xii INTRODUCTION TO THE VINTAGE EDITION INTRODUCTION TO THE VINTAGE EDITION xiii "other,"but -also anyone whom she considered barred from empower- She drew upon earlier feminist writers,among them Virginia Woolf, ment by color or sexual preference.To her;the next logical step seemed to develop still another perspective.Woolf's view of the relationship "the need to define what these 'others'were in relation to white men, between economic independence and intellectual freedom had long then to study the historical situations which made such alterity possible been her own.She also used the documentation of women themselves, in the first place and what circumstances made it legitimate." as she studied,evaluated,and formed theories about letters,diaries, Nelson Algren,with whom she carried on an almost fifteen-year personal psychoanalytic histories,autobiographies,essays,and novels.In long-distance love affair,was responsible for giving a particularly Ameri- many ways she deserves credit for focusing the attention of later genera- can slant to The Second Sex.He suggested that she conduct her study tions of scholars upon these heretofore neglected areas that are now of women along the lines of the experience of black Americans in a valued as important sources for revising history to include the participa- segregated society and introduced her to the writings of Gunnar and tion and contribution of women. Alva Myrdal,among many others,and introduced her to his black These are only several examples of the scope of her research and American friends in Chicago,urging them to share their experiences methodology.The global influence of the book is all the more extraordi- with her.She adopted Algren's view in part because of her own friend- nary when we realize that it was written by a French woman of a specific ship with the black American writer Richard Wright and his white wife, social and intellectual background who had very little firsthand knowl- Ellen.Seeing the problems they encountered as a couple convinced her edge of previous feminist movements,writings,or ideas within France that white men had succeeded in relegating both black men and all itself to guide her initial explorations,and almost no knowledge of women into positions of "alterite"or "otherness."Algren also insisted feminist activity elsewhere in the world.Yet she was able to go unfail- that she read American literature of the 1920s and 1930s,with its strong ingly to the important documents,sources,and writings in many fields, political and social content.When he was in Chicago and she in Paris and to synthesize all this information within her self-imposed frame- 00 their correspondence often contained discussions about such writers as work of existential philosophy. James T.Farrell,John O'Hara,John Dos Passos,Frank Conroy,Tess The book that resulted has been many things to many readers in the Schlessinger,Maridel LeSeur,and others. years since it was published and translated into more than twenty-six From reading fiction and sociology,she turned to history to ascertain different languages.One of the fairest assessments is by British scholar women's role in it.She discovered that in general there was none,for Terry Keefe,who called it"one of the most important and far-reaching they were seldom mentioned,if at all.She found support for her views books on women ever published,"but who also noted that in the French writer Poulain de la Barre,whom she called "a little- known feminist of the seventeenth century."She shared his belief that This highly ambitious project leaves a good deal to be desired,for the "All that has been written about women by men should be suspect,for book cannot be said to be very carefully composed,or even,on the the men are at once judge and party to the lawsuit." whole,particularly well-written....While almost every section Beauvoir's citation of Poulain to prove a point is only one example contains some fertile ideas and valuable insights,argument of the of the scope of her research and methodology.She was also inquisitive highest quality is rarely sustained for long.10 about contemporary scholarship and incorporated much new informa- tion from developing disciplines into her book.Using anthropology,she Criticism of the book was quick in coming and has continued ever was an early practitioner of gender theory as she sought ways to extract since,even though it is generally praised for having changed how and define common characteristics among women from within studies "official anti-feminist and feminist discourse have been carried on that only mentioned them as figures in the larger background.Although [since]the Middle Ages.1 One of the most sustained criticisms has she held a life-long distrust of psychology,she nevertheless attended been that Beauvoir is guilty of unconscious misogyny,that having writ- some of Jacques Lacan's lectures,hoping again to find patterns and ten about women,she has taken great care to separate herself from trends common among women. them.The French writer and political activist Francis Jeanson accused