Woman’s alliance with death is the inverted mirror of her fertility.

Evidence

Born of flesh, man accomplishes himself in love as flesh, and flesh is destined to the grave. The alliance between Woman and Death is thus confirmed; the great reaper is the inverted figure of corn-growing fertility. But it is also the frightening wife whose skeleton appears under deceitful and tender flesh. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 355

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the fertility god who must die (Tammuz, Adonis) and anticipates her later treatment of the death-goddess figures in matriarchal religion. — connects to: Death and fertility are mythologically bound in a single ambivalent figure — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 328; Death reminders increase people’s desire to have children — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 409

Broader Connections

• Death and fertility are mythologically bound in a single ambivalent figure #expands (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 328
• Death reminders increase people’s desire to have children #complicates (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 409