I remained faithful to my declared intention of turning all that life imposed on me to my own purposes.
--from The Prime of Life, by Simone de Beauvoir
Today is your 100th birthday, Simone! Joyeux anniversaire!
How I wish you were alive today. I will write this as if you are, because I feel you are alive, in spirit. In my mind and in my soul. :-)
In the last six months, since I began reading the first volume of your autobiographies, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, you have possessed me.
Revolutionized my thinking. Caused me to want to read everything you wrote. Deepened my convictions about the need for gender equality. Broadened my understanding of the place of women in history as well as what it means to be a woman. Convinced me of the importance of lifelong study of issues important to me, thus becoming more strongly independent-minded. Inspired me to not be afraid of anything: go after what I believe in, go after what I want, and not be bothered by what other people think...to keep an open, inquiring mind.
You have ignited my passion concerning women's issues!
I have been inspired by some great male thinkers in history, but to feel energized by a great female thinker and doer such as yourself brings inspiration to a whole new dimension! Men cannot hope to understand everything, especially about women--because they are not women! The world needs more women like you.
I hope that there will come a day in my lifetime that women such as yourself will not be a rarity. That the bright women today are no longer hidden in the masses. When both women and men will respect brilliant women and be inspired by them, not threatened or intimidated by them. Nor be reduced to saying stupid, sarcastic, and offensive things about women who have their own mind. Things like: a woman is something less of a woman if she is not a mother, doesn't have a man in her life, or has too much ambition in her career pursuits. Or that she must be frigid because of any of the aforementioned things.
Things haven't changed that much for women since The Second Sex published nearly 60 years ago, or maybe even the last 22 years since you departed this earth. Sure, there have been improvements in varying degrees, especially since the feminist movement of the 70's. But it's not enough. If it were, we wouldn't have the problems tied to gender inequality we have today that have been around for a long time: domestic violence, violence against women with impunity, the spread of AIDS--especially among women and girls in developing countries, sex trafficking, pay inequality, etc.
Research shows that gender inequality is the root of many ages-old and newer problems mentioned above. Anyone can find detailed information on this on the internet; the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is a great place to start, and discover what research leading to progressive policy changes is happening around the world today.
I have become obsessed now with reading everything you wrote! I hope to accomplish this in 2008...you were quite prolific! Few writers have had the effect of causing me to want to read everything they wrote, so consider yourself lucky. ;-) A few of them you've read: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Dickens, and Shakespeare. I've read all but one of the first's popular novels, the two major ones of the second, and working on the third, thanks to a recent Christmas gift from my dear mother in-law. The last, I also love, but I consider him the most challenging, so I don't feel as time-pressed to read everything!
The other writer you probably don't know, since most of her work was published after your passing: Banana Yoshimoto, from Japan. The only person whose work I've read entirely thus far. It's only fitting that she's a woman, isn't it? Women first! ;-)
So far, I've read your first two autobiographical volumes, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (which got me hooked on your work from the start) and The Prime of Life (which hooked me even more), The Ethics of Ambiguity (which I need to reread after I read a primer on philosophy since I remember nothing from my intro class 20+ years ago, and I was not entirely awake when I read it), and The Second Sex (I LOVE it).
I cannot do justice to The Second Sex in describing it to others. Many have written about it, but I think you expressed your thoughts on your very own work the best, when you wrote about it in your third autobiographical volume, Force of Circumstance--which I haven't read and am going on the word of the site where I found it, and which I must share with the world: On the Publication of The Second Sex.
What I have done in your honor is to read everything you wrote, read as much as I can on feminism and women's issues from as many viewpoints as possible so that when the day comes when I decide to open my mouth publicly and/or write as prolificly as you did (at least, in spirit!), I will have a clue as to what I'm talking about.
So you see, you need not worry that I'm blindly and slavishly reading only your work! I've only just begun my quest to reach out to others' work. I have read Gloria Steinem and bell hooks. hooks, who doesn't use capital letters when writing her name, wrote a very cool primer/handbook: Feminism is for Everybody. In it, she provided a very clear and straightforward definition of feminism that everyone can embrace:
Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
Who can disagree with that, except those who are the most close-minded, insecure, and ignorant?!
