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it is why I is not excluded so radically, not so other. And also, as a consequence, this “I” (or
“Otheress”/”Other”) becomes less untolerated. Beauvoir does not consider a word (or language) as
an over‐defective medium which cannot describe the entirety of human experience.
Recognizing the universality of language and emphasizing the necessity of subjectification
(through the idea of the literary voice, as we have discussed just before), Simone de Beauvoir – with
great suspicion – refers to the idea of an universal subject, seeing in this concept a threat of exclusion
of these narratives/stories that do not fit into the universalistic perspective. For her, attempts to
implement the universal speaking/acting subject are the attempts to devalue different/various way
of feeling/describing the world. Including, obviously and especially, female experience. For Beauvoir,
category of the universal is also suspicious, it is the category which excludes, constrains, an apology
of a certain experiencing of the reality – and, for her, it is of experiencing the world by a male
subject.
Autobiographical writing can also be considered as crucial to a problem of the identity of a
woman. The French philosopher writes:
Woman is not a fixed reality but a becoming; she has to be compared with man in her
becoming; that is, her possibilities have to be defined: what skews the issues so much is
that she is being reduced to what she was, to what she is today, while the question
concerns her capacities; the fact is that her capacities manifest themselves clearly only
when they have been realized: but the fact is also that when one considers a being who is
transcendence and surpassing, it is never possible to close the books. 7
This passage shows how Beauvoir applies a terminology, which is characteristic for existentialism,
and a point of view useful in research on the situation of women. For Beauvoir, to create a work,
anyway, is to reveal the world – to share with it, recreate and present. Therefore, a listener is
necessary. The plurality of women's voices cited in The Second Sex shows how different women in
different ways perceive their situation. Beauvoir is not looking for general laws, but is trying to
present a point of view of an other woman – to analyze in what way this reality is presented. She
sees a fundamental relationship between literature and the experience of existential loneliness and
self‐separateness. This can definitely be seen in the constructions of Simone de Beauvoir's novels and
in her autobiographies.
Simone de Beauvoir strongly emphasizes commonality of an act of speaking and its strong
connection with an act of reading and understanding. It can be said that there is a real Union formed
by language (“il y a un rapport là qui se crée vrai à travers le langage” 8 – it is non‐transparent, but
common, accessible to everyone.
In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir recalls and analyzes women's writing, their experiences
recorded and interpreted in their creativities. She writes:
Woman’s situation encourages her to seek salvation in literature and in art. Living on
the margin of the masculine world, she does not grasp it in its universal guise but through
a particular vision; for her it is not a group of implements and concepts but a source of
feelings and emotions; she is interested in the qualities of things inasmuch as they are
gratuitous and secret; taking on a negative attitude, one of refusal, she does not lose
herself in the real: she protests against it, with words; she looks for the image of her soul
in nature, she abandons herself to her reveries, she wants to reach her being: she is
doomed to failure; she can only recover it in the realm of imagination. 9
Creativity becomes the only way for women to express themselves, to express their opposition –
however, later in her speech, she notices that women's creativity often turns out to be a literary
production of poor quality, she even compares it to the typical women's needlework such as sewing