Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T15:53:40.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sisyphean Torture of Housework: Simone de Beauvoir and Inequitable Divisions of Domestic Work in Marriage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Andrea Veltman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir's account of marriage in The Second Sex and argues that Beauvoir's dichotomy between transcendence and immanence can provide an illuminating critique of continuing gender inequities in marriage and divisions of domestic work. Beauvoir's existentialist ethics not only establishes a moral wrong in marriages in which wives perform the second shift of household labor but also supports the need to transform existing normative expectations surrounding wives and domestic work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , Summer 2004 , pp. 121 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Asher, Carol. 1981. Simone de Beauvoir: A life of freedom. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1948. The ethics of ambiguity. Trans. Frechtman, Bernard. New Jersey: Citadel Press.Google Scholar
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1974. All mid and done. Trans. O'Brian, Patrick. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
de Beauvoir, Simone. 19521989. The second sex. Trans. Parshley, H. M.Reprint. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Bergoffen, Debra. 1997. The philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered phenomenologies, erotic generosities. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Bergoffen, Debra. 1999. Marriage, autonomy, and the feminine protest. Hypatia 14 (4): 18–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, SusanMilke, MelissaSayler, Liana, and Robinson, John. 2000. Is anyone doing the housework? Trends in the gender division of household labor. Social Forces 79 (1): 191–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1996. Against marriage and motherhood. Hypatia 11 (3): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia. 2002. The atrocity paradigm: A theory of evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delphy, Christine, and Leonard, Diana. 1992. Familiar exploitation: A new analysis of marriage in contemporary Western societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Ken. 1997. Inequalities in marriage: Australia and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Deutsch, Francine. 1999. Halving it all: How equally shared parenting works. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha. 1995. The neutered mother, the sexual family, and other twentieth century tragedies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fullbrook, Edward, and Fullbrook, Kate. 1998. Simone de Beauvoir: A critical introduction. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gupta, Sanjiv. 1999. The effects of transitions in marital status on men's performance of housework. Journal of Marriage and the Family 61 (August 1999): 700–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. 1989. The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Kruks, Sonia. 1998. Beauvoir: The weight of situation. In Simone de Beauvoir: A critical reader, ed. Fallaize, Elizabeth. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leighton, Jean. 1975. Simone de Beauvoir on women. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Genevieve. 1993. Man of reason: “Male” and “female” in Western philosophy. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Lundgren‐Gothlin, Eva. 1996. Sex and existence: Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Trans. Schenck, L.London: Athlone and Hanover.Google Scholar
Mahon, Joseph. 1997. Existentialism, feminism, and Simone de Beauvoir. New York: St. Martín's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maushart, Susan. 2002. Wifework: What marriage really means for women. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
McMahon, Anthony. 1999. Taking care of men: Sexual politics in the public mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nock, Steven. 1998. Marriage in men's lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Press, Julie, and Townsley, Eleanor. 1998. Wives' and husbands' housework reporting. Gender and Society 12 (2): 188–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarzer, Alice. 1984. After The Second Sex: Conversations with Simone de Beauvoir. Trans. Howarth, Marianne. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 1984. Gender‐specific values. Philosophical Forum 15 (summer): 425–42.Google Scholar
Shelton, Beth, and Daphne, John. 1993. Does marital status make a difference? Housework among married and cohabiting men and women. Journal of Family Issues 14 (3): 401–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simons, Margaret. 1999. Beauvoir and The second sex: Feminism, race, and the origins of existentialism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman 6k Littlefield.Google Scholar
Slipman, Sue. 1995. Female refuseniks withdraw from gender war: The opportunity costs of being a mother are too high for many modern women. The Independent, April 11.Google Scholar
Steil, Janice. 1997. Marital equality: Its relationship to the well‐being of husbands and wives. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Williams, Joan. 2000. Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar