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9-2010 The Grand Rectification: Review of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. Meryl Altman DePauw University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Altman, Meryl. "The Grand Rectification." Rev. of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. The Women's Review of Books 27.5 (2010): 3-6. Print. Obtained from JSTOR with permission from the author and the publisher and in compliance with JSTOR's terms and conditions.

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Grand Rectification

The Second Sex

By Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, 776 pp., $40.00, hardcover

Reviewed byMeryl Altmm

a confidence, enlightenment, and pleasure. Which is Many may wonder why the editors chose, not or a good thing indeed, because the challenges philosopher other Beauvoir scholar to translate Beauvoir issued to thinkingwomen everywhere are Vie Second Sex but rather, these two,who describe not only still relevant but more urgent than ever. I themselves as activists and language teachers, and hope this new translation will encourage scholars who don't seem ever to have taken on such an who may have hesitated to work with or quote ambitious project before. But in some ways I from a text thatwas known to be poorly translated think the choice was a good one, since Borde or and have no to revisit The Second Sex, perhaps to take it Malovany-Chevallier particular stake in what Beauvoir meant." seriously for the firsttime, and that itwill also give professional "really Beauvoir's a new afterlife for readers well Each of of wants to be as faithful as thought us, course, to Beauvoir?that is to to our beyond the academy. possible say, Beauvoir,

^The new translation isn't perfect. How could it be? But it's very much better and can be read with confidence, enlightenment, and pleasure."

The integrityof this new translationmatches the for there are many Some (though not all) ofwhat earnest purpose with which the book was originally Moi, in her review, labels "errors" look like errors account about based on Moi's own of Beauvoir's written: to encyclopedically for just interpretation women and to a out of work?an I find but that's every impasse face point way interpretation brilliant, as to them, Beauvoir says, "towards independence." not the point. Beauvoir's theory is rich enough controversies about how to Parshley may have meant well; but he felthe knew have generated interpret more on a than Beauvoir did variety of topics, and it. (For instance, she has been accused both of paying Simone de Beauvoir in a Chicago hotel room, 1952. betrayed that condescension not only through cuts too much attention and of not paying attention to differences between men and and distortions but also in occasional knowing enough women.) at to based translators would It was a scandal ofmodern intellectualmisogyny. asides, totally cross-purposes Beauvoir's points. Academically undoubtedly in have been more and who teach For almost sixty years, themajor work by the Borde and Malovany-Chevallier, contrast, have opinionated, people a I have major feminist philosopher and thinker of our attempted to be faithful, down to microscopic The Second Sex regularly (as do) might on succumbed to the to Beauvoir out" time, Simone de Beauvoir, could be read by level. Their insistence minimizing the truth that temptation "help a translation involves reveals a word a there. Borde and Anglophones only in translation that silently every interpretation by inserting here, gloss some have remained and deleted some fifteen percent of the text; that of the impossible, intractable problems that Malovany-Chevallier admirably and sometimes made neutral carelesslymangled philosophical terms,garbling the any translator faces; they have responsibly throughout. on argument; and that distorted Beauvoir's position things unnecessarily harder for a number of other things that have turned out to themselves (and for readers). But their as choices were made with matter rather badly, such her attitude toward systematic an maternity, her acknowledgment of the historical integrityand are explained clearly in to contributions of women, and her attention honest and transparent way. seems material conditions. Now, thanks to agitation by It particularly praiseworthy scholars such as Simons and Toril the to Margaret Moi, that they resisted temptation journalists such as Sarah Glazer, and (I'd like to modernize and create a sort of "Beauvoir we nos "he" to think) feminist bookbuyers everywhere, at last pour jours"?by changing or or "sex" to for have the Grand Rectification. Translators Constance "he she," "gender" Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier have brought example. That would have damaged us an English version that, in theirwords, will "say our ability to read Beauvoir historically what Simone de Beauvoir said as close as possible to and to sift out what continues to be theway she said it." valuable. In addition, in the case of not over. "sex" versus it would not But the controversy is Toril Moi, who "gender," when to use did so much to alert us all to the flaws in H.M. always have been clear Pars hi ey's 1953 translation, has expressed her keen which term. While Beauvoir's work see disappointment with the new version in the London helped second-wave feminists the Review of Books (February 11, 2010). Other scholars difference between "natural" sex and common in as and constructed she herself and readers have weighed well, socially gender, by the time you read this, therewill undoubtedly never formulates the distinction in a those terms. To it anachronisti be sheaf of conflicting reviews. impose The new translation isn't How could it more than it perfect. cally would have obscured be? But it's very much better and can be read with would have illuminated.

