Individual women transcend their condition only when granted masculine possibilities by chance

Evidence

This license is also the main freedom found in the following centuries for women whose rank or fortune liberates them from common morality; in general, it remains as strict as in the Middle Ages. As for positive accomplishments, they are possible only for a very few. Queens are always privileged: Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth of England, and Isabella the Catholic are great sovereigns. A few great saintly figures are also worshipped. The astonishing destiny of Saint Teresa of Avila is explained approximately in the same way as Saint Catherine’s: her self-confidence is inspired by her confidence in God; by carrying the virtues connected with her status to the highest, she garners the support of her confessors and the Christian world: she is able to emerge beyond a nun’s ordinary condition; she founds and runs monasteries, she travels, takes initiatives, and perseveres with a man’s adventurous courage; society does not thwart her; even writing is not effrontery: her confessors order her to do it. She brilliantly shows that a woman can raise herself as high as a man when, by an astonishing chance, a man’s possibilities are granted to her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 227

Categorization

• XREF: Links to Beauvoir’s overall thesis that transcendence is a masculine-coded privilege; also resonates with the exceptional-woman pattern (‘the anomaly’) she critiques throughout. — connects to: Male transcendence is fleeting while the female is chronically alienated by gestation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 94; In lower animals only the male gains individual existence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 92; Only sovereignty or sanctity could lift women above their sex in medieval society. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 219 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence #contradicts (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684
• Granting woman freedom while denying her transcendence yields only negative freedom #qualifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 406