Black Milk - Elif Shafak [49]
Waging a passionate war against bourgeois norms, she questioned the institutions of marriage and motherhood at great length. She said many women longed to rediscover themselves in their children—a “psychological need” she clearly did not share. She and Sartre were a committed but free couple—independent, self-reliant and sufficient for each other. Bourgeois marital life was full of lies, deceptions and unrealistic pledges of fidelity. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, they had made a pact: They would tell each other everything. They were both open to the idea of “experiencing contingent love affairs.” Besides, she believed that maternity was incompatible with the life she had chosen as a writer and intellectual. She needed time, concentration and freedom to pursue her ideals.
In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir reiterates Hegel’s famous dictum that the birth of children often goes hand in hand with the death of parents. Yet, despite her strong feelings on marriage and motherhood, de Beauvoir’s writings bear traces of another truth underneath: that if Sartre had wanted to have children, in her desire to please him she could have become a mother. She adored him. To her the sun of a new society rose from the depths of his eyes. He was the only man she respected more than she desired—the man whose time, work and ideas she had had to share with hundreds of other people, some of whom were women far more beautiful and ambitious than she was. And yet she knew how special she was in his eyes. Since the day their paths intersected in 1929 when they were both students at the École Normale Supérieure, he had been many things to her—a comrade, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a tutor, a best friend and an impossible dream.
One should not be fooled by the terms of endearment she uses in her letters to him: “my little man,” or “my dear little being.” He was a giant to her—a man she addressed with the formal vous all the time. If he had wanted to start a family, she would have probably gone ahead, even though she clearly thought that motherhood was not meant for the likes of her. Though she was hurt by Sartre’s infidelities, she continued to defend the pact they had made. Simone de Beauvoir was a woman of impeccable analyses and unexpected conflicts.
If the broader society was not ready to address motherhood in a critical light, the intellectual circles—by definition progressive and open-minded—were just as unprepared, not to mention disproportionately male. There was a widespread silence in the world of books when it came to issues such as premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression or menopause. Likewise, hardly anyone wrote about the Bermuda triangle of “ideal wife–diligent housekeeper–selfless mother” whereby so many women’s creative talents disappeared into the vortex. In a milieu such as this de Beauvoir faced deeply rooted prejudices and clichés. She wrote and spoke fervently on how women were being “forced to choose” between the brain and the body.
She was equally critical of those women who had willingly internalized gender inequalities, seeing themselves as inferior to their male counterparts. “Even the lowliest of men sees himself a demi-God when faced with a woman,” she remarked. Her mind was corrosive, her pen was sharp and her personality was highly contentious. Once she said she found it quite normal that many people among the middle class hated her. “If it were any other way, I would begin to doubt myself.”
It wasn’t only Western feminists who questioned the romanticized sacredness of motherhood.