Total dependence reduces a wife’s freedom to abstract interiority that cannot save her

Evidence

For a wife who wants to live her situation in lucidity, in authenticity, her only resort is often to stoic pride. Because she is totally dependent, she can only have a deeply interior and therefore abstract freedom; she refuses ready-made principles and values, she judges, she questions, and thus escapes conjugal slavery; but her haughty reserve and her acceptance of the saying “Suffer and be still” constitute no more than a negative attitude. Confined in denial, in cynicism, she lacks a positive use of her strength; as long as she is passionate and living, she finds ways to use it: she helps others, she consoles, protects, gives, she has many interests; but she suffers from not finding any truly demanding job, from not devoting her activity to an end. Often eaten away by loneliness and sterility, she ends up by giving up, destroying herself. Mme de Charrière provides us with a notable example of such a destiny. In the sympathetic book he devotes to her, Geoffrey Scott depicts her with “a frond of flame; a frond of frost.” But it is not her reason that put out this flame of life that Hermenches said could “warm the heart of a Laplander,” it is marriage that slowly assassinates the brilliant Belle de Zuylen; she resigned herself and called it reason: either heroism or genius would have been necessary to invent a different outcome. That her lofty and rare qualities were not sufficient to save her is one of the most stunning condemnations of the conjugal institution found in history. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates the existentialist apparatus from earlier chapters — dependent woman’s freedom is only interior and therefore abstract, echoing the immanence/transcendence distinction. — connects to: The temptation of easy marriage is itself a dangerous obstacle to independence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 297; Marriage chains wives to ceaseless disposal of their own shared detritus — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1224; A wife can lose her own self by absorbing her husband’s thoughts and vision. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1267 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Wifely devotion becomes tyranny because husbands refuse reciprocity #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1367
• Woman’s dependence is interiorized while man’s is only external. #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1370
• Granting woman freedom while denying her transcendence yields only negative freedom #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 406