ABSTRACT
Simone de Beauvoir's portrait of la femme independante comes in the concluding section of Le Deuxieme Sexe entitled 'Vers la liberation'. One obvious response to the question is that la femme independante is Simone de Beauvoir herself. Much of Le Deuxieme Sexe is devoted to an analysis of la femme vassale, since that is the role which women have played, in Beauvoir's view, for most of history. Economic independence via paid work is the minimum condition of her existence, though Beauvoir recognizes that by no means all employment is liberatory. Beauvoir identifies a double bind for the Independent Woman. The portrait of la femme independante, which this chapter shows the extent nevertheless to which Beauvoir conceives of the 1949 Independent Woman as also participating in multiple other subject positions. In a parallel analysis Beauvoir describes the charade performed by the intellectual woman who attempts to act out the dumb blonde role.