Women's Review of Books 3

This content downloaded from 163.120.69.225 on Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:11:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ^Beauvoir's honest lucidityabout the way class and race loyalties are impediments to female solidarity is hardly outdated. Her discussion of the predicament of the adolescent girl,who is condemned to be seen rather than to do (and which includes a reflection on what we now call eating disorders), remains unparalleled."

cultivate it as a source of self knowledge and vigor and energy to the text: I prefer "the principle use as to expression, and it the basis critique of marriage is obscene" to Parshley's "marriage is patriarchal institutions. obscene in principle," which leaves open the possibility that in practice theremay be nothing If that sentence ismeant to direct us to the "new obscene about it at all?which may be true,but if s French fen?nists" of a few decades ago, if s worth not what Beauvoir meant. remembering that Beauvoir lived long enough to Although I am very familiarwith The Second Sex, encounter, and dismiss, that rather dangerous bout the new translation freshens certain sections, of silliness. But Thurman is less interested in particularly that on myth. And our standpoint has arguing through any of these positions than in moved with time in curious and unexpected ways. establishing the book's appeal to a middlebrow The parts of the biology chapter dealing with audience, suggesting that younger readers might prenatal development and nonhuman animals, at best appreciate it as a "personal meditation." which my eyes used to glaze over, now looksmuch more interesting in light of the feminist science This is help The Second Sex does not need. studies of Anne Fausto-Sterling and Marlene Zuk. Young readers will find Beauvoir speaking Beauvoir's discussion ofwhat we would now call quite directly to questions they actually have, "intersexuality" no longer seems like a digression. for instance, "Is feminism over?" and, "Can I be a Another happy feature of this translation is that feminist without denying that being a woman is in restoring all the long quotations, it restores the Iwish I could say the same for JudithThurman's important to me, and that biology matters?" feeling of thinking-with, writing-with, Colette, a breezy and patronizing introduction,which seems Beauvoir's honest lucidity about theway class and Sophie Tolstoy, Wilhelm Stekel, and myriad of aimed at a popular audience. Thurman is the race loyalties are impediments to female solidarity is other creative and scientific writers. Pruning the author of Secrets of theFlesh (1999), a pretty good hardly outdated. Her discussion of the predicament quotations obscured the function of The Second Sex as a biography of Colette (and more recently of a of the adolescent girl,who is condemned to be seen minianthology and eliminated the feeling of a on on delightfully wry piece in a recentNew Yorker about rather than to do (and which includes reflection "thick description." In the chapter themarried we were shopping forwrinkle cream). Philosophers may feel what we now call eating disorders), remains woman, for instance, deprived of apt one of their number would have been more unparalleled. It is not superfluous to be reminded quotations fromVirginia Woolf, Gaston Bachelard, suitable. But Beauvoir does not belong exclusively that the cult of normality iswhat she calls an "ersatz James Agee, Francis Ponge, Dorothy Parker, and a de morale" an "ersatz whether one locates work to be better to the philosophers, and the choice of biographer morality," Colette Audry (whose deserves or of Colette?whose influence throughout The Second that cult in Freud (as Beauvoir does) in the known)?as well as the statement that "the poetry is as as some sense. of been and a Sex pervasive Hegel's?makes Diagnostic and StatisticalManual ofMental Disorders housework has highly praised," The problem is thatThurman doesn't seem to have IV, where it now lives. She makes a good, still rather lovely discussion of jam-making. Some of the are some taken her task especially seriously. She rightly relevant case forwhat might be called "romantic" quotations tragic, are unpleasantly celebrates the fact that the original translation of feminism?that is to say, that equality might make clinical, some are surprisingly funny?and taken The Second Sex reached a broad, nonacademic relationships between men and women better, rather together, they create the sense thatwomen's "lived some audience and became highly influential. But she man worse. And I think it is stillworm reflectingon experience," while it has shared aspects, is makes the old dismissive move of reading how Beauvoir might have answered the question the varied and multifaceted. Beauvoir was careful to as own Beauvoir's thought through her biography, psychologist Virginia Valian has formulated supplement her experience with other voices; emphasizing especially her relationships with men; "Why So Slow?": muting those voices changed the texture of what rehashes some clich?s; adopts a surprisingly she wrote, giving her account the feeling of a judgmental tone; and seems unaware of recent As long as perfect economic equality is not polemical, isolated harangue. as as newcomers will scholarship. realized in society and long customs That undergraduates and other Where the translators leave itup to us to decide allow the woman to profit as wife and continue to.find the book hard going is inevitable? which parts of the book are outdated, Thurman mistress from the privileges held by certain The Second Sex is not a work you can skim through rushes in: men, the dream of passive success will be on the stairmaster while watching Tyra. But then, maintained in her and will hold back her own reading Parshley wasn't easy, either. The difficulty [Beauvoir's] single most famous assertion? accomplishments. arises in part because of the cultural allusions: Who "One is not born, but rather becomes, was Clovis? Who was Montherlant? Who was woman"?has been more recent disputed by the unmistakable fact that this is a work Veronica Lake? The new version does not even feminist and a substantial of Despite scholars, body a an of serious philosophy, ordinary women readers will pretend to help us out: it is translation and not research in biology and the social sciences frequentlymeet themselves in these pages?and in annotated edition, and while Borde and Malovany supports their argument that some sexual this translation, will meet themselves more Chevallier have occasionally supplemented and in differences (besides the obvious ones) are some corrected Beauvoir's For instance, at the end of the places sporadic innate rather than "situational." sympathetically. on "sexual the new translators to do taken chapter initiation," footnotes, really that job would have Oh really? Since Thurman provides no footnotes, it have, "Not all women agree to give their sexual another five years. is hard to know exactlywho orwhat shemeans, but problems the one classic solution officially accepted The greatest difficultyposed by Beauvoir's text, the blanket statement hardly describes a by society." Parshley had, "Not all women are able though, continues to be her (French, intellectual) universally accepted feminist view. Thurman and willing to solve their sexual problems in the tendency to provide long, ironic but precise continues, standard fashion, the only manner approved by paraphrases of views she is about to reject. society." Indeed, many of us don't accept the Beauvoir took on a vast array of culturalmyths and as an not because to overturn them?or at Instead of rejecting "otherness" "standard fashion"?marriage?and assumptions only least, cultural in we In to overturn most of to imposed construct, women, can't, whatever Parshley may have thought. mostly them?and show [recent feminist scholars'] opinion, should some cases, the translators have restored a feminist that they are socially contingent rather than

