A Feminist Reading of Simone de Beauvior’s ‘The Woman Destroyed’

Roger
Once Assistant Professor III
Aquinas University of Legazpi

All women think they are different;

they all think there are some things that will never happen to them;
and they are all wrong.
Monique, The Woman Destroyed

Introduction
There has been no era in human history where the issue on extra marital affair has been more
out in the open than in the contemporary society. The seventh commandment “Thou shall not commit
adultery,” violation of which was once considered a social crime and taboo with strong social
condemnation is not as strong as it has been. The Philippines, considered to be the only Catholic
country in Asia that forbids divorce as stated in its Family Code, is not exempt from this growing trend.
The issue, which is no longer an issue, proliferates as a main theme in the mass media - films such as
Mistress, In the Name of Love, My Neighbor’s Wife, No Other Woman, A Secret Affair; telenovelas such
as Ang Dalawang Mrs. Real, The Legal Wife, A Beautiful Affair, Etiquette for Mistresses; songs such Kabet
by Gagong Rapper. This theme has become dominant so as to make the contemporary man and
woman, married or unmarried, to be tolerant of extra marital affairs.
In an affair, it is almost as always that the woman, the wife, is considered to be at a loss. She is
at the receiving end of the husband’s infidelity. What has been promised is broken. Some perspectives
show that woman necessarily becomes devastated, destroyed, and powerless because trust is betrayed.
She believes that the commitment made guarantees faithfulness as it is grounded on trust. But some
questions may be worthy to be asked. Is trust the only one that defines the relationship? Is there an
other alternative?
Given such condition, the paper would look into the issue of extra marital affair as it unfolds in
Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Woman Destroyed.’ A critical analysis of the characters will be made on the
background of the feminist ideal. What destroys the woman? What defines the woman? How can she
or how does she overcome such devastation, destruction, betrayal? Is there another perspective that
must be seen? The notion of trust in a given promise defines the promised. The woman is free, to
define his own take and understanding of the relationship.

The story
The story is a woman’s story in a journal style. The entry begins on September 13 and ends on
March 24. It is an almost half-year period that presents a complete turn in the married and personal life
of the main characters - Monique and Maurice. They are married for 22 years, within which they
nurtured two daughters, Colette and Lucienne. Colette is now married to Jean-Pierre and Lucienne is in
America. Hence, both children are no longer in their house and living lives of their own. They live in
Paris, the city of love. Maurice is a doctor, not only a general practitioner but with specialization.
Monique is a housewife. They are in their early forties.
The years spent with each other as couple, for Monique, seemed to be a perfect one. She felt so
loved and cared for by her husband. Until one fateful midnight of September 27, the question was
dropped and she found the answer. Her husband has another woman in his life, Noellie Guerard. They
had been seeing each other for eight years. His confession unfolded, thus started the changes and
everything becomes questionable for her. What has been, what is, and what will be becomes uncertain
and indeterminable. The struggle came in. Having an affair breaks the promise.
The story opens up with a vivid description of a living afternoon. Monique saw her husband,
Maurice, off to attend a conference that would last a week. Their two daughters, Collette and Lucienne,
have their own lives to live. The former is married to Jean Pierre and the latter is in America. Her being
alone for the time being grants her both freedom and happiness. She claims, ‘… and here I am with
happiness of a forgotten kind given back to me. My freedom makes me twenty years younger.’ She is full
of life and an awareness of it which her husband so likes in her. And this new freedom has given her the
opportunity to reconstruct her life after giving everything to her family.
Her married life was entirely devoted to attending to the needs of her husband and two
daughters. She did not seek a job believing that her house work suffices. It is what is required of her and
what is asked of her. It is enough. Her belief is not something different as it is shared by many in the
patriarchal society. Married women are constructed to be bearers of offspring and nurture them. Erik
Erikson as quoted by Weissen sees that it is mature womanly fulfillment to harbor an inner space
destined to bear chosen men’s offspring and with it is a biological, psychological and ethical
commitment to take care of. Bruno Bettelheim thinks that women in a way as much as they want to be
good scientists or engineers, they want first and foremost to be womanly companions of men and
mothers (Weissen, 1969).
Monique’s life was full that she could extend her ‘nurturance’ to others. ‘I should find it hard to
bear if I were not entirely free to help the people who need me.’ This holds true as ‘liberation for
women will consist first in their attractiveness, so that second, they may obtain the kinds of homes and
the kinds of men, which will allow joyful altruism and nurturance (Weissen, 1969)’. She took care of
Marguerite, a juvenile delinquent whose direction in life was lost. Marguerite escaped from the center
out of boredom, weariness and despair, where for her the only option is either running away or
committing suicide.