And since I'm such a devotee of yours, I'm leaving reviews on amazon.com for each work of yours I read. It may not be the most well-written among the others, but a lot of respect, admiration and love went into reading your work, writing about it, and sharing it. A good site where others can find out more about you is The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Or for a fresh (and shorter) look at your life, Spiegel Online International published a wonderful article in honor of your 100th birthday, today. ;-)
You've become my mentor in spirit, my inspiration to reach for higher achievements, and my heroine, because of what you represented: you were your own woman, you did what you wanted to do on your own terms, you were seemingly unafraid to do anything in life--including challenging men, and helping countless women. Myself included.
The quote I put at the beginning of this dedication to you is forever seared into my memory. I turn to it whenever I am in doubt, or feel weighted down by illness, or by life circumstances. I reflect on it when I'm in good spirits as well. It gives me a big boost!
If I was writing this 25 years ago, I could maybe write something coherent to you in French, with five years of study under my belt...fractured French! Then I'd be too embarrassed to send it to you! But I barely knew you existed then. :-(
Fortunately, I know about you, NOW. :-)
I can only imagine the amount of work you might have produced had you lived at least until today, your 100th birthday, and in the internet age, no less!
Merci beaucoup, Simone. Et bon anniversaire!
Showing posts with label Simone de Beauvoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Simone de Beauvoir. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Friday, November 16, 2007
I Didn't Aspire To Be A Domestic Goddess
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with it's endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
-Simone de Beauvoir
-from The Second Sex
Merci, Simone, for expressing my thoughts exactly on housework and putting them on paper before I even was born! You are my newfound heroine, inspiration, and mentor from beyond! I am in the process of devouring everything you wrote and I will dedicate a post to you on your 100th birthday next January. :-)
For now, I am publicly admitting that I am not a domestic goddess. That's a fancy, modern day term for housewife. I never yearned to be one. Ever. It would drive me insane.
I say kudos to the generations of housewives who have fed, clothed, and kept their families living in relative neatness and cleanliness. We wouldn't be here without them!
However, I don't fit that category. My apartment is evidence of that! %-0 It's not a pigsty but neither is it a Macy's showroom. Daily cleaning is BORING. I'm talking about thorough cleaning beyond just cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen or bathroom, like daily dusting, vacuuming, cleaning floors.
Cooking is also part of housework. Cooking is essential, and I like to cook the things I like to eat, but I am not a chef--though I do like to pat myself on the back when a dish turns out especially good. It's much more enjoyable to feast on other people's fine dining, like my family's or friends' or at a restaurant. ;-)
Referring back to de Beauvoir's words, it is the montony of housekeeping that I relate to. Having read half of her four volume autobiographical series, I can tell she was no housekeeper. She was an intellectual since her youth. She had no intention of ever submitting to the "service" of marriage and motherhood. And she didn't. She was too busy teaching and writing. She was a woman ahead of her times: freethinking and independent in her own right. She challenged women to think for themselves and become their own person. She laid the foundation for modern-day feminists.
Thinking about dust bunnies was not high on her to-do list. Nor mine--until I see them...and I have poor eyesight anyway!
What is the torture of Sisyphus, to which Simone de Beauvoir refers in the quote? Sisyphus, according to Greek mythology, was a king punished in the Tartarus (either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades or the entire underworld with Hades being the hellish component) to roll a huge boulder up a hill for eternity. The catch was that before he reached the top of the hill, the rock would always escape him and would have to begin again! %-0
That sounds EXACTLY like ironing to me! Torture. Repetitive torture at that! I hate ironing. But it's a necessary evil; I iron because I don't like to wear wrinkly clothes. I have wrinkly clothes because I've never liked to use a dryer unless I have to in emergency. I hang them out. Just as my mom has done probably her whole life. Freshly hung clothes smell better and last longer. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and they'd all be smooth, straight out of the washing machine! I can't think of a more mind-numbing activity than ironing. :-(
If I know company is coming, which is very rare for hubby and myself (as in a few times a year or less), I go on a mad cleaning rampage: I put on some kind of racy classical music in the cd player, while I wash and vacuum the floors, and make everything non-cluttered and clean as can be in a few hours' time! Yes, I wait until the last minute. That's how much I think of the the task of housework.
