The Second Sex (78 page)
Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
Because it is the man who “takes” the woman—and especially when there is a good supply of women—he has rather more possibilities for choosing. But since the sexual act is considered a
service
imposed on the woman and upon which are founded the advantages conceded to her, it is logical to ignore her own preferences. Marriage is intended to defend her against man’s freedom: but as there is neither love nor individuality without freedom, she must renounce the love of a particular individual to ensure the protection of a male for life. I heard a mother of a family teach her daughters that “love is a vulgar sentiment reserved for men and unknown to women of good standing.” In a naive form, this was the very doctrine Hegel professed in
Phenomenology of Spirit:
The relationships of mother and wife, however, are those of particular individuals, partly in the form of something natural pertaining to desire, partly in the form of something negative which sees in those relationships only something evanescent and also, again, the particular individual is for that very reason a contingent element which can be replaced by another individual. In the ethical household, it is not a question of
this
particular husband,
this
particular child, but simply of husband and children generally; the relationships of the woman are based, not on feeling, but on the universal. The difference between the ethical life of the woman and that of the man consists just in this, that in her vocation as an individual and in her pleasure, her interest is centred on the universal and remains alien to the
particularity of desire; whereas in the husband these two sides are separated; and since he possesses as a citizen the self-conscious power of universality, he thereby acquires the right of desire and, at the same time, preserves his freedom in regard to it. Since, then, in this relationship of the wife there is an admixture of particularity, her ethical life is not pure; but in so far as it
is
ethical, the particularity is a matter of indifference, and the wife is without the moment of knowing herself as
this
particular self in the other partner.
This points out that for a woman it is not at all a question of establishing individual relations with a chosen husband, but rather of justifying the exercise of her feminine functions in their generality; she should have sexual pleasure only in a generic form and not an individualized one; this results in two essential consequences that touch upon her erotic destiny. First, she has no right to sexual activity outside marriage; for both spouses, sexual congress becoming an institution, desire and pleasure are superseded by the interest of society; but man, as worker and citizen transcending toward the universal, can savor contingent pleasures prior to marriage and outside of married life: in any case, he finds satisfaction in other ways; but in a world where woman is essentially defined as female, she must be justified wholly as a female. Second, it has been seen that the connection between the general and the particular is biologically different for the male and the female: in accomplishing his specific task as husband and reproducer, the male unfailingly finds his sexual pleasure;
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on the contrary, very often for the woman, there is a dissociation between the reproductive function and sexual pleasure. This is so to the extent that in claiming to give ethical dignity to her erotic life, marriage, in fact, means to suppress it.
Woman’s sexual frustration has been deliberately accepted by men; it has been seen that men rely on an optimistic naturalism to tolerate her frustrations: it is her lot; the biblical curse confirms men’s convenient opinion. Pregnancy’s pains—the heavy ransom inflicted on the woman in exchange for a brief and uncertain pleasure—are often the object of various jokes. “Five minutes of pleasure: nine months of pain … It goes in more easily than it comes out.” This contrast often makes them laugh. It is part of this sadistic philosophy: many men relish feminine misery and are repulsed by
the idea of reducing it.
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One can understand, then, that males have no scruples about denying their companion sexual happiness; and it even seems advantageous to them to deny woman the temptations of desire along with the autonomy of pleasure.
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This is what Montaigne expresses with a charming cynicism:
And so it is a kind of incest to employ in this venerable and sacred alliance the efforts and extravagances of amorous license, as it seems to me I have said elsewhere. A man, says Aristotle, should touch his wife prudently and soberly, lest if he caresses her too lasciviously the pleasure should transport her outside the bounds of reason … I see no marriages that sooner are troubled and fail than those that progress by means of beauty and amorous desires. It needs more solid and stable foundations, and we need to go at it circumspectly; this ebullient ardor is no good for it … A good marriage, if such there be, rejects the company and conditions of love.
He also says:
Even the pleasures they get in making love to their wives are condemned, unless moderation is observed; and … it is possible to err through licentiousness and debauchery, just as in an illicit affair.
Those shameless excesses that our first heat suggests to us in this sport are not only indecently but detrimentally practiced on our wives. Let them at least learn shamelessness from another hand. They are always aroused enough for our need … Marriage is a religious and holy bond. That is why the pleasure we derive from it should be a restrained pleasure, serious, and mixed with some austerity; it should be a somewhat discreet and conscientious voluptuousness.
In fact, if the husband awakens feminine sensuality, he awakens it in its general form, since he was not singularly chosen by her; he is preparing his wife to seek pleasure in other arms; “to love one’s wife too well,” says Montaigne, is to “shit in your hat and then put it on your head.” He admits in good faith that masculine prudence puts the woman in a thankless situation:
Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them. There is naturally strife and wrangling between them and us … we treat them inconsiderately in the following way. We have discovered … that they are incomparably more capable and ardent than we in the acts of love … we have gone and given women continence as their particular share, and upon utmost and extreme penalties … We, on the contrary, want them to be healthy, vigorous, plump, well-nourished, and chaste at the same time: that is to say, both hot and cold. For marriage, which we say has the function of keeping them from burning, brings them but little cooling off, according to our ways.
Proudhon is less scrupulous: according to him, separating love from marriage conforms to justice:
Love must be buried in justice … all love conversations, even between people who are engaged, even between husband and wife, are unsuitable, destructive of domestic respect, of the love of work, and of the practice of one’s social duty… (once the function of love has been fulfilled)… we have to discard it like the shepherd who removes the rennet once the milk has coagulated.
