Exclusion from adult female secrets provokes hysterical demands to be treated as a woman

Evidence

Toward the age of thirteen the little girl was on intimate terms with her older sister, and she had been proud to be in her confidence when the sister was secretly engaged and then married: to share the secret of a grown-up was to be accepted among the adults. She lived for a time with her sister; but when the latter told her that she was going “to buy” a baby, Nancy got jealous of her brother-in-law and of the coming child: to be treated again as a child to whom one made little mysteries of things was unbearable. She began to experience internal troubles and wanted to be operated on for appendicitis. The operation was a success, but during her stay at the hospital Nancy lived in a state of severe agitation; she made violent scenes with a nurse she disliked; she tried to seduce the doctor, making dates with him, being provocative and demanding throughout her crises to be treated as a woman. She accused herself of being to blame for the death of a little brother some years before. And in particular she felt sure that they had not removed her appendix or had left a part of it inside her; her claim that she had swallowed a penny was probably intended to make sure an X-ray would be taken. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 766

Categorization

• XREF: The operation-as-punishment/sexual-birth-fantasy pattern connects to psychoanalytic readings of hysteria (Freud’s Dora, where the appendix was also a displaced sexual symbol). — connects to: A woman’s worst affliction is failing to recognize her condition as a woman — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 673; Online confusion with another woman triggered an identity crisis. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 23
• SEED: The girl demanding surgery as proof of adult status — self-harm as claim to recognition — could ground an essay on how medical procedures are sought as rites of passage.

Broader Connections

• Online confusion with another woman triggered an identity crisis. #exemplifies (0.78) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 23