Dramatic female passion arises from blocked alternatives rather than youthful ardor.

Evidence

The great women lovers are often those who did not waste their emotions on juvenile crushes; they first accepted the traditional feminine destiny: husband, home, children; or they lived in difficult solitude; or they counted on some venture that more or less failed; when they glimpse the chance to save their disappointing life by dedicating it to an elite being, they desperately give themselves up to this hope. Mlle Aïssé, Juliette Drouet, and Mme d’Agoult were nearly thirty when they began their love lives, Julie de Lespinasse was close to forty; no goal was available to them, they were unprepared to undertake any venture that seemed worthwhile to them, love was their only way out. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1843

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reverses the romantic myth: the ‘great lover’ is produced by lack of other life openings, i.e., love-as-desperation rather than love-as-fullness.
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the sacrifice chapter’s logic — devotion framed as the only remaining avenue, a gendered dead-end becoming a totalizing commitment.