4 Women'S Review OfBO OkS Vol 2 7,No. J,September/October 2010

This content downloaded from 163.120.69.225 on Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:11:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ontologically or naturally necessary, though none the less socially powerful NEW FROM because of that.The temptation to clarifyby constantly inserting "are thought to" or "are seen as" is one the translators rightly resisted. No translation can KNOPF /DOUBLEDAY make this easier to unknot, and I don't think if s a good idea to try. But is the new edition readable? Is it accessible? Is it elegant? Above all, is it clear? Since I feltpoorly placed to judge the last question (after all, I already At the Dark End of the Street it I a Black and Resistance? know what says), photocopied few chapters from both versions and Women, Rape, dragooned a random set of students and friends into comparing them.One of A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from the seniors inmy feminist theory class wrote, Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power byDanielle L. McGuire The in the new translation is less and formal than the "Danielle details the all too tactic language daunting McGuire ignored of old one. In it also flows much more and of black women in the of southern my opinion, seamlessly rape everyday practice white as she resistance logically.... As a student, I think that the new translation is a lotmore supremacy. Just important, plots this as an facet of the Civil accessible, and it a foundation on which to build as against outrage integral provides stronger Movement. . . .This book is as essential as its is Rights history infuriating." one continues reading. ?Nell Irvin Painter, author of TheHistory of White People Knopf ICloth I352 pages | $27-95 Another student wrote,

I was able to grasp difficult theoretical ideas rather easily in this The Grace of Silence translation. 3 was ... the first time I read this Chapter especially good byMich?le Norris itwas hard; the was and "old," and itmade me piece, language clunky "Mich?le Norris takes us on a to one riveting personal jour tired read it; I didn't want to this down. from north to south and back the put ney again through of race in America?and anew tangled landscape teaches about the of our In contrast, an English department colleague wrote, "As I compared the pain and possibilities past and future." ?Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation and Boom paragraphs to Parshley, the older translations struckme as clearer. A bit old Pantheon |Cloth I208 pages | $24-95 fashioned in phrasing, but more consistent and stately." Tastes differ.And some of us may miss Parshley's wording just because it is familiar to us. As I said, the new translation isn't perfect. There are trickysituations where The Annotated Persuasion Borde and Malovany-Chevallier acquit themselves with admirable dexterity, byJane Austen but others where I found myself wanting to blue-pencil sentences thatwere Edited byDavid M. Shapard more awkward than sometimes because of or of David M. necessary, cognates sequence Shapard's annotated edition of Persuasion jux the text of .the novel with more than tenses and moods, more often because of word order. Sometimes when they taposes complete 2,000 annotations on with had to choose between "his" and "its," or "hers" and "its" (French doesn't facing pages, along maps, illustrations, of historical context, defi make the Iwould have made the call. There were or explanations distinction), opposite three nitions of archaic words; citations from Austen's life four times I had to back to to out was on. and letters and go the French figure what going And thought-provoking literary analyses. there are some "howlers," although perhaps no more than are to be expected in Anchor |Paper | 544 pages | $16.95 a work of almost 800 pages. Moi isright when she points out that "viol" should be not "violation of law" make error once but it "rape" (they this get