Montherlant’s misogyny stems from measuring the distance between male transcendence and female immanence

Evidence

When that happens, the male’s sex life is normally integrated into his individual existence: in terms of desire and coitus, his surpassing toward the species is an integral part of the subjective moment of his transcendence: he is his body. Woman’s history is much more complex. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97 (#expands, via linked claim)

Montherlant’s attitude has no positive counterweight, and it expresses nothing but his own existential choice. In fact, this hero chooses fear. … And because he does not dare confront humanity, he abolishes it. … His hero always rises up alone facing animals, children, women, landscapes; he is prey to his own desires (like the queen of Pasiphaé) or his own demands (like the master of Santiago), but no person is ever beside him. Even Alban in The Dream does not have a friend: when Prinet was alive, he disdained him; he only exalts him over his dead body. Montherlant’s works, like his life, recognize only one consciousness. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 485 (#expands, via linked claim)

In this way, woman succeeds in acquiring a certain independence. Giving herself to many men, she belongs to none definitively; the money she accumulates, the name she “launches” as one launches a product, ensure her economic autonomy. The freest women in ancient Greece were neither matrons nor common prostitutes but hetaeras. Renaissance courtesans and Japanese geishas enjoy an infinitely greater freedom than their contemporaries. In France, the woman who seems to be the most virile and independent is perhaps Ninon de Lenclos. Paradoxically, those women who exploit their femininity to the extreme create a situation for themselves nearly equal to that of a man; moving from this sex that delivers them to men as objects, they become subjects. They not only earn their living like men but also live in nearly exclusively masculine company; free in their mores and speech, they can rise to the rarest intellectual freedom—like Ninon de Lenclos. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Montherlant’s myth of woman equates femininity with immanence and harm to men — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 454; Male hatred of women often masks a deeper hatred of maternal origin and embodiment — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 454; Montherlant redefined woman as a lack of virility and condemned autonomous women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 461 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Montherlant’s misogyny stems from refusing risk among peers #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 485
• Male sexuality integrates with individual transcendence while female sexuality does not #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97
• Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684