Marriage converts a girl’s open-ended future into a closed destiny of repetition

Evidence

From this definitive, immutable background, freedom emerges with the most intolerable gratuitousness. Previously the girl, sheltered by her parents’ authority, made use of her freedom in revolt and hope; she used it to refuse and go beyond a condition in which she nevertheless found security; her own transcendence toward marriage took place from within the warmth of the family; now she is married, there is no other future in front of her. The doors of home are closed around her: of all the earth, this will be her portion. She knows exactly what tasks lie ahead of her: the same as her mother’s. Day after day, the same rites will be repeated. When she was a girl, her hands were empty: in hope, in dreams, she possessed everything. Now she has acquired a share of the world and she thinks in anguish: there is nothing more than this, forever. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1258

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates the existentialist apparatus of immanence/transcendence: marriage cuts off the girl’s transcendence, trapping her in immanence.
• XREF: Directly applies Beauvoir’s Sartrean notions of project and facticity; the ‘nothing more than this, forever’ echoes the bad-faith resignation she dismantles throughout the book. — connects to: Marriage makes woman contingent while man mediates her to the universe — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196; Puberty converts the girl’s imagined future passivity into a settled bodily fate of waiting — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 832; Marriage annexes women to the husband’s universe — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1109 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Puberty converts the girl’s imagined future passivity into a settled bodily fate of waiting #exemplifies (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 832
• Marriage annexes women to the husband’s universe #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1109