Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir posed questions many men, and women, had yet to ponder when the book was released in 1953. "One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should..." she says in this comprehensive treatise on women. She weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology and a host of other disciplines to show women's place in the world and to postulate on the power of sexuality. This is a powerful piece of writing in a time before "feminism" was even a phrase, much less a movement. --Christine Buttery

Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

A hugely impressive book, 09 Apr 2008
Simone de Beauvoir was scandalised and ridiculed particularly by the church when this first came out in 1949 which must have been a disappointment for her. Perhaps a radical book at the time but very relevant to the present and this is worth reading by all women and any man who agrees that women should have a better time whilst on this planet.

The book covers many aspects of being a woman, begining when humans first roamed the earth as nomads and the tyranny of life as a woman giving birth constantly as unlike many animals humans are always fertile. Infant death and infantacide were a means of survival then and the reason why the human population was realatively small for tens of thousands of years. Then tilling the earth when the male began to domineer and own all land, passing it on to their male heirs, leaving woman to be a virtual slave to fathers and husbands, the start of male domination!

I learnt some really interesting things from reading this for example: I didn't know that reproduction was properly underrstood until the mid 19th Century, all sorts of bizare beliefs were practised prior to this revelation, people even believed that sperm contained tiny little people!!! Also discussed is how man and woman are prisoners of instinctive behaviour and really cannot help themselves to a great extent, brilliant for understanding relationships, ie why men walk away after sex in many cases but instinctively a for a woman it is the start of relationship due to the feelings of wanting to nurture a pregnancy. It also explains why in some ways a woman does not always progress due to involuntarily sabotaging their own plans ie preferring part time work or not going for the promotion due to home making instincts. Prostitution, love, ageing are all discussed in depth in this volume. A fascinating read, it sucks you in and you cannot put it down. Only one negative comment and that is that I found it very slightly depressing as there is little hope for women to be truly independant before they get old, ugly and die according to Ms De Beauvoir.

One of the great books of the 20th century, 26 Mar 2008
There is more good sense in this wonderful book than in most of the rest of all the writing by and about women. Marvellous.

encyclopaedic, 28 Mar 2006
The Second Sex is a book of mammoth proportions, displaying the intellectual prowess of de Beauviour in full swing, putting women right up there in the literary firmament. It is almost impossible to overestimate this book, and it is a shame that it never recieved its due praise whence published. However, this unfairness only concretises Beauvior's arguments upon Patriarchal attitudes. TSS is encyclopaedic in scope, and dazzling in its wealth of knowledge. Opening this book is like opening Pandora's box - there is no end to what you may find inside.

Great book, shame about the editing, 04 Feb 2004
This book is both absorbing and informative, giving an excellent account of what it is to be a woman as Other. I would normally give the work five stars, but I am prevented from doing so by the way the text has been translated and edited. Big, important and interesting parts have been lost through poor and reductive editing. Let me give an example: in the chapter “Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France” the paragraph on page 133 starting with the words “Woman still retained a few privileges in the Middle Ages…” has been heavily reduced, excluding de Beauvoir’s account and use of the Songes du Verger, a vitriolic and misogynous text vilifying women.

As such this edition of the Second Sex is highly educational to all newcomers, but the shoddy editing will disappoint people already acquainted with this work, for it has robbed the book of some of its ideas and bite.

Amazing study of gender difference and similarity, 07 Feb 2003
De Beauvoir takes us on an epic tour from the dawn of the human race to the contemporary world of 1940's commerce and culture, through the internal workings of the body to how others perceive them via the beliefs, thoughts and prejudices of societies throughout the world. Her breadth and depth of research is an attempt to answer one simple question- why are women constantly seen as inferior to men, in effect the "second sex"?
Such a question is almost impossible to answer but at just under seven hundred pages of intelligent writing TSS gets as close to the quick as any women's study or feminist book has got before or after its publication. Questioning every one of the "labels" attached to the human female De Beauvoir pulls apart traditional thinking on issues such as the "innate" maternal instinct, women's intellectual capacity and physical strength and make-up. Every chapter is a definitive case in itself and De Beauvoir's collection of facts, statistics and case studies are unshakable in their accuracy. Her conclusions are well thought through and easy to follow and it is only the sheer amount and wealth of information she gives us that can seem overwhelming at times.
The very fact that a woman has written such a masterpiece is evidence enough that women are as intellectually equal to men but it is sadly revealing of our patriarchal society that gives TSS less reverence than it deserves. Since the 1940's many other theories have developed in the area of gender studies so TSS is no longer the "one text that covers all". Supplementing TSS with more recent works such as those by Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Kate Millet will give you a more general picture of feminism but it still remains the greatest and most complete work on women's studies and possibly the most important book to come out of the twentieth century.
This is essential reading for any self-respecting individual, male or female, although its size and density means it is probably better to read this segments at a time.

Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

A hugely impressive book, 09 Apr 2008
Simone de Beauvoir was scandalised and ridiculed particularly by the church when this first came out in 1949 which must have been a disappointment for her. Perhaps a radical book at the time but very relevant to the present and this is worth reading by all women and any man who agrees that women should have a better time whilst on this planet.

