Responses to The Second Sex: 1962–79

Abstract

There is an extensive literature on The Second Sex, enough now to justify a book in its own right. I propose to devote three chapters of the present work to summarizing this secondary literature; then I shall offer a further, final chapter in which I propose to reply to the main criticisms of The Second Sex and defend de Beauvoir against these criticisms. The present chapter concentrates on the responses contained in the following works: M. Cranston, ‘Simone de Beauvoir’, in J. Cruickshank (ed.), The Novelist as Philosopher (1962); R. Cottrell, Simone de Beauvoir (1975); J. Leighton, Simone de Beauvoir on Woman (1975); and K. Bieber, Simone de Beauvoir (1979).