The refusal to give chills the whole self and recoils on the refuser

Evidence

I know a mother who disliked at birth her fourth daughter, a quiet charming girl … She claimed that this child had inherited, in concentrated measure, all her father’s unpleasant traits … The child was born to her during the year when this exalted, dreamy woman had fallen passionately in love with another man, a poet, who was courting her … during her husband’s embraces she permitted her mind to dwell on the poet, hoping that the child would thus become endowed with her beloved’s traits—as in Goethe’s Elective Affinities. However, the child looked so much like its father, from the moment of its birth, that its paternity was obvious … She saw in the child a reflection of herself—a reflection of the dreamy, tender, yielding, sensual side of herself. She despised these qualities, scorned them in herself. She would have preferred to have been strong, unyielding, vigorous, prudish, and energetic. Thus she hated herself even more than she hated her husband through her hatred of the child. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1525 (#expands, via linked claim)

The negro slave of the eighteenth century, the Mohammedan woman enclosed in a harem have no instrument, be it in thought or by astonishment or anger, which permits them to attack the civilization which oppresses them. Their behavior is defined and can be judged only within this given situation, and it is possible that in this situation, limited like every human situation, they realize a perfect assertion of their freedom. But once there appears a possibility of liberation, it is resignation of freedom not to exploit the possibility, a resignation which implies dishonesty and which is a positive fault. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 33 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Refusing a genuine possibility of liberation is a moral fault. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 33; A mother’s rejection of a child can disguise self-contempt projected outward. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1525

Broader Connections

• A mother’s rejection of a child can disguise self-contempt projected outward. #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1525
• Refusing a genuine possibility of liberation is a moral fault. #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 33