right World and Town elsewhere); the couple in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row live in an abandoned byGish Jen boiler, not a "cadet" almost means brother," not "jalopy"; certainly "younger Hattie the of a descendant "cadet." Most of don't matter a Konghas, spirited offspring these much but all of fairnumber of Confucius and an to them?plus American missionary China, in ofwhat seem to be be corrected in next typos?should the printing. her fiftiethyear of living in theUnited States, has lost both her husband and her best friend to cancer. Set in a small New town, this is a novel that asks Another friend, an translator with England experienced largely unacquainted and about deep absorbing questions religion, home, feminist felt bothered what he called "translationese," in theory, by America, what neighbors are, what love is, and, the an over-reliance on "sentiment" rendered as we make of especially cognates: largest sense, what "worlds" the world. "sentiment," rather than "emotion" or "feeling"; significationas "signification" Knopf ICloth I400 pages I$26.95 rather than simply "meaning"; and so on. He went on to say, "'une fuite inauthentique' is perfectly clear in French, but 'an inauthentic flighf is not clear Civ? War Wives we would 'an ouf or like that." He's English: say easy way something right, The Lives & Times ofAngelina Grimk? Weld, and the idiom is the sort of would have done using English just thingParshley Varina Howell Davis & Julia Dent Grant with this existentialist thaf s version erases key phrase?and why Parshley's byCarol Berkin and the garbles philosophical terminology. "From firebrand abolitionists to slaveholders' daughters, How the "translationese" bothers on taste Civil War Wives illuminates three American strongly you may depend your extraordinary care wives. . . .Carol Berkin's fluid and and what you about. For instance, "We are shown women solicited by two absorbing portraits move her emblematic trio to offer kinds of alienations; it is very clear that to at aman will be a for beyond captivating play being recipe on sex and on and war to a woman insights marriage, partnerships failure;but at is also a The first of the sentence tumultuous play being trap." part during this era." does take a moment to decode. the were to use ?Catherine of A However, translators right the Clinton, author Mrs. Lincoln: Life technical term so thatwe can see that is connected to "alienations," this point Vintage IPaper I384 pages I$16. OO Beauvoir's discussion of alienation elsewhere. They could probably have improved upon "solicited." But could anyone really misunderstand what a Further Life Beauvoir is here? The sentence to thosewho are still Composing saying puts paid saying, The Age ofActive Wisdom bother with Beauvoir? She was a liberal feministwho women "Why just thought byMary CatherineBateson should imitatemen"; should also those who see Sex in the as the yet give City "As she did in her wonderful book Composinga Lifef best kind of on. Catherine Bateson has used her vision up-to-date "empowerment feminism" something to chew I'd Mary unique and to the facets of the Further hate to see people deprived of that insight, and feminism deprived of that insight lightup many us a whole, fresh to look at this new renewed because a reviewer's for different diction Lifetgiving " way conversation, preference frontier of longevity. them from thebook. discouraged buying ?Jane Fonda, author ofMy LifeSo Far Borde and Malovany-Chevallier leave us in no danger of forgetting thatwe Knopf ICloth I272 pages I$25-95 are reading a translated work. But is that so very bad? Some translation scholars now argue that a "foreignizing" version, which preserves traces of the Knopf Doubleday Academic translator's labor and a sense of the distance meaning has to travel from one 1745 Broadway, 20-2 s New York, NY * 10019 and to is to be to a language, culture, time, space another, actually preferred www.randomhouse.com/academic $ [email protected]

