Pregnant women adopt masculine myths that cast the womb as mysteriously Other

Evidence

Other women are more weighed down; they mull indefinitely over their new importance. With just a little encouragement they adopt masculine myths: they juxtapose the lucidity of the mind to the fertile night of Life, clear consciousness to the mysteries of interiority, sterile freedom to the weight of this womb there in its enormous facticity; the future mother smells of humus and earth, spring and root; when she dozes, her sleep is that of chaos where worlds ferment. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1471

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illuminates how the ‘Other’ operates internally: a woman can be made Other to herself by internalizing masculine mythologizing of her own body as fertile night and chaotic mystery.
• XREF: Speaks to the interiority-mystery dichotomy Beauvoir develops against Sartre’s for-itself/in-itself, and anticipates her later critique of ‘the eternal feminine.’ — connects to: Expressed attitudes toward pregnancy mask women’s contradictory and repressed inner feelings. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433; Pregnancy grants women a socially sanctioned justification for self-absorption and exemption from effort — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1465

Broader Connections

• Pregnancy grants women a socially sanctioned justification for self-absorption and exemption from effort #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1465
• Expressed attitudes toward pregnancy mask women’s contradictory and repressed inner feelings. #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433