The girl’s transition to womanhood replaces wonder with cold ambition

Evidence

With so much flattery, wooing, and such, I become terribly ambitious. This is no longer the trembling, marvelous happiness of the fifteen-year-old. It is a kind of cold and hard intoxication to take my revenge on life, to climb. I flirt; I play at loving. I do not love … I gain in intelligence, in sangfroid, in ordinary lucidity. I lose my heart. It was as if it cracked … In two months, I left childhood behind. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 919

Categorization

• XREF: Marie Bashkirtseff’s description of ‘losing her heart’ to gain ‘sangfroid’ anticipates Beauvoir’s later discussion of the woman who becomes alienated from her own feeling in the chapter on the woman in love. — connects to: The older girl’s growth becomes smooth adaptation instead of upheaval; The older girl adapts to reality and becomes less internally divided — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 916
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The older girl’s growth becomes smooth adaptation instead of upheaval; The older girl adapts to reality and becomes less internally divided — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 916

Broader Connections

• The older girl adapts to reality and becomes less internally divided #qualifies (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 916
• The older girl’s growth becomes smooth adaptation instead of upheaval #qualifies (0.80)