Judith Okely (Essay Date 1986)

SOURCE: Okely, Judith. "Rereading The Second Sex." In Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader, edited by Elizabeth Fallaize, pp. 20-28. New York: Routledge, 1998.

In the following essay, originally published in 1986, Okely considers how elements of The Second Sex have withstood the passage of time and how the book furthers development of feminist thought.

Though de Beauvoir's study now reads differently both for her past and her new readers, the earlier reading cannot be easily jettisoned. The book is part of some women's personal history and part of the history of feminism. This double reading, then and now, is the rationale for my selection of certain themes for a critical discussion.

De Beauvoir's central section on mythology proved startling and evocative to a young woman like myself in the early 1960s. Today, thanks partly to anthropology and to feminists' interrogation of the subject...