Women’s quest for reasons to live through mystification gives their destinies romantic glory

Evidence

The woman feels endowed with a sure and high value; at last she has the right to cherish herself through the love she inspires. She is exhilarated at finding a witness in her lover. This is what Colette’s Vagabond admits: I must confess that, in allowing this man to return tomorrow, I was giving way to my desire to keep, not an admirer, not a friend, but an eager spectator of my life and my person. “One has to get terribly old,” said Margot to me one day, “before one can give up the vanity of living in the presence of someone else.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1851 (#expands, via linked claim)

Beyond this barrier she has unexpectedly struck, she has the feeling that she will do no more than survive; her body will be without promise; the dreams and desires she has not realized will forever remain unaccomplished; she will look back on the past from this new perspective; the time has come to draw the line, to take stock. And she is horrified by the narrow strictures inflicted on her life. Faced with this, her brief and disappointing story, she behaves like an adolescent girl on the threshold of a still inaccessible future: she denies her finitude; to the poverty of her existence she contrasts the nebulous treasures of her personality. Because as a woman she endured her destiny more or less passively, she feels that her chances were taken from her, that she was duped, that she slid from youth to maturity without being aware of it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Being loved gives a woman justification for self-cherishing through the lover’s witness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1851; Aging women deny finitude and feel duped by a passively endured destiny — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710; Female self-abandonment in love is actually an avid will to be — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1849

Broader Connections

• Being loved gives a woman justification for self-cherishing through the lover’s witness #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1851
• Aging women deny finitude and feel duped by a passively endured destiny #qualifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710