Motherhood offers women fusion that male embrace only promises then refuses

Evidence

If flesh is pure inertia, it cannot embody transcendence, even in a degraded form; it is idleness and ennui, but as soon as it burgeons, it becomes progenitor, source, flower, it goes beyond itself, it is movement toward the future while being a thickened presence at the same time. The separation woman suffered from in the past during her weaning is compensated for; it is submerged again in the current of life, reintegrated into the whole, a link in the endless chain of generations, flesh that exists for and through another flesh. When she feels the child in her heavy belly or when she presses it against her swollen breasts, the mother accomplishes the fusion she sought in the arms of the male, and that is refused as soon as it is granted. She is no longer an object subjugated by a subject; nor is she any longer a subject anguished by her freedom, she is this ambivalent reality: life. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1449

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘fusion sought in the arms of the male, refused as soon as granted’ connects to Beauvoir’s earlier chapters on female sexuality and to the Lacanian/psychoanalytic theme of lost fusion with the mother. — connects to: Motherhood alone does not fulfill a woman or give meaning to her existence. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1527; Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614

Broader Connections

• Motherhood alone does not fulfill a woman or give meaning to her existence. #complicates (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1527
• Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614