Transvestia

BOOK

REVIEW

THE SECOND SEX, by Simone de Beauvoir - 1961, Bantam Books, Inc., New York, 689 pp - index, 954.

The fact that this book was originally published in 1949 (in France) and that this review is some 16 years late need not cause any feeling of untimeliness; no significant trend towards girls going out of style has been observed. In fact, Mlle. de Beauvoir is very much in the review columns this month, her third volume of autobiography "Force of Circumstance" just having appeared here (658 pp., G. P. Putnam Sons, New York, $10). This has led most reviews to recon- sider "The Second Sex", written during the period de- scribed in the current work.

The Second Sex is a long book, and not to be rushed through. I've studied it for about six months, off and

on.

The author's style places her amongst the enume- rators of trees rather than the discoverers of forests, and all too often her point is made in far more steps than one might wish. The gems, and there are many, require time and thought to extract from the matrix and she is not very helpful in mapping their locations. A summary-conclusion, not in itself very condensed, and an excellent index are the main concessions to the hasty reader.

One gem is her courageous assault on the Freudian "religion". That such criticism was made in the late 40s places Mlle. de Beauvoir among the pioneers of

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