The event unfolds

It was on a midnight after visiting Collette that the secret was revealed. For Monique, he used to
be always present when she needs him. His presence meant a lot to her. It’s the only thing that could
ease her mind. But on this occasion, he was not there. ‘But this is the first time in my life that I have a
serious worry that he does not share.’
Why was he absent? Her thoughts banked on work as the culprit. ‘His work now cuts him off
from me…He has let himself be eaten up by his profession… He was no longer interested in his private
life.’ But that is not only that. This shows her dependence upon him. A kind of dependence wrought by
the usual, what came to be normal and normative in her life. He used to be there so he must be there -
an unwritten agreement which clouded the present. ‘Each of us used to be able to see entirely into the
other.’ However what is left is silence. ‘After twenty two years of marriage one relies too much upon
silence.’ She feels betrayed.
Vicencio rightfully says ‘In a romantic triangle, we easily sympathize with the woman being
cheated on, especially if kids are involved. We are mad at the cheating boyfriend or husband, but we
look at them with a forgiving eye. Men are just men. When she dropped the question ‘Is there a woman
in your life?’ she knew the answer. The crises unfold right after the problem was known. She was
stunned by the news, unable to respond immediately, trying to deny the reality.

The other woman

 The affair started when Noellie brought her daughter who was anemic to Maurice. He advised
her to spend an evening with him which she accepted. They ended up in bed. Noellie Guerard is in her
late thirties, younger than the couple. She is divorced and has only child, a fourteen year old daughter
from a wealthy husband she married when she was twenty years old. Her character is read in the
dialogue between the couple and in the perspective of one of her acquaintances, Diana.
Diana describes her as a social climber using her position and profession. ‘She has slept with
quantities of men – most of them useful in her career,’ and that ‘she will do anything to succeed.’ To
support her and the child’s needs and whims, ‘she asks her clients outrageous fees’ although she also
protects herself by making sure that publicity is well taken care of. Why should she stick it out with
Maurice? Want of a ‘steady relationship. But she will drop Maurice if she hooks a richer or better-
known man’ Diana’s description may not be well appreciated considering that she is her friend, although
necessary because it is Monique who asks her.
Monique describes the other woman as ‘pretty, dashing, bitchy, and available. The sort of
adventure that has no importance and that flatters a man. She is the incarnation of everything we dislike
– desire to succeed at any price, pretentiousness, love of money, a delight in display. She does not
possess a single idea of her own; she is fundamentally devoid of sensitivity – she just goes along with the
fashion.’ Her description of the other woman is certainly rooted on her dislike of the other. This rings
true in Vicencio who says that we can never be as forgiving to the other woman. They are always seen in
bad light as they are thought to be home wrecker, a ‘menace that lures loving and married men.’
The author presented a different perspective in defense of the other woman through Maurice’s
characterization. He describes her as ‘an outstanding attorney and she is eaten up with ambition; she is
a woman on her own – divorced, with one daughter – with very free and easy ways, fashionable, very
much in the swim. She possesses one quality you ought to like – a way of giving herself up entirely to
what she is doing.’ His description is exactly the opposite of Monique.
Vicencio offers that people ‘say karma will come quick to mistresses, but what they don’t know
is that being embroiled in a relationship based on deceit is a curse in itself. Some of them already want
out, but it’s never simple or that easy… It takes a tough woman to survive an affair, and even tougher
one to leave it.’ The other woman personifies the woman that escapes the normative woman. She
‘knows the right way of behaving so perfectly that you don’t have to conform.’ Conformity is a social
demand.

Society says
Why would the man have an affair? ‘It is perfectly natural for a man to have an affair after
twenty two years of marriage,’ says the patriarchal society defending man’s affair as mouthed by
Isabelle, Monique’s friend. The affair for her is guaranteed by his being a man. Reasons pointed out the
following: adventure - ‘he should have wanted an adventure and excusable that he should have hidden
it from me at first: but he will certainly soon grow tired of it; variety – ‘Men wants variety’; sexual
satisfaction - ‘slumbering in Maurice, as in most men, there is a young man who is far from certain of
himself... Obviously it is also a question of direct desire – she is appetizing. He has rediscovered the
proud delight of fully satisfying a woman’; egoistic tendencies - ‘He had fresh ambitions’; need to be
appreciated – ‘His laments: indifference to his career. You don’t even read my articles. You might at
least have had some curiosity about what I was doing.’
The woman sees herself as lacking. Reasons she thinks: concern – ‘I no longer take part in what
he does’; neglect – ‘I was not watchful enough. I thought Maurice was aging, that he was overworking,
that I ought to adapt myself to her lack of warmth.’
 The situation also gave rise to its possibility. What gives this sort of affair its piquancy is its
newness. The other woman has the attraction of novelty: Maurice grows younger in her bed. Noellie
awoke his desires.