And no, I don't like looking at dust, much less dirt. I'll take care of it in due time thank you very much. Dirt first. We don't wear shoes in the apartment, so that helps a lot. I don't let company wear their shoes in our home, either, if they're going to stay awhile.
Clutter is another matter. I do try to make "neat" piles of stuff. It's hard! Hubby is a pack-rat, as is his dad and my family. I save a lot, too, but I try to organize it, or at worst, hide stuff in drawers until I get to it in another life. ;-) Hubby's worse than me: he'll even save cardboard boxes. He might have to send back an item someday he says. Hah! %-(
When we left our house four years ago, we had an attic PACKED with old boxes! A fire hazard, indeed! NEVER AGAIN, I proclaimed. He even took the words right out of my mouth one day recently: "I didn't sign up to be a WAREHOUSE manager!" Darn right I didn't, mister.
Hubby's favorite line to me whenever I make noise about clutter: "What's it hurting you? Don't you have more important things to think about?"
* BIG sigh*!
Well, of course I do. He's right. I DO have more better things to think about, like keeping abreast of new developments in my field of massage therapy, or devouring the work of Simone de Beauvoir or any other feminist, or reading about things Chinese. That's plenty to keep my mind busy. I made a vow to myself long ago that I wanted my life to have a feverish quality about it: to be as involved as possible through mind, body and soul in pursuing what I enjoy and what I believe in.
I think of myself as a woman finally on the blazing path to realizing her dreams, but still pulled back now and then by the nitty gritty details of life: serious illness and death among friends and family/relatives (six already this year). Somehow, the serious and sad parts are easier for me to accept than the mundane details of housekeeping.
It is my good fortune I hooked up with a progressive-thinking man who is not a neat freak. I just don't want too much clutter and dust! Is it because I'm a woman, conditioned by society that it's the woman's job to upkeep the home?
Even though The Second Sex was written over a half century ago, I think that Simone's views on housework and other topics are still pretty much as true today as when she wrote them. It is what I observe in some, but not all, relatives and friends. Impatient and ignorant reviewers on amazon.com will say she's boring and outdated, but I don't agree.
On housework:
"...woman's work within the home gives her no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it does not open out on the future, it produces nothing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as it is linked with existent beings who reach out beyond themselves, transcend themselves, toward society in production and action. That is, far from freeing the matron, her occupation makes her dependent upon husband and children; she is justified through them; but in their lives, she is only an inessential intermediary."
I like to keep in mind her words: "in order to find a hearth and home within oneself, one must first have found self-realization in works or in deeds". For myself, it is more important to invest my time nourishing my mind and body than to spend time making my home look physically beautiful.
Dust bunnies will never rule my day! %-0
* * * *
At worst, a house unkept, cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
-Rose Macaulay, prolific poet and novelist
-Simone de Beauvoir
-from The Second Sex
Merci, Simone, for expressing my thoughts exactly on housework and putting them on paper before I even was born! You are my newfound heroine, inspiration, and mentor from beyond! I am in the process of devouring everything you wrote and I will dedicate a post to you on your 100th birthday next January. :-)
For now, I am publicly admitting that I am not a domestic goddess. That's a fancy, modern day term for housewife. I never yearned to be one. Ever. It would drive me insane.
I say kudos to the generations of housewives who have fed, clothed, and kept their families living in relative neatness and cleanliness. We wouldn't be here without them!
However, I don't fit that category. My apartment is evidence of that! %-0 It's not a pigsty but neither is it a Macy's showroom. Daily cleaning is BORING. I'm talking about thorough cleaning beyond just cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen or bathroom, like daily dusting, vacuuming, cleaning floors.
Cooking is also part of housework. Cooking is essential, and I like to cook the things I like to eat, but I am not a chef--though I do like to pat myself on the back when a dish turns out especially good. It's much more enjoyable to feast on other people's fine dining, like my family's or friends' or at a restaurant. ;-)
Referring back to de Beauvoir's words, it is the montony of housekeeping that I relate to. Having read half of her four volume autobiographical series, I can tell she was no housekeeper. She was an intellectual since her youth. She had no intention of ever submitting to the "service" of marriage and motherhood. And she didn't. She was too busy teaching and writing. She was a woman ahead of her times: freethinking and independent in her own right. She challenged women to think for themselves and become their own person. She laid the foundation for modern-day feminists.
