Du Plessix Gray, Francine. "Dispatches from the Other." NEW YORK TIMES May 20, 2010.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New Translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. Intro. Judith Thurman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier’s new translation of The Second Sex is the first English-language edition in almost 60 years, and the first to restore the material Parshley excised. In this passionate, awesomely erudite work, Beauvoir examines the reasons women have been forced to accept a place in society secondary to that of men, despite the fact that women constitute half the human race. Supporting her arguments with data from biology, physiology, ethnology, anthropology, mythology, folklore, philosophy and economics, she documents the status of women throughout history, from the age of hunter-gatherers to the mid-20th century. In one of her most interesting chapters, “The Married Woman” (a chapter Parshley particularly savaged), she offers numerous quotations from the novels and diaries of Virginia Woolf, Colette, Edith Wharton, Sophia Tolstoy and others. She also scrutinizes the manner in which various male authors, from Montaigne to Stendhal to D. H. Lawrence, have represented women (and, in many cases, how they treated their wives). Urging women to persevere in their efforts at emancipation, she emphasizes that they must also do so for the sake of men: “It is when the slavery of half of humanity is abolished and with it the whole hypocritical system it implies that the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its authentic meaning and the human couple will discover its true form.” How does Beauvoir’s book stand up more than a half-century later? And how does this new translation compare with the previous one? I’m sorry to report that The Second Sex, which I read with euphoric enthusiasm in my post-college years, now strikes me as being in many ways dated. Written in an era in which a minority of women were employed, its arguments for female participation in the work force seem particularly outmoded. And Beauvoir’s truly paranoid hostility toward the institutions of marriage and motherhood — another characteristic of early feminism — is so extreme as to be occasionally hilarious. Every aspect of the female reproductive system, from puberty to menopause, is approached with the same ferocious disdain. . . . Read the whole review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/books/review/Gray-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all. Read the introduction here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/books/excerpt-introduction-second-sex.html. Read an excerpt from Chapter 1 "Biological Data" here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/books/excerpt-first-chapter-second-sex.html?ref=review.