The book covers many aspects of being a woman, begining when humans first roamed the earth as nomads and the tyranny of life as a woman giving birth constantly as unlike many animals humans are always fertile. Infant death and infantacide were a means of survival then and the reason why the human population was realatively small for tens of thousands of years. Then tilling the earth when the male began to domineer and own all land, passing it on to their male heirs, leaving woman to be a virtual slave to fathers and husbands, the start of male domination!

I learnt some really interesting things from reading this for example: I didn't know that reproduction was properly underrstood until the mid 19th Century, all sorts of bizare beliefs were practised prior to this revelation, people even believed that sperm contained tiny little people!!! Also discussed is how man and woman are prisoners of instinctive behaviour and really cannot help themselves to a great extent, brilliant for understanding relationships, ie why men walk away after sex in many cases but instinctively a for a woman it is the start of relationship due to the feelings of wanting to nurture a pregnancy. It also explains why in some ways a woman does not always progress due to involuntarily sabotaging their own plans ie preferring part time work or not going for the promotion due to home making instincts. Prostitution, love, ageing are all discussed in depth in this volume. A fascinating read, it sucks you in and you cannot put it down. Only one negative comment and that is that I found it very slightly depressing as there is little hope for women to be truly independant before they get old, ugly and die according to Ms De Beauvoir.

One of the great books of the 20th century, 26 Mar 2008
There is more good sense in this wonderful book than in most of the rest of all the writing by and about women. Marvellous.

encyclopaedic, 28 Mar 2006
The Second Sex is a book of mammoth proportions, displaying the intellectual prowess of de Beauviour in full swing, putting women right up there in the literary firmament. It is almost impossible to overestimate this book, and it is a shame that it never recieved its due praise whence published. However, this unfairness only concretises Beauvior's arguments upon Patriarchal attitudes. TSS is encyclopaedic in scope, and dazzling in its wealth of knowledge. Opening this book is like opening Pandora's box - there is no end to what you may find inside.

Great book, shame about the editing, 04 Feb 2004
This book is both absorbing and informative, giving an excellent account of what it is to be a woman as Other. I would normally give the work five stars, but I am prevented from doing so by the way the text has been translated and edited. Big, important and interesting parts have been lost through poor and reductive editing. Let me give an example: in the chapter “Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France” the paragraph on page 133 starting with the words “Woman still retained a few privileges in the Middle Ages…” has been heavily reduced, excluding de Beauvoir’s account and use of the Songes du Verger, a vitriolic and misogynous text vilifying women.

As such this edition of the Second Sex is highly educational to all newcomers, but the shoddy editing will disappoint people already acquainted with this work, for it has robbed the book of some of its ideas and bite.

Amazing study of gender difference and similarity, 07 Feb 2003
De Beauvoir takes us on an epic tour from the dawn of the human race to the contemporary world of 1940's commerce and culture, through the internal workings of the body to how others perceive them via the beliefs, thoughts and prejudices of societies throughout the world. Her breadth and depth of research is an attempt to answer one simple question- why are women constantly seen as inferior to men, in effect the "second sex"?
Such a question is almost impossible to answer but at just under seven hundred pages of intelligent writing TSS gets as close to the quick as any women's study or feminist book has got before or after its publication. Questioning every one of the "labels" attached to the human female De Beauvoir pulls apart traditional thinking on issues such as the "innate" maternal instinct, women's intellectual capacity and physical strength and make-up. Every chapter is a definitive case in itself and De Beauvoir's collection of facts, statistics and case studies are unshakable in their accuracy. Her conclusions are well thought through and easy to follow and it is only the sheer amount and wealth of information she gives us that can seem overwhelming at times.
The very fact that a woman has written such a masterpiece is evidence enough that women are as intellectually equal to men but it is sadly revealing of our patriarchal society that gives TSS less reverence than it deserves. Since the 1940's many other theories have developed in the area of gender studies so TSS is no longer the "one text that covers all". Supplementing TSS with more recent works such as those by Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Kate Millet will give you a more general picture of feminism but it still remains the greatest and most complete work on women's studies and possibly the most important book to come out of the twentieth century.
This is essential reading for any self-respecting individual, male or female, although its size and density means it is probably better to read this segments at a time.

Excellent and inspiring., 04 Dec 2004
This book has so much more to offer than simply a treatise on the feminist needs of creative women (although this is a very important topic, and as relevant now as when Woolf wrote her essays); it also offers excellent advice on the art of writing well, and the need for a good writer to resist the urge to use their craft as a stage from which to proclaim their views. I already know this book will have a profound effect on my own writing, and for that alone it thoroughly deserves five stars.

Gets to the point eventually..., 17 May 2004
I found this book slightly tiring and difficult at times, but finishing it can see Woolfs point about women coming up trumps.

No introduction or illustrations.

Concise and Invigorating, 16 Mar 2003
Asked originally to deliver a talk on Women and Fiction in 1928, Virginia Woolf eventually produced this longer essay which expands its subject to cover education, marriage, property and money. She moves backwards through literary history, examining the women who have written, often against great opposition, and the female characters that have been written, mostly by men, and finds a startling anomaly: "Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant."

