ABSTRACT
The influence of androcentric criticism reaches even into feminist criticism, as if to verify Judith Fetterley's theory about the 'immasculation of women by men'. Le Deuxieme Sexe argues that women have traditionally occupied a paradoxical position in their relations with men, playing the role of Other despite experiencing themselves, at least partially, as subjects in their own rights. Le Dernier Stendhal does give an extraordinary degree of agency and centrality to his female characters, though not primarily to those whom Beauvoir treats as most illustrative of her argument; indeed, while she admires all of Stendhal's heroines for their unusual independence of character, she gives his less flagrantly autonomous females a privileged place in her essay. In an article published in 1965, Beauvoir proposes that the specificity of literature lies in its simultaneous affirmation and transcendence of people's separation from the other people.
