Reading The Second Sex caused concrete life transformations in ordinary women

Evidence

The makers of a 1989 television programme and book called Daughters of de Beauvoir collected stories from women whose lives were changed by reading her work during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. These were women such as Angie Pegg, a housewife in a small Essex town who picked up The Second Sex at random in a bookshop, and read it until four in the morning. She plunged first into the chapter on how housework isolates women from the world, then went back to read the rest. Until that moment, Pegg had thought she was the only one to feel disconnected from life because of the way she spent her days; Beauvoir made her realise that she was not — and showed her why she felt that way. It was another of those life-changing book discoveries, like Sartre’s or Levinas’ when they read Husserl. By the morning, Pegg had decided on a change of direction in her life. She abandoned her mop and duster and went to university to study philosophy. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 886

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing thread on books as life-changing discoveries — contrasts with Sartre and Levinas reading Husserl, and parallels the memoir genre in the reader’s own library. — connects to: The Second Sex transformed women’s lives as an unrecognized existentialist work — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 68; Reading transforms both its object and the reader when practiced critically — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 396; Learning the truth of sex transforms the child into another being marked by shame — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 728 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Beauvoir diagnosing housework as world-isolating parallels the reader’s ‘On Sacrifice’ piece’s theme of domesticity as a structural condition — though weaker; primarily a strong example of a text genuinely changing a reader’s trajectory.

Broader Connections

• Reading transforms both its object and the reader when practiced critically #corroborates (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 396
• Learning the truth of sex transforms the child into another being marked by shame #qualifies (0.70) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 728