The woman’s response

The woman’s response played with what society expects of her. She has to submit to his
husband. He has been enough for her and she has lived only for him. ‘It is difficult to imagine that a man
one does not care for can possibly be enough to fill anyone’s life’ reinforces the power man has over
women. ‘I have never asked anything for myself that I did not also wish for him.’ ‘I gave way. Since I have
adopted an understanding, kindly attitude I must stick to it. No head head-on collision with him.’ ‘I
ought to respect Maurice’s freedom.’ The emerging position is ‘lowering myself in his eyes – doing it
myself.’
Despite the betrayal of their vows, still, she believes that ‘this affair had not much importance for
Maurice’ justifying that ‘he was out of his mind with anxiety.’ She gave in. Maurice says, ‘Since you
acquiesce in my having this affair, let me live it decently.’ ‘If I want our love to emerge from this trial
unhurt I must play neither the victim nor the shrew. “Be understanding, be cheerful. Above all be
friendly.” Another perspective is given by a friend, Diana. For her ‘so long as her husband is kind to her
and her children and looks after them, she does not care in the least whether he deceives her or not.’
The woman is relegated to what society expects of her. She is silenced.
But what is woman now as society defined her? She wallows in self pity - ‘And where does it get
me? It has not made me any more desirable to myself.’ ‘My heart is filled with anxiety and bitterness.’ ‘I
always used to be spontaneous and completely open: serene, too’ ‘A feeling that I have never
experienced before - other people’s cheerfulness oppressing me.’; loss - ‘Between them there is that
intimacy that used to belong only to me.’ ‘He never kisses me on the lips anymore.’ ‘I feel utterly
wretched’; hopelessness - ‘I had the feeling of being at the bottom of a grave, with the blood frozen in
my veins, unable either to stir or to weep’; sense of self - ‘I realized that I had come here in the hope of
once more finding that man so hopelessly in love: I had not seen him for years and years, although this
memory lies like a transparency over all the visions I have of him’; numbness – ‘Today my movements
were automatic’; pain - ‘When you hit against a stone at first you only feel the impact – the pain comes
after’; unhappiness – ‘I sink even further down into doubt and unhappiness.’
What did the woman lost substantially? She lost her past. What does the past mean? It is
everything of herself, her identity constructed. She said ‘I sought shelter in our past. We held each other
tightly, for a long while, and we felt that no cold or weariness or anything on earth could touch us.
Perhaps the more remote memories always seem the loveliest.’
She lost her self concept. ‘I used to see myself clearly in his eyes. Indeed I saw myself only
through his eyes – too flattering a picture, perhaps, but one in which I recognized myself.’ What was
she? ‘I was possessive, overbearing and encroaching with my daughters just as I was with him.’ ‘And
sometimes I think myself sensible, and sometimes I accuse myself of cowardice. In fact, I am defenseless
because I have never supposed I had any rights.’ ‘Usually I am not afraid of being alone.’ ‘I thought I
could preserve myself from jealousy: not at all.’ ‘I have to bottle up my anxieties, rein back my impulses.’
‘He trusted in my judgment more than anyone else’s because it was both ‘enlightened and naïve. I try to
say exactly what I think, what I feel; so does he; and there is nothing that seems more precious to us
than this sincerity’ ‘I was an admirable person, but men liked variety.’
She also lost her notion of the ideal husband and wife and relationship. ‘I was so proud of us as a
pair – a model pair. We proved that love could last without growing weary. How often I stood up for
total faithfulness! Shattered, the ideal pair!’ ‘“Nothing has changed between us.” What illusions I built
up for myself upon those words.’ She once has seen their marriage as their happiness. ‘I should like him
to rediscover a happiness and closeness that he has rather tended to forget – rediscover it with me; and
I should like him to remember our past too.’
She lost her community. ‘I’m beyond caring about what other people think. I am too utterly
destroyed. I don’t give a damn for the picture they may draw of me. It’s a matter of survival.’

