Petty household tasks cannot absorb a woman’s energies once her aspirations are gone.

Evidence

Housework in fact allows the woman an indefinite escape far from herself. Chardonne rightly remarks: … Here is a meticulous and disordered task, with neither stops nor limits. In the home, a woman certain to please quickly reaches her breaking point, a state of distraction and mental void that effaces her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1237 (#expands, via linked claim)

For the moment, it is the housewife who is uppermost in her. Once she has dusted the insides of her cupboards, she dusts the geraniums on the windowsills. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1235 (#expands, via linked claim)

All possibility of concrete communication with others is removed from her; in her experience she does not recognize either the appeal or the advantages of solidarity, since, separated, she is entirely devoted to her own family; she cannot be expected therefore to go beyond herself toward the general interest. She obstinately confines herself in the only familiar area where she has the power to grasp things and where she finds a precarious sovereignty. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1746 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Housework never produces lasting results, trapping women in a perpetual present — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1221; Confined to domesticity, a woman cannot be expected to pursue the general interest — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1746; Housework functions as an endless escape from woman’s own self — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1237 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Housework functions as an endless escape from woman’s own self #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1237
• Domestic activity erases woman’s selfhood by displacing her identity #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1235
• Confined to domesticity, a woman cannot be expected to pursue the general interest #complicates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1746