Women's Review ofBooks 5

This content downloaded from 163.120.69.225 on Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:11:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "domesticating" one, which aspires to cancel out or Different translations have different audiences matter, James Joyce?which would go through the wish away thatdistance. I think there's a good case and differentpurposes. When Iwork with classical book line by line, clarify allusions and other texts for "foreignization." The aim of translating this text texts, I use the Loeb editions, which have theGreek opacities, adduce parallel fromother works by an on was not to help us forget thatBeauvoir was not an on one page and English version the facing Beauvoir, perhaps quote relevant passages from American and lived in a differenttime, or tomake us page that sticks closely to the original. Borde and Heidegger or Merleau Ponty, and identify think, "Wow, she's just likeus." In fact,there's a long Malovany-Chevallier have produced something competing readings by subsequent scholars? These a same issues as history of problematic readings of Beauvoir based on like the English half of Loeb Beauvoir. Parshley might not raise the copyright to the assumption that she eitherwas, or should have was doing something different: trying to turn another full edition, and theymight be fun do. on been, "just like us"?ranging from arguments that Beauvoir's text into one ordinary Americans would But fornow, we have a reliable English version or An such commentaries and other in she sings the praises ofmarriage, ?criturefeminine, buy. accurate, word-by-word account, though, which scholarship can a the "ethic of care" to howls of betrayal about her is what scholars and students have urgently English be based. That's significant step a failure to anticipate 1970s analyses of lesbianism and needed. We may not agree with eveiything we read forward and remarkable achievement. one race.Whether Borde and Malovany-Chevallier did it in it,but at leastwe'll know we're disagreeing with So if you're of those people who always not on purpose or not, the feeling of slight estrangement Beauvoir, not her translator. meant to read The Second Sex?why now? ? a induced by (among other things) preserving Wouldn't it be great, though, also to have and Women's Beauvoir's paragraphing and punctuation was series of commentaries to The Second Sex, like the Meryl Altman teaches English probably a good idea. ones we have forPlato and Herodotus?or, for that Studies atDePauw University in Indiana.