Opportunities of reclaiming herself

The woman lost her past, her ideal and her community. It is regrettable. But what she lost
symbolizes where and when she was thrown into. It is a condition she cannot alter. Losing it would
mean shedding off the ‘yoke’ that she carries. It is a yoke that burdens woman. Shedding the past, she
could reconstruct what she is. She could reclaim.
The diary she made reclaims time. It ties down the past to an understandable and subjected to
her detail. ‘I started it because I was taken aback by being alone: I went on with it because I was
worried, Maurice’s attitude leaving me altogether at a loss. But now that I know just where I am the
worry has vanished, and I think I shall give it up.’
The confrontation she has over her condition granted her the opportunity to direct what used to
be her ideal. ‘I would like to know who is aware and who isn’t, and since when.’ She has expelled the
shackle. ‘I shall not fight with Noellie over you – if you prefer her to me, that’s your affair. I shan’t
struggle.’ ‘No, I must not try to follow Noellie on to her ground, but fight it out on my own.’
She sought to redefine herself. ‘I had to make sure that a man could still find me desirable.’ ‘I
must learn to control myself.’ ‘No more concessions! It gets me nowhere and it disgusts me with myself.
One has to look things in the face. This is not a mere affair.’
She has reinterpreted her society. ‘When one has lived so much for others it is quite hard to
turn oneself back again – to live for oneself.’ ‘I must not plunge into the pitfall of devotion - I know very
well the that the words give and receive are interchangeable… because giving others pleasure is in the
first place a pleasure to you.’
It is at first glance perplexing that the affair occurred when the man, Maurice, sees the woman
in this light. He sees a calling in each woman. She must work because ‘women who do nothing cannot
bear those who work. He ‘does acknowledge that there are other ways in which a woman can fulfill
herself.’ ‘He was astonished at the thoroughness with which I looked after the cases he told me about
while at the same time I looked after the house really well and took great care of our daughters – and
that without ever appearing tense or overworked.’ ‘I had a balanced life: he even used the word
harmonious.’ Deeper analysis would reveal that the man presents what was different between a woman
who determines and one who is determined. And when it happens, it is necessary that ‘he is altogether
gone from me if he likes being with someone I dislike so very much – and whom he ought to dislike if he
were faithful to our code. Certainly he has altered. He lets himself be taken in by false values that we
use to despise.’ The man should become part of the change in the woman.

The truth and knowledge

Remarkably, the entire story could be read in the context of the husband and wife as the
subjugation of women and the other woman as the liberation of women. The woman sought for the
truth. ‘I must tell myself the truth: I have always wanted the truth and the reason why I have had it is
that I desired it.’ The man lied. History lied. The subjugation of women is not a gospel truth, neither a
scientific truth. Man’s confession of the affair explained everything. The confession is the acceptance of
the reality that women are not entirely defined by men and by society.
The woman claims, ‘I had a foreknowledge of the change, and that was one of the hidden
reasons for my resistance – you cannot transform your life without being transformed yourself.’ The
transformation requires the transformation of all. It is not only the woman that needs to be awakened
and changed. It is the entire system. It is the entire society and everyone living in it. There is resistance.
There must be.
The woman asks, ‘When all is said and done, what has it profited me, his telling me the truth?’
Still, I should like to know whether he told me for my sake or for his own ease and comfort. Liberation,
that is taking the rein of one’s life. But that would not happen if questions remain to be questions. ‘I am
tired of asking myself questions and not knowing the answers.’ Answers in one way or another must be
forged.
The struggle would not be easy as ‘each has his own version of the truth.’ And now I do not
know where I stand in it or what I have to fight against or whether I ought to fight or why.’ She may ask.
‘You would do better to tell me everything. If I really knew the position I could try to face up to it. But
suspecting everything, knowing nothing, is unbearable.’ But if no one answers, ‘I must know what is
going on. My ignorance is eating me away.’
And what of the reality? The woman asks, ‘And how would you like me to take it?’ The man
replied, “Without enmity. All right, so I was wrong to begin this affair. But now it’s done I must try to
manage things so as not to hurt anyone more than I can help. From a completely selfish view, hurting
you tears me to pieces.’ Tensions between us. Isabelle tells me again and again that time is on my side.
The woman realized. ‘I am being manipulated. I do not know how to make the maneuver fail,
whether by pretending to yield or by resisting.’ ‘I showed that my mind revolted against it.’ ‘I have so
questioned myself about him, so distrusted him and blamed him, that in the end I was really seeing
what kind of a person he was at all.’ And she was right. ‘For the first time I see that a gap has come into
being between us.’
Monique ends her journal with the final realization of the importance of herself and still the
uncertainty of the future. The predicament clearly shows that everything lies in one’s heart and her
experiences can never be taken away from her. It is her own most experience where no one else could
experience aside from her.

