| Description | Photographs of Simone de Beauvoir with readings over: "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman… It is civilisation as a whole that produces this creature…" De Beauvoir (with Jean-Paul Sartre) interviewed saying that "Truth can be used as an offensive weapon, and it’s often men who do that… truth has no intrinsic value…"
The Second Sex (Le Deuxième sexe, 1949). Women in cafés, etc. "… men compel her to assume the status of ‘the other’." Kate Millett, Writer, talking about the book, how it was received, and how women who read it were labelled "maladjusted", etc. Ann Oakley, Sociologist and Writer, talks about de Beauvoir being a very important role model, "the mother … that some of us wished we’d had ourselves". Angie Pegg, Further Education Teacher, was angry with her mother for suggesting that home should come before university studies and thinking that de Beauvoir would have been more encouraging. Books by de Beauvoir. The programme looks at the influence she has had worldwide through her life and work, forty years after the publication of The Second Sex. La Rotonde, Paris, above which de Beauvoir was born. Photographs of her family and her early life; her description of her mother and father’s different ideas and approaches to life, "the reason why [she] became an intellectual", though "to train for a profession was a sign of defeat". Ann Oakley on first being given a copy of The Second Sex; her life at the time; deciding to do her PhD on women and housework, much to the confusion of male academics. She read The Second Sex in the course of her studies, and found its message that there was room for change, as well as its breadth of focus, very inspiring. She thinks that de Beauvoir didn’t come to see the positive side of motherhood as she never had children herself. Oakley reads de Beauvoir’s response to her mother’s death. |
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