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Since time immemorial, society has been less cooperative towards women. Till today, feminists all over the world struggle to obtain equality between the genders. The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir is not a personal examination of the image of women in the western world, but a social critique on the hypocritical institutions in society.
With the help of psychoanalysis, anthropology, biology, and sociology, she examines different reasons for the isolation of women in the society.
The entire book is divided into two main volumes namely Volume One: Facts and Myths and Volume Two: Lived Experience. Volume one of the book deals with how women came to hold a secondary position in society as compared to men. Through biology, psychoanalysis and historical materialism, the author reveals the essential difference between men and women and how women take their inferior status for granted.
Through the course of history, she finds that women have been subjugated without any kind of justification. The next section consists of the mythical representation of women through the portrayal of five modern writers. Volume two of The Second Sex deals with realities of the present world by tracing the journey of women from birth to old age. It generally deals with various situations in a woman`s life and how at every stage they are forced to live a life depending on society rather than their own free will.
Highly controversial while dealing with aspects such as marital life, menstruation, and motherhood, the author’s views are very different from the opinions that exist in society today.
When the book was published in France in 1949 and in the US in 1953, it aroused a lot of controversy and the Vatican placed it in the Index of Forbidden Books.ISBN - 9780099499381
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Pages : 848
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