Woman in love

Simone de Beauvoir’s account of the woman in love describes more than an intense private feeling: it is a way of seeking existence through a man who has been made to appear absolute. The lover’s devotion can seem like freedom because she chooses to exalt him, yet its promise rests on dependence. She hopes to lose herself in a sovereign beloved and thereby become complete; instead, his ordinary limits and refusal to be possessed expose the solitude built into that dream.

Love as an unequal vocation

Beauvoir begins with a difference in the meaning assigned to love. For a man, love may be an important occupation among others in a life whose center remains his own projects; for a woman, whom social conditions have confined to dependence, love can be made to stand for life itself. The contrast is not, she insists, a law of nature. It reflects the unequal situations in which men and women learn to understand themselves and one another.

The man who experiences himself as a subject can pursue aims and extend his reach into the world through action. The woman, by contrast, is directed toward him as the sovereign and essential being, while she is treated as relative and inessential. If she has not relinquished her claim to be fully human, she may hope to surpass her assigned position by joining herself to the man who seems to embody what she cannot realize alone. Love offers an escape from dependence that works by accepting dependence completely.

That acceptance can feel like an act of choice. Rather than simply obey parents, a husband, or a protector, the woman may choose to serve the man she loves as if he were a god. She exalts him through her body, feelings, and conduct, makes him the supreme measure of reality, and effaces herself before him. Dependence thereby assumes the appearance of freedom, and love becomes a religion: devotion promises to transform submission into a chosen path toward the absolute.

The beloved as a mirror and an absolute

The promise of self-loss contains a desire for self-possession. Beauvoir distinguishes the woman’s dream of annihilation from simple self-erasure: as in religious adoration, surrendering wholly to an idol is also a hope that the idol will grant her possession of herself and of the world he seems to contain. Often what she first seeks from a lover is confirmation and exaltation of her own existence. Having imagined herself as seen through a man’s eyes, she may believe that she has finally found herself in his gaze; to be loved in return can itself awaken her love.

This dependence on recognition makes the beloved more than a particular man. A young woman may initially seek participation in masculinity through being loved, and become favorably disposed toward men as representatives of male superiority. The qualities that seem to prove this superiority vary—physical strength, elegance, wealth, culture, intelligence, authority, social position, or a military uniform—but the hope is for one man to gather into himself the whole essence of man. Familiarity then tests the ideal against the contingent person: prestige can fall away with a first kiss, ordinary contact, or the wedding night. Love at a distance remains fantasy; when desire is physically consummated, the imagined devotion becomes passionate love, with the body and the need for recognition bound together.

The body, surrender, and the need for love

Beauvoir describes erotic surrender as a passage through an altered relation to the self. In physical intimacy, a woman may experience herself as passive, anonymous, and effaced, as though losing herself were a route into something whole. But when the man withdraws, the spell breaks: she is returned to the bed and the light as a person with a name and face, and may feel herself reduced to a conquered object. The lover’s gaze then becomes necessary—not simply as further desire, but as reassurance that can reunite her with the fullness she briefly felt she had entered.

If the man’s desire subsides while she remains attached to the experience, her sensuality can turn into feeling and expectation. A promise of enduring love gives the moment a future: what might otherwise remain a painful memory becomes a cherished pledge, and pleasure can be understood as a gift rather than a defeat. In this transformation, Beauvoir sees why the woman in love may give erotic experience a mystical cast. She longs to efface herself within the beloved and, through that surrender, to exist as though sovereignly united with him. Yet the longing contains a paradox: she seeks salvation in love, while the idolatrous form of love can require her to disavow herself.

Recognition, dependence, and disillusion

The beloved’s acknowledgment can seem to resolve the conflict. When he speaks of the pair as a “we,” the woman feels included in his identity, sharing his prestige and authority over a world in which she had been secondary. So long as she loves, is loved, and believes herself necessary to him, this arrangement may offer peace: even second place feels secure if it is hers permanently. Beauvoir associates this possible happiness with Mlle Aïssé beside Knight d’Aydie before religious scruples disturbed her, and with Juliette Drouet in the shadow of Victor Hugo.

But a man is present and finite, not a divine absence sustained by the believer’s own fervor. His limitations make the woman’s ideal vulnerable to disappointment, while her decision to treat him as indispensable deepens her dependence. Beauvoir contrasts women’s consuming heartbreak with examples of male grief that, however intense, need not consume an entire life: Benjamin Constant recovered from his desire to die for Juliette Récamier within a year, while Stendhal’s regret for Métilde enriched rather than destroyed his life. For the woman who has made herself wholly dependent, love instead risks becoming a private hell, figured through the Little Mermaid’s painful walk on needles and burning coals.

Idolatrous love also mistakes the beloved’s value. It makes him absolute, although he has lacks and limitations; observers may recognize the excess even when the woman cannot, and the discovery of his mediocrity can wound her because she chose to give herself to him. Beauvoir sets this ideal against authentic love, which would accept the other person’s contingency and become a relation between human beings rather than a promised salvation. The central injury is not merely that the beloved falls short of a fantasy: the woman has been encouraged to stake her own justification on a person who cannot—and does not—possess the power to justify her.

The impasse of idolatrous love

Beauvoir rejects the claim that women’s self-effacement is simply a natural destiny or a straightforward form of masochism. Its roots lie, in her account, in a social condition that trains women to know themselves as other and to locate their being in a man’s recognition. Love then becomes an attempt to overcome imposed dependence by embracing it. But consent cannot make dependence reciprocal: the woman may fear that the man who holds her destiny can undo her, while he remains a separate subject rather than surrendering himself to her in return. The desired union can therefore turn into loneliness, conflict, and even hatred.

The culture that calls love a woman’s supreme achievement conceals this asymmetry. Men may praise a woman who makes her life an offering, yet resist the claims that such an offering would entail. Her gifts can exasperate the man who encouraged her to give; she is left confronting the uselessness of those gifts and the emptiness of a life organized around them. Beauvoir’s conclusion is conditional rather than dismissive of love: when women can love from strength, affirm themselves instead of fleeing themselves, and meet men without dependence, love can become a source of life rather than mortal danger. Under present conditions, however, idolatrous devotion concentrates the wider injustice of a feminine world that denies self-sufficiency and offers a sterile hell as its supposed salvation.

The impasse of idolatrous love

Beauvoir rejects the claim that women’s self-effacement is simply a natural destiny or a straightforward form of masochism. Its roots lie, in her account, in a social condition that trains women to know themselves as other and to locate their being in a man’s recognition. Love then becomes an attempt to overcome imposed dependence by embracing it. But consent cannot make dependence reciprocal: the woman may fear that the man who holds her destiny can undo her, while he remains a separate subject rather than surrendering himself to her in return. The desired union can therefore turn into loneliness, conflict, and even hatred.

The culture that calls love a woman’s supreme achievement conceals this asymmetry. Men may praise a woman who makes her life an offering, yet resist the claims that such an offering would entail. Her gifts can exasperate the man who encouraged her to give; she is left confronting the uselessness of those gifts and the emptiness of a life organized around them. Beauvoir’s conclusion is conditional rather than dismissive of love: when women can love from strength, affirm themselves instead of fleeing themselves, and meet men without dependence, love can become a source of life rather than mortal danger. Under present conditions, however, idolatrous devotion concentrates the wider injustice of a feminine world that denies self-sufficiency and offers a sterile hell as its supposed salvation.