Menarche initiates girls into an irreversible before-and-after divide in selfhood

Evidence

I was sure that if they had been warned of what was happening to me, they would all be overjoyed. “So it’s your turn now,” they would have thought. That one too, I said to myself when I saw one. And this one too. I was had by the world. I had trouble walking and didn’t dare run. The earth, the sun-hot greenery, even the food, seemed to give off a suspicious smell … The crisis passed and I began to hope against hope that it would not come back again. One month later, I had to face the facts and accept the evil definitively, in a heavy stupor this time. There was now in my memory a “before.” All the rest of my existence would no longer be anything but an “after.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 747

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘before/after’ structure and being ‘had by the world’ echo Beauvoir’s existentialist theme of facticity — the body as situation, aligning with the chosen reading purpose of situating her against Sartre’s concept of our thrownness into a body we didn’t choose. — connects to: Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835; Puberty transforms the girl’s body from familiar self into strange flesh. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 738
• DEEPTHINKING: The intimacy here — hatred of ignorant sister, of men who will never know, of women who accept it calmly, and finally the body itself (‘the evil’) — compresses the whole thesis that women are alienated from their own flesh as others initiate them into a servitude. Resists one-sentence summary.
• STORYSTEM: A first-person vignette of a girl’s first menstruation as a betrayal by her own body and all the women who shared the secret — could seed a story narrated in the girl’s present tense where the body itself is the antagonist that ‘had her by the world’.

Broader Connections

• Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835
• Puberty transforms the girl’s body from familiar self into strange flesh. #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 738