Reading 'The Second Sex'

a couple of decades ago, I was struck, first of all, by what a pleasant person Simone de Beauvoir seemed to be, and how reasonable.  I still couldn't (and can't) fathom her loyalty to, and obvious pride in, being the Significant Other of the weak and nasty--and, for my money, quite negligible--J.P. Sartre; charitably, I put her attachment down to the Madness of Love.  What, after all, appealed to me in de Beauvoir was her unaffectedly original view of herself and the world.  I was very interested to notice what she said about not being born a woman, but having become one.  "How odd," I thought; "I wonder if other women feel that way about themselves, and just don't say so?" And I didn't entirely forget about it, but sort of filed it away in the "Watch for Future Applications" file--and it did come in handy, as a critical insight in reading the next book of de Beauvoir's that I read, L'Invitée, a very depressing novel which is made much easier to bear as you read by keeping in mind that the plot, and the characters (even Sartre's*), are both real and semi-fictionalized constructs.  You might suppose that I would have realized that I was on to something.  

*  I didn't for a moment, however, doubt the literal truth of the account of Sartre's bummer of a mescaline trip; nor was I much surprised to learn that he was pursued for months (Who knows?--maybe for the rest of his life) by a giant blue lobster that only he could see.  Cold-hearted old hippy that I am, I believe that intellectual cowards and moral relativists, unable to bear the truth they apperceive of themselves under the influence of mind-expanding drugs, naturally take refuge in paranoia and persecution mania.  And I see, now't I think about it, that both Sartre's menacing "lobster" and Beauvoir's "constructed self" are similarly cowardly evasions of responsibility for themselves.  This had never occurred to me until I started reading about postmodernism.