Woman serves man as a risk-free stage for performing his own emotions

Evidence

Love, that is woman, reveals the real ends of existence: beauty, happiness, the freshness of feelings and of the world. It tears man’s soul out and thus gives him possession of it; the lover experiences the same tension, the same risks, as his mistress and feels himself more authentically than during a planned career. When Julien hesitates at the base of the ladder Mathilde has set up, he puts his whole destiny into question: in that very moment, he demonstrates his true worth. It is through women, under their influence, in reaction to their behavior, that Julien, Fabrice, and Lucien learn about the world and themselves. Test, reward, judge, or friend, the woman in Stendhal is really what Hegel was once tempted to make of her: that other consciousness that, in reciprocal recognition, gives to the other subject the same truth it receives from it. The happy couple that recognizes each other in love defies the universe and time; it is sufficient in itself, it realizes the absolute. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614 (#expands, via linked claim)

Regardless of the ego looking for itself through her, it can only attain itself if she consents to be his crucible. In any case, what is demanded of her is self-forgetting and love. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 622 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Man’s voluntary motion over passive woman makes her feel like an instrument.; Woman’s role is to be the mediating consciousness through which man discovers himself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614; Man needs woman’s confirming gaze to affirm his particular self. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 399 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Woman’s role is to be the mediating consciousness through which man discovers himself #expands (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• Man’s self-realization requires woman’s consent to serve as his crucible. #expands (0.93) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 622
• Man’s voluntary motion over passive woman makes her feel like an instrument. #expands (0.92)
• Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself #expands (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• Man needs woman’s confirming gaze to affirm his particular self. #expands (0.88) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 399
• Man projects his own unattainable interiority onto woman as mirror and Other #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 401
• Woman’s subordinate situation makes her lovable but not genuinely equal in man’s eyes. #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1930
• The lover’s self-presentation demands the Other’s free recognition to succeed #corroborates (0.80)
• A single woman’s presence transformed the emotional character of a bachelor settlement #exemplifies (0.72) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 547