Woman’s cultural role is to soften the harsh edges of male-created law and necessity

Evidence

This distance between the males’ intended constructions and nature’s contingency seems troubling in some cases; but it becomes beneficial when the woman, too docile to threaten men’s work, limits herself to enriching and softening their too sharp edges. Male gods represent Destiny; on the goddesses’ side are found arbitrary benevolence and capricious favor. The Christian God has the rigors of Justice; the Virgin has gentleness and charity. On earth, men are the defenders of laws, reason, and necessity; woman knows the original contingency of man himself and of the necessity he believes in; from this comes her supple generosity and the mysterious irony that touches her lips. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 396

Categorization

• DEFINE: Beauvoir here maps the man/woman, law/contingency, Justice/charity binary that grounds her analysis of woman as Other.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘tender mercy role’ and the gendered split between logos and contingency that Sartre’s Being and Nothingness also rehearses; useful for situating Beauvoir against Sartre. — connects to: Women’s reverence for masculine law stems from powerlessness rather than judgment — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1743; Men see household objects as instruments while domestic order is women’s specific concern.; Social ‘representing’ falls to women because men are bound by productive labor. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1550

Broader Connections

• Women’s reverence for masculine law stems from powerlessness rather than judgment #complicates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1743