Marriage was the only available path for a woman to become a free being

Evidence

Brilliant, cultivated, intelligent, and ardent, Mlle de Zuylen astonished Europe; she frightened away suitors; she rejected more than twelve of them, but others, perhaps more acceptable, backed off. Hermenches was the only man who interested her, but it was out of the question to make him her husband: she carried on a twelve-year correspondence with him; but this friendship and her studies no longer satisfied her. “Virgin and martyr” was a pleonasm, she said; and the constraints of Zuylen’s life were unbearable; she wanted to become a woman, a free being. At thirty, she married M. de Charrière; she liked the “honesty of heart” she found in him, his “sense of justice,” and she first decided to make him “the most tenderly loved husband in the world.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1356

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the pressure toward marriage as woman’s sole destiny that Beauvoir develops as a structural theme; also connects to the reader’s own interest in immanence/transcendence - Mme de Charrière’s marriage leads straight into immanence. — connects to: Only sovereignty or sanctity could lift women above their sex in medieval society. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 219; For women, marriage was the only route to social legitimacy — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1096; A courtesan dependent on no single man may be society’s only free woman — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 198 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• For women, marriage was the only route to social legitimacy #corroborates (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1096
• Traditional marriage confines woman to immanence and denies her transcendence #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196
• A courtesan dependent on no single man may be society’s only free woman #contradicts (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 198
• Women’s status in Christendom exceeded that in polygamous societies #complicates (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1860