Woman as myth is a fluctuating, contradictory object that evades fixed definition
Evidence
It is always difficult to describe a myth; it does not lend itself to being grasped or defined; it haunts consciousnesses without ever being posited opposite them as a fixed object. The object fluctuates so much and is so contradictory that its unity is not at first discerned: Delilah and Judith, Aspasia and Lucretia, Pandora and Athena, woman is both Eve and the Virgin Mary. She is an idol, a servant, source of life, power of darkness; she is the elementary silence of truth, she is artifice, gossip, and lies; she is the medicine woman and witch; she is man’s prey; she is his downfall, she is everything he is not and wants to have, his negation and his raison d’être. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 322
Categorization
- DEFINE: Core definition of how ‘myth’ operates — the shifting, contradictory symbol-structure through which woman is grasped.
- XREF: Directly announces the structural theme — woman as ‘everything he is not and wants to have’ — that recurs in all three passages and prefigures Beauvoir’s later distinction between immanence and transcendence. — connects to: Mythic thinking declares women wrong when their reality contradicts the myth — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 652; Incompatible myths of woman coexist because each claims to be the whole truth — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 653; Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Incompatible myths of woman coexist because each claims to be the whole truth
#corroborates(0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 653 - Mythic thinking declares women wrong when their reality contradicts the myth
#expands(0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 652 - Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other
#expands(0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413