Yet, during the nineteenth century, conceptions of the bourgeoisie changed somewhat; it ardently strove to defend and maintain marriage; and besides, the progress of individualism made it impossible to stifle feminine
claims; Saint-Simon, Fourier, George Sand, and all the Romantics had too intensely proclaimed the right to love. The problem arose of integrating into marriage those individual feelings that had previously and carelessly been excluded. It was thus that the ambiguous notion of conjugal love was invented, miraculous fruit of the traditional marriage of convenience. Balzac expresses the ideas of the conservative bourgeoisie in all their inconsequence. He recognizes that the principle of marriage has nothing to do with love; but he finds it repugnant to assimilate a respectable institution with a simple business deal where the woman is treated like a thing; and he ends up with the disconcerting inconsistencies in
The Physiology of Marriage
, where we read:
Marriage can be considered politically, civilly, or morally, as a law, a contract, or an institution …
Thus marriage ought to be an object of general respect. Society has only considered it under these three heads—they dominate the marriage question.
Most men who get married have only in view reproduction, propriety, or what is due to the child; yet neither reproduction, propriety, nor the child constitute happiness.
“Crescite et multiplicamini”
*
does not imply love. To ask a girl whom one has seen fourteen times in a fortnight for her love on behalf of the law, the king and justice, is an absurdity only worthy of the fore-ordained!
This is as clear as Hegelian theory. But Balzac continues without any transition:
Love is the union of desire and tenderness, and happiness in marriage comes from a perfect understanding between two souls. And from this it follows that to be happy a man is obliged to bind himself by certain rules of honour and delicacy. After having enjoyed the privilege of the social laws which consecrate desire, he should obey the secret laws of nature which bring to birth the affections. If his happiness depends on being loved, he himself must love sincerely; nothing can withstand true passion.
But to be passionate is always to desire.
Can one always desire one’s wife?
Yes.
After that, Balzac exposes the science of marriage. But one quickly sees that for the husband it is not a question of being loved but of not being deceived: he will not hesitate to inflict a debilitating regime on his wife, to keep her uncultured, and to stultify her solely to safeguard his honor. Is this still about love? If one wants to find a meaning in these murky and incoherent ideas, it seems man has the right to choose a wife through whom he can satisfy his needs in their generality, a generality that is the guarantee of his faithfulness: then it is up to him to waken his wife’s love by applying certain recipes. But is he really
in love
if he marries for his property or for his posterity? And if he is not, how can his passion be irresistible enough to bring about a reciprocal passion? And does Balzac really not know that an unshared love, on the contrary, annoys and disgusts? His bad faith is clearly visible in the
Letters of Two Brides
, an epistolary novel with a message. Louise de Chaulieu believes that marriage is based on love: she kills her first husband by her excessive passion; she dies from the jealous fixation she feels for her second. Renée de l’Estorade sacrifices her feelings to reason: but the joys of motherhood mostly compensate her, and she builds a stable happiness. One wonders first what curse—except the author’s own decree—deprives the amorous Louise of the motherhood she desires: love has never prevented conception; and one also thinks that to accept her husband’s embraces joyfully, Renée had to accept this “hypocrisy” Stendhal hated in “honest women.” Balzac describes the wedding night in these words:
“The animal that we call a husband,” to quote your words, disappeared, and one balmy evening I discovered in his stead a lover, whose words thrilled me and on whose arm I leant with pleasure beyond words … I felt a fluttering of curiosity in my heart… [Know that] nothing was lacking either of satisfaction for the most fastidious sentiment, or of that unexpectedness which brings, in a sense, its own sanction. Every witchery of imagination, of passion, of reluctance overcome, of the ideal passing into reality, played its part.
This beautiful miracle must not have occurred too often, since, several letters later, we find Renée in tears: “Formerly I was a person, now I am a chattel”; and she consoles herself after her nights “of conjugal love” by reading Bonald. But one would nevertheless like to know what recipe was used for the husband to change into an enchanter, during the most difficult moment of feminine initiation; those Balzac gives in
The Physiology of
Marriage
are succinct—“Never begin marriage by rape”—or vague: “The genius of the husband lies in deftly handling the various shades of pleasure, in developing them, and endowing them with a new style, an original expression.” He quickly goes on to say, moreover, that “between two people who do not love one another, this genius is wanton”; then, precisely, Renée does not love Louis; and as he is depicted, where does this “genius” come from? In truth, Balzac has cynically skirted the problem. He underestimates the fact that there are no neutral feelings and that in the absence of love, constraints, together with boredom, engender tender friendship less easily than resentment, impatience, and hostility. He is more sincere in
The Lily in the Valley
, and the destiny of the unfortunate Mme de Mortsauf seems to be far less instructive.
Reconciling marriage and love is such a feat that at the very least divine intervention is necessary; this is the solution Kierkegaard adopts after complicated detours. He likes to denounce the paradox of marriage:
Indeed, what a passing strange device is marriage! And what makes it all the stranger is that it could be a step taken without thought. And yet no step is more decisive … And such an important step as marriage ought to be taken without reflection!
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This is the difficulty: love and falling in love are spontaneous, marriage is a decision; yet falling in love should be awakened by marriage or by decision: wanting to marry; this means that what is the most spontaneous must at the same time be the freest decision, and what is, because of the spontaneity, so inexplicable that it must be attributed to a divinity, must at the same time take place because of reflection and such exhausting reflection that a decision results from it. Besides, these things must not follow each other, the decision must not come sneaking up behind; everything must occur simultaneously, the two things have to come together at the moment of dénouement.
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