Thinking about dust bunnies was not high on her to-do list. Nor mine--until I see them...and I have poor eyesight anyway!
What is the torture of Sisyphus, to which Simone de Beauvoir refers in the quote? Sisyphus, according to Greek mythology, was a king punished in the Tartarus (either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades or the entire underworld with Hades being the hellish component) to roll a huge boulder up a hill for eternity. The catch was that before he reached the top of the hill, the rock would always escape him and would have to begin again! %-0
That sounds EXACTLY like ironing to me! Torture. Repetitive torture at that! I hate ironing. But it's a necessary evil; I iron because I don't like to wear wrinkly clothes. I have wrinkly clothes because I've never liked to use a dryer unless I have to in emergency. I hang them out. Just as my mom has done probably her whole life. Freshly hung clothes smell better and last longer. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and they'd all be smooth, straight out of the washing machine! I can't think of a more mind-numbing activity than ironing. :-(
If I know company is coming, which is very rare for hubby and myself (as in a few times a year or less), I go on a mad cleaning rampage: I put on some kind of racy classical music in the cd player, while I wash and vacuum the floors, and make everything non-cluttered and clean as can be in a few hours' time! Yes, I wait until the last minute. That's how much I think of the the task of housework.
And no, I don't like looking at dust, much less dirt. I'll take care of it in due time thank you very much. Dirt first. We don't wear shoes in the apartment, so that helps a lot. I don't let company wear their shoes in our home, either, if they're going to stay awhile.
Clutter is another matter. I do try to make "neat" piles of stuff. It's hard! Hubby is a pack-rat, as is his dad and my family. I save a lot, too, but I try to organize it, or at worst, hide stuff in drawers until I get to it in another life. ;-) Hubby's worse than me: he'll even save cardboard boxes. He might have to send back an item someday he says. Hah! %-(
When we left our house four years ago, we had an attic PACKED with old boxes! A fire hazard, indeed! NEVER AGAIN, I proclaimed. He even took the words right out of my mouth one day recently: "I didn't sign up to be a WAREHOUSE manager!" Darn right I didn't, mister.
Hubby's favorite line to me whenever I make noise about clutter: "What's it hurting you? Don't you have more important things to think about?"
* BIG sigh*!
Well, of course I do. He's right. I DO have more better things to think about, like keeping abreast of new developments in my field of massage therapy, or devouring the work of Simone de Beauvoir or any other feminist, or reading about things Chinese. That's plenty to keep my mind busy. I made a vow to myself long ago that I wanted my life to have a feverish quality about it: to be as involved as possible through mind, body and soul in pursuing what I enjoy and what I believe in.
I think of myself as a woman finally on the blazing path to realizing her dreams, but still pulled back now and then by the nitty gritty details of life: serious illness and death among friends and family/relatives (six already this year). Somehow, the serious and sad parts are easier for me to accept than the mundane details of housekeeping.
It is my good fortune I hooked up with a progressive-thinking man who is not a neat freak. I just don't want too much clutter and dust! Is it because I'm a woman, conditioned by society that it's the woman's job to upkeep the home?
Even though The Second Sex was written over a half century ago, I think that Simone's views on housework and other topics are still pretty much as true today as when she wrote them. It is what I observe in some, but not all, relatives and friends. Impatient and ignorant reviewers on amazon.com will say she's boring and outdated, but I don't agree.
On housework:
"...woman's work within the home gives her no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it does not open out on the future, it produces nothing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as it is linked with existent beings who reach out beyond themselves, transcend themselves, toward society in production and action. That is, far from freeing the matron, her occupation makes her dependent upon husband and children; she is justified through them; but in their lives, she is only an inessential intermediary."
I like to keep in mind her words: "in order to find a hearth and home within oneself, one must first have found self-realization in works or in deeds". For myself, it is more important to invest my time nourishing my mind and body than to spend time making my home look physically beautiful.
Dust bunnies will never rule my day! %-0
* * * *
At worst, a house unkept, cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
-Rose Macaulay, prolific poet and novelist
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