Feminist Mothers

and Daughters The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present

By Christine Stansell

New York: Modern Library,2010, 528 pp., $36.00, hardcover ?al

THIS ISWHAT A FEMINIST reason for the sidelining of feminism. After Wollstonecraff sA Vindication of theRights ofWoman LOOKS LIKE all, themovement had its public moments? also allows Stansell to reveal that the ironies and I its marches, rallies, sit-ins, and hunger tensions usually associated with twentieth-century strikes. And when it comes to newsreel feminism have a much longer history.Whether if s s footage, Gloria Steinern is only the best the sort of feminism thaf made queasy by actual known of many charismatic and eloquent women or that asserts the meaninglessness of feminists on the airwaves and the lecture gender only to fall back upon apparently bedrock circuit. My own hunch is that feminism's gender differences, ifs all there inWollstonecraft. marginality stems in some measure from The Feminist Promise does not contribute to the how close Itothe bone it cut and how very "re-waving" of American feminism that some controversial some of its causes remain to scholars have advocated. (The period between the this day. 1930s and the 1950s remains feminism's lost years It is precisely this diminishment that in this account.) But Stansell's interventions?her Christine Stansell seeks to rectify in her examination of feminism's unexplored corners and Feminism transformed the world?split it beautifully written, indeed sublime, new book. The the themes she presses?are significant, original, to counter wide open, to paraphrase the title of one Feminist Promise is not the first effort the and potentially field-changing. terrifichistory (TheWorld Split Open: How the near negligibility of feminism's history. But what Modern Women's Movement Changed America, sets Stansell's history apart is its unflinching For one, she contends thatAmerican ferninism by Ruth Rosen [2006 revised]). Yet for all its honesty, intellectual ambition, and unusually broad ismarked by tensions between the politics of an shattering changes, in today's culture, thehistory of scope?from 1792 to the present. Her decision to themothers?cautious and pragmatic in feminism is little known outside the world of begin with Mary Wollstonecraft and the French effort to improve women's condition without academic specialists. Feminists of the sixties and Revolution that inspired her not only makes this upending the status quo?and the politics of the seventies are now often dismissed in the same something of a transatlantic storybut is also critical daughters?daring and visionary in their move as terms inwhich their foremotherswere?as prudish to Stansell's argument?which is that feminism's determination to freely through theworld and racist. Indeed, when it comes to themovements origins lie in the democratic surges of the French as they imagine men do. Although Stansell, like of the "long sixties," feminism trails behind the (and the American) Revolution. In contrast to other historians of feminism, has been associated black freedom movement and theNew Left in the feminist theoristswho focus on the shortcomings of with the politics of the daughters, it is often the number of scholarly monographs, popular books, liberal democracy, Stansell argues that however mothers who capture her empathie imagination. and serious documentaries if s generated. If s true, blinkered its vision, and however dedicated to This generosity does not extend to Gilded Age of course, thatmuch of the drama in feminism's women's subordination, liberal democracy suffragists,who receive an understandably scornful to story took place behind the scenes?in bedrooms, nonetheless enabled women's political aspirations. response, but it does second-wave liberal kitchens, and workplaces?and the combat was Feminism, she says, really is democracy's "younger feminists,who are inmany ways the heroines of this comes largely verbal. But surely this cannot be the sole sister." Beginning with the "wild wishes" of narrative. When it to employment and

no. 2010 6 Women's Review of Books voi 27, s, september/october

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