Unlike many feminist authors, Woolf does not argue for tearing down the achievements of male authors. In fact she argues that both sexes should write androgynously, in order to find the proper reality of things, but at its heart it is a feminist essay. At the time Woolf was writing women had been granted many more freedoms than their mothers, but still had a lot to fight for, and she urges women to do so, albeit for the realm of intellectual freedom and the pleasure of writing for a living. (I have no doubt she would do the same today, despite all our apparent advances.)

She knew she was one of the fortunate (she was left five hundred pounds a year by her aunt, giving her economic independence) and she famously concludes that a women must have a room of her own and money of her own in order to write. But why? It is not so that there are idle hours to be filled by writing - it is because writing well and truthfully can only be properly achieved when a woman is not railing against the bounds of poverty, dependence, social exclusion and disapproval.

The essay is, however, also art. Unlike a dry academic paper it skips lightly and often with humour from subject to observation, and demonstrates with her usual deftness how the real world produces new trains of thought in a person, just as a person's thoughts can mean interpreting the world in a new way. The very construction of the essay is an example of the work she is promoting, to attempt "to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life." Because of this, and the sheer energy of the writing, it is a work that deserves a reading, no matter what your sex or station or ambition. And if you are a woman intending to write, be it a novel, travelogue or PHD you really ought to give up a couple of hours to read this; you are almost certainly guaranteed a new enthusiasm for your task.

Wonderful essay, demonstrating fantastic cultural insight., 05 Apr 2001
'A Room of One's Own' is an extremely readable essay. It's a delightful read and the classification of it as an 'essay' should not put anyone off as it is as entertaining as any of Woolf's prose. Once I started reading it I could not stop. Woolf flirts with you through her narrative, drawing you in to her thought processes, enticing you to follow her narrator on a journey of the mind as she wanders about 'Oxbridge' and London. Woolf demonstrates great insight, forseeing the future for women and their involvement in the arts with great accuracy. Through her narrative she also introduces a new discourse, one that she encourages other women to take up in order to free themselves from the masculine domination of literature. Inspirational.

Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

A hugely impressive book, 09 Apr 2008
Simone de Beauvoir was scandalised and ridiculed particularly by the church when this first came out in 1949 which must have been a disappointment for her. Perhaps a radical book at the time but very relevant to the present and this is worth reading by all women and any man who agrees that women should have a better time whilst on this planet.

The book covers many aspects of being a woman, begining when humans first roamed the earth as nomads and the tyranny of life as a woman giving birth constantly as unlike many animals humans are always fertile. Infant death and infantacide were a means of survival then and the reason why the human population was realatively small for tens of thousands of years. Then tilling the earth when the male began to domineer and own all land, passing it on to their male heirs, leaving woman to be a virtual slave to fathers and husbands, the start of male domination!

I learnt some really interesting things from reading this for example: I didn't know that reproduction was properly underrstood until the mid 19th Century, all sorts of bizare beliefs were practised prior to this revelation, people even believed that sperm contained tiny little people!!! Also discussed is how man and woman are prisoners of instinctive behaviour and really cannot help themselves to a great extent, brilliant for understanding relationships, ie why men walk away after sex in many cases but instinctively a for a woman it is the start of relationship due to the feelings of wanting to nurture a pregnancy. It also explains why in some ways a woman does not always progress due to involuntarily sabotaging their own plans ie preferring part time work or not going for the promotion due to home making instincts. Prostitution, love, ageing are all discussed in depth in this volume. A fascinating read, it sucks you in and you cannot put it down. Only one negative comment and that is that I found it very slightly depressing as there is little hope for women to be truly independant before they get old, ugly and die according to Ms De Beauvoir.

One of the great books of the 20th century, 26 Mar 2008
There is more good sense in this wonderful book than in most of the rest of all the writing by and about women. Marvellous.

encyclopaedic, 28 Mar 2006
The Second Sex is a book of mammoth proportions, displaying the intellectual prowess of de Beauviour in full swing, putting women right up there in the literary firmament. It is almost impossible to overestimate this book, and it is a shame that it never recieved its due praise whence published. However, this unfairness only concretises Beauvior's arguments upon Patriarchal attitudes. TSS is encyclopaedic in scope, and dazzling in its wealth of knowledge. Opening this book is like opening Pandora's box - there is no end to what you may find inside.

Great book, shame about the editing, 04 Feb 2004
This book is both absorbing and informative, giving an excellent account of what it is to be a woman as Other. I would normally give the work five stars, but I am prevented from doing so by the way the text has been translated and edited. Big, important and interesting parts have been lost through poor and reductive editing. Let me give an example: in the chapter “Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France” the paragraph on page 133 starting with the words “Woman still retained a few privileges in the Middle Ages…” has been heavily reduced, excluding de Beauvoir’s account and use of the Songes du Verger, a vitriolic and misogynous text vilifying women.

As such this edition of the Second Sex is highly educational to all newcomers, but the shoddy editing will disappoint people already acquainted with this work, for it has robbed the book of some of its ideas and bite.

