The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

Simone de Beauvoir 1949

The Second Sex

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Source: The Second Sex, 1949, translated by H M Parshley, Penguin 1972;
Written: in French and first published as Le Deuxième Sexe, in 1949;
First Published in English: by Jonathan Cape in 1953;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden for the Value_of_Knowledge website, 1998;
Proofread: from the Penguin edition by Andy Blunden, February 2005.

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Sixty years after its initial publication, The Second Sex is still as eye-opening and pertinent as ever. This triumphant and genuinely revolutionary book began as an exceptional woman’s attempt to find out who and what she was. Drawing on extensive interviews with women of every age and station of life, masterfully synthesizing research about women’s bodies and psyches as well as their historic and economic roles, The Second Sex is an encyclopedic and cogently argued document about inequality and enforced “otherness.”

This long-awaited new translation pays particular attention to the existentialist terms and French nuances that may have been misconstrued in the first English edition; restores Beauvoir’s phrasing, rhythms, and tone; and reinstates significant portions of the “Myths” and “History” chapters that were originally cut due to length, including accounts of more than seventy female figures.

A vital and life-changing work that has dramatically revised the way women talk and think about themselves, Beauvoir’s magisterial treatise continues to provoke and inspire.

Read full book here:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1, The Data of Biology
• Chapter 2: The Psychoanalytic Point of View
• Chapter 3: The Point of View of Historical Materialism
• From Part II of The Second Sex. 
• Conclusion

• On the publication of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir 1963 
• Interview with Simone de Beauvoir 1976 - The second sex 25 years later

• Simone de Beauvoir - Quotes