The mother’s contradiction mirrors the lover’s in Beauvoir’s analysis

Evidence

Though she may approve in principle of her son’s undertakings, she is torn by a contradiction similar to one that tortures the woman in love. To justify his life—and his mother’s—the son must surpass her toward his ends; and to attain them, he is led to risk his health and put himself in danger: but he contests the value of the gift she gave him when he places certain goals above the pure fact of living. She is shocked by this; she reigns sovereign over man only if this flesh she has engendered is for him the supreme good: he does not have the right to destroy this work she has produced through suffering. “You’ll tire yourself out, you’ll make yourself ill, you’ll be sorry,” she drones in his ears. Yet she knows very well that to live is not enough, or else procreation itself would be superfluous; she is the first to be irritated if her offspring is a loafer, a coward. She is never at rest. When he goes to war, she wants him home alive but decorated. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1724

Categorization

• XREF: The explicit ‘similar to the woman in love’ parallel anchors this to earlier chapters on the lover; shows a recurring structural trap of feminine devotion regardless of the love-object. — connects to: Beauvoir saw motherhood as a threat to a woman’s integrity; Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413

Broader Connections

• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413