Amazing study of gender difference and similarity, 07 Feb 2003
De Beauvoir takes us on an epic tour from the dawn of the human race to the contemporary world of 1940's commerce and culture, through the internal workings of the body to how others perceive them via the beliefs, thoughts and prejudices of societies throughout the world. Her breadth and depth of research is an attempt to answer one simple question- why are women constantly seen as inferior to men, in effect the "second sex"?
Such a question is almost impossible to answer but at just under seven hundred pages of intelligent writing TSS gets as close to the quick as any women's study or feminist book has got before or after its publication. Questioning every one of the "labels" attached to the human female De Beauvoir pulls apart traditional thinking on issues such as the "innate" maternal instinct, women's intellectual capacity and physical strength and make-up. Every chapter is a definitive case in itself and De Beauvoir's collection of facts, statistics and case studies are unshakable in their accuracy. Her conclusions are well thought through and easy to follow and it is only the sheer amount and wealth of information she gives us that can seem overwhelming at times.
The very fact that a woman has written such a masterpiece is evidence enough that women are as intellectually equal to men but it is sadly revealing of our patriarchal society that gives TSS less reverence than it deserves. Since the 1940's many other theories have developed in the area of gender studies so TSS is no longer the "one text that covers all". Supplementing TSS with more recent works such as those by Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Kate Millet will give you a more general picture of feminism but it still remains the greatest and most complete work on women's studies and possibly the most important book to come out of the twentieth century.
This is essential reading for any self-respecting individual, male or female, although its size and density means it is probably better to read this segments at a time.

Excellent and inspiring., 04 Dec 2004
This book has so much more to offer than simply a treatise on the feminist needs of creative women (although this is a very important topic, and as relevant now as when Woolf wrote her essays); it also offers excellent advice on the art of writing well, and the need for a good writer to resist the urge to use their craft as a stage from which to proclaim their views. I already know this book will have a profound effect on my own writing, and for that alone it thoroughly deserves five stars.

Gets to the point eventually..., 17 May 2004
I found this book slightly tiring and difficult at times, but finishing it can see Woolfs point about women coming up trumps.

No introduction or illustrations.

Concise and Invigorating, 16 Mar 2003
Asked originally to deliver a talk on Women and Fiction in 1928, Virginia Woolf eventually produced this longer essay which expands its subject to cover education, marriage, property and money. She moves backwards through literary history, examining the women who have written, often against great opposition, and the female characters that have been written, mostly by men, and finds a startling anomaly: "Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant."

Unlike many feminist authors, Woolf does not argue for tearing down the achievements of male authors. In fact she argues that both sexes should write androgynously, in order to find the proper reality of things, but at its heart it is a feminist essay. At the time Woolf was writing women had been granted many more freedoms than their mothers, but still had a lot to fight for, and she urges women to do so, albeit for the realm of intellectual freedom and the pleasure of writing for a living. (I have no doubt she would do the same today, despite all our apparent advances.)

She knew she was one of the fortunate (she was left five hundred pounds a year by her aunt, giving her economic independence) and she famously concludes that a women must have a room of her own and money of her own in order to write. But why? It is not so that there are idle hours to be filled by writing - it is because writing well and truthfully can only be properly achieved when a woman is not railing against the bounds of poverty, dependence, social exclusion and disapproval.

The essay is, however, also art. Unlike a dry academic paper it skips lightly and often with humour from subject to observation, and demonstrates with her usual deftness how the real world produces new trains of thought in a person, just as a person's thoughts can mean interpreting the world in a new way. The very construction of the essay is an example of the work she is promoting, to attempt "to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life." Because of this, and the sheer energy of the writing, it is a work that deserves a reading, no matter what your sex or station or ambition. And if you are a woman intending to write, be it a novel, travelogue or PHD you really ought to give up a couple of hours to read this; you are almost certainly guaranteed a new enthusiasm for your task.

Wonderful essay, demonstrating fantastic cultural insight., 05 Apr 2001
'A Room of One's Own' is an extremely readable essay. It's a delightful read and the classification of it as an 'essay' should not put anyone off as it is as entertaining as any of Woolf's prose. Once I started reading it I could not stop. Woolf flirts with you through her narrative, drawing you in to her thought processes, enticing you to follow her narrator on a journey of the mind as she wanders about 'Oxbridge' and London. Woolf demonstrates great insight, forseeing the future for women and their involvement in the arts with great accuracy. Through her narrative she also introduces a new discourse, one that she encourages other women to take up in order to free themselves from the masculine domination of literature. Inspirational.

An eye opener, 15 Aug 2008
I found this book incredibly illuminating. I have experienced, as a young person growing up, both my parents views on sex etc and my friends- both highly contrasting. This book has helped me to understand why nowadays somethings are accepted that would have been seen in a worse light years ago.
Levy writes in an easy to read prose (unlike me) and the book works in chapters linking together different ideas.
I definitely will be looking at this one again. Highly recommended!!

Sisters are doing it to themselves, 10 Mar 2008
Few things in life bug me more than twentysomething women sneering at feminism. Because they're usually doing it over a glass of wine in the pub, on their way home from work, and looking forward to a bit of strings-free 'how's your father' at the weekend. We ought to run some kind of boot camp where they can all go live as fifties housewives for a fortnight, and THEN decide if feminists were all dungaree-wearing, moustachioed lesbians who did nothing but sit about braiding their leg hair. Hello, girls? That job you've got, that pub you're sitting in, the university you went to, the contraception in your purse... in a world where feminism never happened, you'd be home every night baking apple pie and starching your husband's underpants.

