ABSTRACT
Written in 1958, yet still sounding contemporary, The Second Sex has clearly achieved the status of a classic in feminist thought. In adopting the ontological and ethical language of existentialism, de Beauvoir observed that men named 'man' the self and 'woman' the other. A good way to test Simone de Beauvoir's characterization of woman's oppression as unique is to examine her analysis of how woman became the other. Unlike Sartre, de Beauvoir specified social roles as the primary mechanisms the self, or subject, uses to control the other, or object. A wide variety of critics faulted de Beauvoir for writing primarily for the European intelligentsia, and communitarian critic Jean Bethke Elshtain censured her for failing to speak to ordinary women, especially women of color and working-class women. To understand poststructuralism, one must first understand structuralism as presented by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Clearly, there is dispute about how illuminating or opaque postmodern feminist writers are.
