Men transform woman from flesh into an ethereal ideal, denying her body
Evidence
So woman is no longer flesh, she is glorious body; rather than trying to possess her, men venerate her for her untouched splendor; the pale dead of Edgar Allan Poe are as fluid as water, wind, or memory; for courtly love, for les précieux, and in all of the gallant tradition, woman is no longer an animal creature but rather an ethereal being, a breath, a radiance. Thus it is that the feminine Night’s opacity is converted into transparence, and obscurity into purity, as in Novalis’s texts: Thou, Night-inspiration, heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me-the region gently upheaved itself; over it hovered my unbound, newborn spirit. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 383
Categorization
- XREF: The etherealization of woman connects to the history of courtly love tradition and to the dead women theme (Poe) that recurs in feminist literary criticism. — connects to: Desiring woman as transfigured nature drives men to make her artificial — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 351; Poetic tradition reduces woman’s body to a natural landscape for man to possess.; Flesh prized in women is that which appears passive, purposeless, and inert — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 351 (+9 more)
- ADDENDUM: Beauvoir’s chapter ‘Myth’ — the Virgin/whore split — resonates somewhat thematically with the immodesty moral panics article, both reading idealized female purity as a social construct.
Broader Connections
- Women who claim freedom reject being reduced to their bodies as passive flesh
#corroborates(0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1041 - Women become immoral by embodying an inhuman ideal imposed on them.
#expands(0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1352 - Female mystics destroy their flesh to transform it from abjection into glory
#qualifies(0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1911 - Surrealist desire reduces woman to the status of a fetishized equivocal object.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 595