But even more galling are the 'new feminists', or female chauvinist pigs as Ariel Levy calls them. Under the magic umbrella of feminism, any kind of behaviour (yes, really, ANY kind) can become 'empowering', that catch-all word that's somehow come to mean you can make shedloads of money out of it. This is the 'new' feminism, and anyone who doesn't actually think it's that cool for women to sell their bodies needs to get with the programme, grandma. Yes, that's right, it's actually 'feminism' in action on those 'music' videos and late-night TV 'programmes' that your boyfriend is probably sorta partial to. That's funny because it used to be degradation, but the adult industry has got one mother of a marketing programme going on. As Levy points out in this well-paced readable book, young women today are afflicted with Uncle Tom syndrome, joining their male friends in the strip clubs and sex shops, and idolising adult stars like Jenna Jameson. Levy reminds us that women like Jameson, glamorous as they might be, are actually prostitutes. No girl in a million years would want to emulate a crack-addled backstreet whore, but plenty of them want to live as brainless blow-up dolls for some reason. Men have once again sold us an image of ourselves, and we women are falling over each other (and maybe pushing and shoving a bit) to buy it.

Levy writes smoothly and well in a poppy, fairly lightweight style with some useful statistics (most sobering of all the high percentage of childhood abuse victims working in the adult industry, including Jameson herself). Your blood may boil at some points on reading this, but she's always level-headed and measured in her assessment of the situation. Levy herself is strikingly attractive (although admittedly not blonde, nor sporting mammary glands the size of basketballs) so the naysayers arguing that it's all sour grapes need to wake up and smell the... KY, or whatever. I have an 8 year old daughter and this is not the world I want her to grow up in. Buy this, read it, pass it around to your friends (male and female) and maybe get a bit of consciousness-raising going on like it's 1970 again. I hope Levy's working on a sequel though, because oops she somehow forgot to present a single, solitary idea about how to actually change any of this. So just read it as a straightforward, entertaining 'state of the nation' style book... and then maybe cancel that brazilian after all, if it's actually really painful and you're only doing it for your boyfriend's sake. One small step for womankind...

An excellent call for sanity, 07 Feb 2008
I found myself reading parts of this book aloud to friends - it is clever and funny on top of its razor-edge insight. Levy's language is simple but evocative, full of witty descriptions of products, behaviours and ideas that desperately deserve the mocking.

It doesn't contain a clear agenda for improvement, which is a mild disappointment. I hope that not too many readers end the book feeling powerless to be agents of change.

Powerful stuff, 19 Jan 2008
Ever felt there was something slightly 'off' with the way female sexual bravado, and even promiscuity, is held up as empowering, and even 'feminist'?

This book is brilliantly argued and hugely important for all women to read. Not only that but it is so entertaining and snappy, it can be read in a couple of sittings. If you are interested in modern feminism, but are put off by the hundreds of scary academic looking books, then this is the book for you. And this is meant as a compliment to the author.

I think if every women and girl read this, we would all be alot closer to TRUE empowerment and liberation (not just sexual), and therefor real happiness.

Essential, 06 Aug 2007
I wrote a review stright after reading this book, but somehow it didn't make it on. However even though a few months have passed I still think this is one of the best books on any subject ever written. The flow, tone, balance and research is impeccable. Levy puts just enough of herself into it to make you feel like it is personable but not too much. On the subject matter itself - What a voice in the wilderness. When all you see around you are young girls wanting to grow up to be Page 3 models and lap dancers this is an essential and timely book. What I really loved is Levy's pointing out that the appearance of being sexually available is not the same as being sexually empowered.
The only thing lacking for me was an international flavour. How does the same phenomenon play out in the UK for example with Page 3 culture and laddettes? Overall, outstanding.

Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

A hugely impressive book, 09 Apr 2008
Simone de Beauvoir was scandalised and ridiculed particularly by the church when this first came out in 1949 which must have been a disappointment for her. Perhaps a radical book at the time but very relevant to the present and this is worth reading by all women and any man who agrees that women should have a better time whilst on this planet.

The book covers many aspects of being a woman, begining when humans first roamed the earth as nomads and the tyranny of life as a woman giving birth constantly as unlike many animals humans are always fertile. Infant death and infantacide were a means of survival then and the reason why the human population was realatively small for tens of thousands of years. Then tilling the earth when the male began to domineer and own all land, passing it on to their male heirs, leaving woman to be a virtual slave to fathers and husbands, the start of male domination!

I learnt some really interesting things from reading this for example: I didn't know that reproduction was properly underrstood until the mid 19th Century, all sorts of bizare beliefs were practised prior to this revelation, people even believed that sperm contained tiny little people!!! Also discussed is how man and woman are prisoners of instinctive behaviour and really cannot help themselves to a great extent, brilliant for understanding relationships, ie why men walk away after sex in many cases but instinctively a for a woman it is the start of relationship due to the feelings of wanting to nurture a pregnancy. It also explains why in some ways a woman does not always progress due to involuntarily sabotaging their own plans ie preferring part time work or not going for the promotion due to home making instincts. Prostitution, love, ageing are all discussed in depth in this volume. A fascinating read, it sucks you in and you cannot put it down. Only one negative comment and that is that I found it very slightly depressing as there is little hope for women to be truly independant before they get old, ugly and die according to Ms De Beauvoir.

