The somber thesis of The Second Sex that it is a malediction to be a woman finds substantial support in [Simone de Beauvoir's] novels inasmuch as the feminine characters are preponderantly unhappy, divided and neurotic creatures. Though they do not consciously reflect on their fate and submission qua woman, most are nonetheless conspicuously marked by a flaw; one suspects that their suffering derives in part from their initial misfortune of being female. The pessimism of The Second Sex is thus reinforced in the novels. However, The Second Sex also contains the optimistic and even Utopian idea that woman's subjection and role as the passive, "inessential" being has arbitrarily been imposed by the dominant male culture. If woman could become economically independent and as committed to her work as man she might escape the curse of immanence, passivity, and relative "being." "One is not born a woman, one becomes...