De la teoría por otros medios: Simone de Beauvoir y sus ficciones

Abstract

This paper sets out to establish the connections between some thesis upheld by Simone de Beauvoir in her theoretical and philosophical texts (above all, in her 1949 treaty, Le Deuxième Sexe) and her fictional texts, produced in the sixties. By means of textual analysis we shall attempt to show how the thesis upheld in those former works are illustrated by the latter, and advance some hypothesis about the implications brought about by those strategies of transposition. We shall see the manner in which de Beauvoir constructs a woman subject that names herself and elaborates alternative representations of femininity and masculinity which destabilize sexist stereotypes, through which patriarchy has perpetuated and legitimated itself as a system of privileges. We shall also delve into the important role played by narratives in the construction of Western femininity and the role that new emancipating representations can have in the female liberation movement and in a more egalitarian relationship between the two sexes.