One of the great books of the 20th century, 26 Mar 2008
There is more good sense in this wonderful book than in most of the rest of all the writing by and about women. Marvellous.

encyclopaedic, 28 Mar 2006
The Second Sex is a book of mammoth proportions, displaying the intellectual prowess of de Beauviour in full swing, putting women right up there in the literary firmament. It is almost impossible to overestimate this book, and it is a shame that it never recieved its due praise whence published. However, this unfairness only concretises Beauvior's arguments upon Patriarchal attitudes. TSS is encyclopaedic in scope, and dazzling in its wealth of knowledge. Opening this book is like opening Pandora's box - there is no end to what you may find inside.

Great book, shame about the editing, 04 Feb 2004
This book is both absorbing and informative, giving an excellent account of what it is to be a woman as Other. I would normally give the work five stars, but I am prevented from doing so by the way the text has been translated and edited. Big, important and interesting parts have been lost through poor and reductive editing. Let me give an example: in the chapter “Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France” the paragraph on page 133 starting with the words “Woman still retained a few privileges in the Middle Ages…” has been heavily reduced, excluding de Beauvoir’s account and use of the Songes du Verger, a vitriolic and misogynous text vilifying women.

As such this edition of the Second Sex is highly educational to all newcomers, but the shoddy editing will disappoint people already acquainted with this work, for it has robbed the book of some of its ideas and bite.

Amazing study of gender difference and similarity, 07 Feb 2003
De Beauvoir takes us on an epic tour from the dawn of the human race to the contemporary world of 1940's commerce and culture, through the internal workings of the body to how others perceive them via the beliefs, thoughts and prejudices of societies throughout the world. Her breadth and depth of research is an attempt to answer one simple question- why are women constantly seen as inferior to men, in effect the "second sex"?
Such a question is almost impossible to answer but at just under seven hundred pages of intelligent writing TSS gets as close to the quick as any women's study or feminist book has got before or after its publication. Questioning every one of the "labels" attached to the human female De Beauvoir pulls apart traditional thinking on issues such as the "innate" maternal instinct, women's intellectual capacity and physical strength and make-up. Every chapter is a definitive case in itself and De Beauvoir's collection of facts, statistics and case studies are unshakable in their accuracy. Her conclusions are well thought through and easy to follow and it is only the sheer amount and wealth of information she gives us that can seem overwhelming at times.
The very fact that a woman has written such a masterpiece is evidence enough that women are as intellectually equal to men but it is sadly revealing of our patriarchal society that gives TSS less reverence than it deserves. Since the 1940's many other theories have developed in the area of gender studies so TSS is no longer the "one text that covers all". Supplementing TSS with more recent works such as those by Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Kate Millet will give you a more general picture of feminism but it still remains the greatest and most complete work on women's studies and possibly the most important book to come out of the twentieth century.
This is essential reading for any self-respecting individual, male or female, although its size and density means it is probably better to read this segments at a time.

Excellent and inspiring., 04 Dec 2004
This book has so much more to offer than simply a treatise on the feminist needs of creative women (although this is a very important topic, and as relevant now as when Woolf wrote her essays); it also offers excellent advice on the art of writing well, and the need for a good writer to resist the urge to use their craft as a stage from which to proclaim their views. I already know this book will have a profound effect on my own writing, and for that alone it thoroughly deserves five stars.

Gets to the point eventually..., 17 May 2004
I found this book slightly tiring and difficult at times, but finishing it can see Woolfs point about women coming up trumps.

No introduction or illustrations.

Concise and Invigorating, 16 Mar 2003
Asked originally to deliver a talk on Women and Fiction in 1928, Virginia Woolf eventually produced this longer essay which expands its subject to cover education, marriage, property and money. She moves backwards through literary history, examining the women who have written, often against great opposition, and the female characters that have been written, mostly by men, and finds a startling anomaly: "Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant."

Unlike many feminist authors, Woolf does not argue for tearing down the achievements of male authors. In fact she argues that both sexes should write androgynously, in order to find the proper reality of things, but at its heart it is a feminist essay. At the time Woolf was writing women had been granted many more freedoms than their mothers, but still had a lot to fight for, and she urges women to do so, albeit for the realm of intellectual freedom and the pleasure of writing for a living. (I have no doubt she would do the same today, despite all our apparent advances.)

She knew she was one of the fortunate (she was left five hundred pounds a year by her aunt, giving her economic independence) and she famously concludes that a women must have a room of her own and money of her own in order to write. But why? It is not so that there are idle hours to be filled by writing - it is because writing well and truthfully can only be properly achieved when a woman is not railing against the bounds of poverty, dependence, social exclusion and disapproval.

The essay is, however, also art. Unlike a dry academic paper it skips lightly and often with humour from subject to observation, and demonstrates with her usual deftness how the real world produces new trains of thought in a person, just as a person's thoughts can mean interpreting the world in a new way. The very construction of the essay is an example of the work she is promoting, to attempt "to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life." Because of this, and the sheer energy of the writing, it is a work that deserves a reading, no matter what your sex or station or ambition. And if you are a woman intending to write, be it a novel, travelogue or PHD you really ought to give up a couple of hours to read this; you are almost certainly guaranteed a new enthusiasm for your task.

