Marriage chains wives to ceaseless disposal of their own shared detritus

Evidence

It was their life together that was the cause of everything, their little meals that left skin peelings, dust from both of them that mingled everywhere … Every couple secretes these little bits of litter that must be destroyed to make space for new ones … What a life one spends—and to be able to go out with a fresh little shirt, attractive to passersby, so your engineer husband looks good in his life. Mantras replayed in Marguerite’s head: take care of the wooden floors … for the care of brass, use … she was in charge of the care of two ordinary beings for the rest of their days. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1224

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Beauvoir’s ‘Every couple secretes these little bits of litter’ collapses the romantic couple into a machine that produces waste the wife alone must destroy — a devastating reframing of domestic love as waste-management — and ‘she was in charge of the care of two ordinary beings for the rest of their days’ lands the permanent sentence.
• XREF: connects to: Wifely devotion becomes tyranny because husbands refuse reciprocity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1367; Total dependence reduces a wife’s freedom to abstract interiority that cannot save her — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355

Broader Connections

• Wifely devotion becomes tyranny because husbands refuse reciprocity #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1367
• Total dependence reduces a wife’s freedom to abstract interiority that cannot save her #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355