ABSTRACT
Simone de Beauvoir's portrait of the ideal independent woman in The Second Sex offers a grim view of the emancipated woman's sexual choices in pre-war Europe. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir relies heavily on psychoanalytic theory to describe the little girl's descent into passivity and objectification. Simone de Beauvoir always publicly denied having sex with her students and women. In psychological terms, one could say that such sexism is traumatizing because any narcissistic gratification for a woman is dependent on her ability to be a reflection; that is, she obtains approval from her family and her social sphere for obliterating herself. The trauma of sexism, in the case of Simone de Beauvoir, could be the development of such a split self, insofar as it facilitated feelings of in authenticity and destructive interpersonal relationships. Psychological contingency had no place in Sartre's existentialism and, de Beauvoir's status as a woman meant fundamentally that she had fewer choices than he did.