Wonderful essay, demonstrating fantastic cultural insight., 05 Apr 2001
'A Room of One's Own' is an extremely readable essay. It's a delightful read and the classification of it as an 'essay' should not put anyone off as it is as entertaining as any of Woolf's prose. Once I started reading it I could not stop. Woolf flirts with you through her narrative, drawing you in to her thought processes, enticing you to follow her narrator on a journey of the mind as she wanders about 'Oxbridge' and London. Woolf demonstrates great insight, forseeing the future for women and their involvement in the arts with great accuracy. Through her narrative she also introduces a new discourse, one that she encourages other women to take up in order to free themselves from the masculine domination of literature. Inspirational.

An eye opener, 15 Aug 2008
I found this book incredibly illuminating. I have experienced, as a young person growing up, both my parents views on sex etc and my friends- both highly contrasting. This book has helped me to understand why nowadays somethings are accepted that would have been seen in a worse light years ago.
Levy writes in an easy to read prose (unlike me) and the book works in chapters linking together different ideas.
I definitely will be looking at this one again. Highly recommended!!

Sisters are doing it to themselves, 10 Mar 2008
Few things in life bug me more than twentysomething women sneering at feminism. Because they're usually doing it over a glass of wine in the pub, on their way home from work, and looking forward to a bit of strings-free 'how's your father' at the weekend. We ought to run some kind of boot camp where they can all go live as fifties housewives for a fortnight, and THEN decide if feminists were all dungaree-wearing, moustachioed lesbians who did nothing but sit about braiding their leg hair. Hello, girls? That job you've got, that pub you're sitting in, the university you went to, the contraception in your purse... in a world where feminism never happened, you'd be home every night baking apple pie and starching your husband's underpants.

But even more galling are the 'new feminists', or female chauvinist pigs as Ariel Levy calls them. Under the magic umbrella of feminism, any kind of behaviour (yes, really, ANY kind) can become 'empowering', that catch-all word that's somehow come to mean you can make shedloads of money out of it. This is the 'new' feminism, and anyone who doesn't actually think it's that cool for women to sell their bodies needs to get with the programme, grandma. Yes, that's right, it's actually 'feminism' in action on those 'music' videos and late-night TV 'programmes' that your boyfriend is probably sorta partial to. That's funny because it used to be degradation, but the adult industry has got one mother of a marketing programme going on. As Levy points out in this well-paced readable book, young women today are afflicted with Uncle Tom syndrome, joining their male friends in the strip clubs and sex shops, and idolising adult stars like Jenna Jameson. Levy reminds us that women like Jameson, glamorous as they might be, are actually prostitutes. No girl in a million years would want to emulate a crack-addled backstreet whore, but plenty of them want to live as brainless blow-up dolls for some reason. Men have once again sold us an image of ourselves, and we women are falling over each other (and maybe pushing and shoving a bit) to buy it.

Levy writes smoothly and well in a poppy, fairly lightweight style with some useful statistics (most sobering of all the high percentage of childhood abuse victims working in the adult industry, including Jameson herself). Your blood may boil at some points on reading this, but she's always level-headed and measured in her assessment of the situation. Levy herself is strikingly attractive (although admittedly not blonde, nor sporting mammary glands the size of basketballs) so the naysayers arguing that it's all sour grapes need to wake up and smell the... KY, or whatever. I have an 8 year old daughter and this is not the world I want her to grow up in. Buy this, read it, pass it around to your friends (male and female) and maybe get a bit of consciousness-raising going on like it's 1970 again. I hope Levy's working on a sequel though, because oops she somehow forgot to present a single, solitary idea about how to actually change any of this. So just read it as a straightforward, entertaining 'state of the nation' style book... and then maybe cancel that brazilian after all, if it's actually really painful and you're only doing it for your boyfriend's sake. One small step for womankind...

An excellent call for sanity, 07 Feb 2008
I found myself reading parts of this book aloud to friends - it is clever and funny on top of its razor-edge insight. Levy's language is simple but evocative, full of witty descriptions of products, behaviours and ideas that desperately deserve the mocking.

It doesn't contain a clear agenda for improvement, which is a mild disappointment. I hope that not too many readers end the book feeling powerless to be agents of change.

Powerful stuff, 19 Jan 2008
Ever felt there was something slightly 'off' with the way female sexual bravado, and even promiscuity, is held up as empowering, and even 'feminist'?

This book is brilliantly argued and hugely important for all women to read. Not only that but it is so entertaining and snappy, it can be read in a couple of sittings. If you are interested in modern feminism, but are put off by the hundreds of scary academic looking books, then this is the book for you. And this is meant as a compliment to the author.

I think if every women and girl read this, we would all be alot closer to TRUE empowerment and liberation (not just sexual), and therefor real happiness.

Essential, 06 Aug 2007
I wrote a review stright after reading this book, but somehow it didn't make it on. However even though a few months have passed I still think this is one of the best books on any subject ever written. The flow, tone, balance and research is impeccable. Levy puts just enough of herself into it to make you feel like it is personable but not too much. On the subject matter itself - What a voice in the wilderness. When all you see around you are young girls wanting to grow up to be Page 3 models and lap dancers this is an essential and timely book. What I really loved is Levy's pointing out that the appearance of being sexually available is not the same as being sexually empowered.
The only thing lacking for me was an international flavour. How does the same phenomenon play out in the UK for example with Page 3 culture and laddettes? Overall, outstanding.

