Marginalized position pushes women to seek self-realization in imagination rather than action

Evidence

Living on the margin of the masculine world, she does not grasp it in its universal guise but through a particular vision; for her it is not a group of implements and concepts but a source of feelings and emotions; she is interested in the qualities of things inasmuch as they are gratuitous and secret; taking on a negative attitude, one of refusal, she does not lose herself in the real: she protests against it, with words; she looks for the image of her soul in nature, she abandons herself to her reveries, she wants to reach her being: she is doomed to failure; she can only recover it in the realm of imagination. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1942

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illuminates how the ‘Other’ structural position produces a distinct epistemology and artistic impulse — a causal chain from marginality to imagination.
• XREF: Connects to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and Sartre’s being-for-itself as recast by existentialist-feminist analysis. — connects to: Feminine mythmaking requires leisure and distance from material necessity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 666; Woman’s disadvantaged position yields a more authentic self-knowledge than man’s. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1015; Woman’s infantilization results from never having emerged as a subject before others — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1742 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64