INTRODUCTION TO THE VINTAGE EDITION INTRODUCTION TO THE VINTAGE EDITION xi principles,she had to begin with the specific and the individual,which of independent,purely reportorial articles about the situation of con- in this case was her role within his system. temporary women.It was not until the fall of that year that all her One idea began "to emerge with some insistence,with clarity,"from formerly haphazard ideas coalesced into the form that became her long, her thinking.It brought her to "the very profound and astonishing serious,and sustained examination of the condition of women through- realization"that she was different from Sartre"because he was a man out history. and I was only a woman."In a 1982 conversation she explained what "Sexuality and socialization"became Beauvoir's"poles of analysis she meant by“only': and reflection"7 as she turned first to the lost or missing history of women.She began "at the beginning,with biology,"then continued I had not yet settled on the idea of woman as the other-that was with history,mythology,politics,and gender.She decided to divide her to come later.I had not yet decided that the lot of woman was inferior to the allotment of men in this life.But somehow,I was research into two parts,which ultimately appeared as two separately published volumes in French and as Books One and Two in the English beginning to formulate the thesis that women had not been given translation. equality in our society,and I must tell you that this was an extremely Book One is a historical overview that she called "Facts and Myths" troubling discovery for me.This is really how I began to be serious about writing about women-when I fully realized the disparity in about women.These she divided further into three separate sections our lives as compared to men.But [in 1947],none of this was clear called“Destiny,,”“"History,”and“Myths,”all of which are further divided into individual chapters."Destiny"discusses the condition of to me. women through biology,psychoanalysis,and historical materialism. These thoughts were interrupted that year when she went to the "History"follows women through nomadic societies,as early tillers of United States for the first time,sent by the French government to the soil,and from the time of the patriarchs and classical antiquity lecture in American colleges and universities on contemporary French through the Middle Ages,the Enlightenment,the French Revolution, literature.In the course of her travels,she began to think about enlarg- and the granting of French suffrage in 1947.In "Myths"she speaks of ing her"essay about women"into a book that would be a comparative dreams,fears,and idols,then follows the mythical woman created by analysis of the situation of women in the United States and France. five different male authors.Four are French:Montherlant,Claudel, This time she intended it to be grounded solidly in existentialism but Breton,and Stendhal;the fifth is English,D.H.Lawrence.She follows with a political cast "not...Marxism per se,but certainly...the this with a discussion of "Myth and Reality." politics of the Left." In the second volume,or Book Two,she deals with"Woman's Life Whenever she had the opportunity to talk to American women she Today,"which,following form,she also divides into three sections: asked questions about the differences between their culture and her u"The Formative Years,”“Situation,”and“lustifications,.”These are own.When she returned to France she asked French women to tell her followed by a conclusion called "Toward Liberation."Here she is both the story of their lives,intending to use them as case histories in her contemporary and personal,as she writes of childhood,adolescence, book.Listening to these stories made her realize that she owed a great maturity,and old age.She also describes sexual initiation and various deal of her success and independence to the good fortune of having expressions of sexuality from lesbianism to heterosexual marriage'as she chosen Sartre as her first and most enduring male companion. deals with the idea of love in its many forms,from narcissism to mysti- She abandoned the idea of a comparative study of women in the two cism.Her conclusion is optimistic,as she defines both a way of being cultures shortly after she returned to France,and instead wrote a series and a model for action by women of future generations. of impressions about American life,collected in book form as America As Beauvoir filled in the details of her ambitious outline,the word Day by Day.By mid-1947 she was envisioning "a long chapter on "other"became increasingly important in her vocabulary.8 She defined women,"and planning to model it on America Day by Day as a series white men in Western civilizations as being the central figures in their societies,and according to this definition,not only women were