Finale
Toward the end of the story, the woman sees a glimpse of herself. She claims, ‘It is only now
that I realize how much value I had for myself, fundamentally.’ And where does man lie in all of this? He
‘has murdered all the words by which I might try to justify it: he has repudiated the standards by which I
measured others and myself.’ What she seeks to build upon her own, is eclipsed by him. Man as a
measure failed to reveal the worth of a woman.
A challenge is wrought upon all. The demise of the familiar construct would also mean the
creation of a new one. Nonetheless it would not be easy as what is considered to be familiar, will
become obscure. What is previously known will become unknown, dissolved into what has been. She
quips, ‘I no longer know everything. Not only do I not know what kind of person I am, but also I do not
know what kind of person I ought to be.’ The common background the society once created, what is
considered to be the world will now be ‘Black and white merge into one another, the world is an
amorphous mass, and I no longer have any clear outlines.’
The story is quite silent in choosing who has the better lot – the woman or the other woman. It
might be conjectured that the reason for such is that both women, the wife and the mistress, are at
stake. The morality issue cannot apply since that would definitely disadvantage the other woman. At
the same time, it becomes not even a question of who is right or wrong. It simply portrays the
devastation one woman feels when she loses everything she considers sacred. Everything she considers
life.
What is at stake is the acceptance of the reality of its existence and what transpires through the
experiences of both wife and mistress. The man portrayed did not choose among two women. He was
 keeping both. Since it is not a morality issue, what is it then? It presents the possibility and the reality of
being different, that is going beyond the social conventions, without being condemned for one’s choice.
On the other hand, it clearly shows what happens when one puts all her ‘money’ on faithfulness,
not on freedom. Everything is put at stake on the hands of both. Faithfulness does not lie on the hand
of any of the partner, but on both. When one becomes unfaithful, everything is destroyed. The very
‘self’ is entrusted to the other for the other to take care of and mind. As such, one loses all the power
one has over the self and demands from the other. Freedom granted on both clearly removes that
demand and requires only the free giving of oneself. So much so that when one is no longer free, one
could opt out intact and still full of ‘oneself.’
The very reason why Monique was destroyed was her total giving of herself to the construct
that man is what measures the woman. Her past, that of being a wife and mother, all points to the
construct of what a fine woman should be, a man’s lady. Her present, as it unfolds in the diary, still
affirms the power held by her man over her. She sought to win back what she consider was hers, all the
while still clinging to the belief that she never lost him, when everything has not been a truth anymore.
The question of truth in the story rang throughout. The lies woven by the husband in order to
keep her wife; the lies accepted and nurtured by the wife in order to keep him; both lies are but an
escape to the reality of their lives. However one wishes for the truth, it still escapes. Truth hurts. One
could only carry the truth that is easier to bear. Fundamentally.
The woman reaches to reclaim what was lost – her past, her present, herself. ‘But I know that I
shall move. The door will open slowly, and I shall see what there is behind the door.’ The story ends with
a positive assurance.

References:

1. De Beauvoir, Simone (1969). The Woman Destroyed. Patrick O’Brian. Trans. New York: Pantheon Books
2. Morgan, Robin. Ed. (1970). Sisterhood is Powerful. An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s
Liberation Movement. USA: Random House, Inc.
3. Douglas, Susan J. (2010). Enlightened Sexism. The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done.
New York: Henry Holt and Company
4. Thorne, Barrie, Kramarae, Cheris, and Henley, Nancy (1983). Language, Gender and Society. USA: Harper
and Row Publishers, Inc.
5. Andersen, Margaret L. (2000). Thinking About Women, Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender.
Fifth Edition. USA: Pearson Education Company
6. Wesstein, Naomi (1969). ‘Kinder, Kuche, Kirche’ as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the
Female. In Morgan, Robin. Ed. (1970). Sisterhood is Powerful. An Anthology of Writings from the
Women’s Liberation Movement. USA: Random House, Inc.
7. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/simone-de-beauvoire-woman-destroyed-2360460
8. Regina Vicencio. 10 songs to help you survive as a mistress.
http://www.rappler.com/entertainment/music/38489-10-songs-mistress

You may add these references and others you may find too. =)
MARGO JEFFERSON MAY 13, 2004, CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; When a Book's Epilogue Is Created on the Stage
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/theater/critic-s-notebook-when-a-book-s-epilogue-is-created-on-
the-stage.html?_r=0, September 8,
2016http://webpage.pace.edu/nreagin/tempmotherhood/fall2003/9/Literary.html
http://philosophy.about.com/od/A-Z-Works-in-Philosophy/fl/The-Woman-Destroyed-by-Simone-de-Beauvoir.htm
http://psyartjournal.com/article/show/lalonde-mapping_the_boundaries_of_melancholy_and