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 832