Midlife women erupt into compensating desires and acts because they never freely chose goals.

Evidence

Her agitation is more eccentric, incoherent, and useless because it only serves as symbolic compensation for past errors and failures. Among other things and before it is too late, the woman will try to realize all her childhood and adolescent desires: this one goes back to the piano, that one begins to sculpt, to write, to travel; she takes up skiing, foreign languages. She welcomes everything she had refused until then—again before it is too late. She admits her repugnance for a husband she had previously tolerated, and she becomes frigid in his arms; or by contrast, she abandons herself to the passions she repressed; she overwhelms the husband with her demands; she goes back to practicing masturbation, which she had given up since childhood. Her homosexual tendencies—which are latent in almost all women—come out. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1711

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s earlier chapters on the girl’s and woman’s dependence-relation; also resonates with Freud’s latency/return model but reinterpreted existentially. — connects to: Aging women deny finitude and feel duped by a passively endured destiny — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710; Some women appropriate another’s transcendence rather than pursue objective aims — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1823; Women’s mediocrity stems from never learning responsibility for the universe. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1950 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Aging women deny finitude and feel duped by a passively endured destiny #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710
• Some women appropriate another’s transcendence rather than pursue objective aims #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1823
• Women’s mediocrity stems from never learning responsibility for the universe. #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1950
• Deprived of action, women express themselves through fanatical defense of inherited causes #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1743