Dated in Places but still required reading, 20 Nov 2007
This book by Gilbert and Gubar was groundbreaking literary criticism when it was first published, and paved the way for an explosion in feminist literary criticism that allowed much existing work to be re-evaluated and enriched by what women had to say
I recently re-read this work, and have to say that some of it is now dated, and the enormous preface to the recent edition does not really add anything to the main body of text, although it does go some way to setting the scene for the research. It seems dated because what Gilbert and Gubar once fought for is now taken for granted by so many, which just shows the success of their achievements.
The majority of the work on the 19th Century novels themselves, particularly the work of Charlotte Bronte is invaluable and always enriching and interesting. Nobody should be able to read these novels without reading these essays because they just make so much sense. The central tenet about the writer and their ability to express the unexpressible aspects of themselves through their literary creations and in particular the character of Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre, is still breathtaking and brilliant. A must read for any serious students of nineteenth century literature.

Feminist lit-crit of the highest order, 26 May 2001
This is the sort of criticism that expands your impression of literature. The authors cast a fresh light on classic women's writing - Austen, the Brontes, etc - by examining how a woman writer's self-perception is shaped by patriarchy and a mysoginistic tradition, and that the anxiety caused by being 'unfeminine' can be found within the writing. It's also well written enough to be read for fun.

A great insight into Victorian feminism, 03 Oct 1999
A must for anyone interested in the feminist aspects of Victorian writing. Gilbert and Gubar explore the writings of canonical Victorian women such as Austen, Eliot and the Bronte sisters with an insight sure to fascinate the academic or just the interested everyday reader.

Winner of the Longman History Today Prize in 1998, Amanda Vickery's The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England is an outstanding study of a crucial period in modern women's history. Roy Porter has described this book as "the most important thing in English feminist history in the last ten years". A reader familiar with the feminist analysis of women's lives in the late 18th to mid-19th century will find some of the commonplaces of that analysis called into question: the rise of "separate spheres" of male and female experience, for example, or the social construction of motherhood in the 18th century. At once scholarly and readable, The Gentleman's Daughter takes its readers on a vivid and well-illustrated tour of "genteel" Georgian society, bringing that world to life through what Vickery identifies as the "terms set out in their own letters by genteel women". Those terms structure the seven sections of the book: "Gentility", "Love and Duty", "Fortitude and Resignation" (which includes a notable discussion of the experience of pregnancy), "Prudent Economy", "Elegance", "Civility and Vulgarity" and "Propriety". "Our battles were not necessarily theirs", Vickery reminds us, striking her convincing balance between a feminist interest in the restriction and rebellion of women's lives and their own ways of finding meaning and pleasure in the gender distinctions of Georgian culture. --Vicky Lebeau

Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

A hugely impressive book, 09 Apr 2008
Simone de Beauvoir was scandalised and ridiculed particularly by the church when this first came out in 1949 which must have been a disappointment for her. Perhaps a radical book at the time but very relevant to the present and this is worth reading by all women and any man who agrees that women should have a better time whilst on this planet.

The book covers many aspects of being a woman, begining when humans first roamed the earth as nomads and the tyranny of life as a woman giving birth constantly as unlike many animals humans are always fertile. Infant death and infantacide were a means of survival then and the reason why the human population was realatively small for tens of thousands of years. Then tilling the earth when the male began to domineer and own all land, passing it on to their male heirs, leaving woman to be a virtual slave to fathers and husbands, the start of male domination!

I learnt some really interesting things from reading this for example: I didn't know that reproduction was properly underrstood until the mid 19th Century, all sorts of bizare beliefs were practised prior to this revelation, people even believed that sperm contained tiny little people!!! Also discussed is how man and woman are prisoners of instinctive behaviour and really cannot help themselves to a great extent, brilliant for understanding relationships, ie why men walk away after sex in many cases but instinctively a for a woman it is the start of relationship due to the feelings of wanting to nurture a pregnancy. It also explains why in some ways a woman does not always progress due to involuntarily sabotaging their own plans ie preferring part time work or not going for the promotion due to home making instincts. Prostitution, love, ageing are all discussed in depth in this volume. A fascinating read, it sucks you in and you cannot put it down. Only one negative comment and that is that I found it very slightly depressing as there is little hope for women to be truly independant before they get old, ugly and die according to Ms De Beauvoir.

One of the great books of the 20th century, 26 Mar 2008
There is more good sense in this wonderful book than in most of the rest of all the writing by and about women. Marvellous.

encyclopaedic, 28 Mar 2006
The Second Sex is a book of mammoth proportions, displaying the intellectual prowess of de Beauviour in full swing, putting women right up there in the literary firmament. It is almost impossible to overestimate this book, and it is a shame that it never recieved its due praise whence published. However, this unfairness only concretises Beauvior's arguments upon Patriarchal attitudes. TSS is encyclopaedic in scope, and dazzling in its wealth of knowledge. Opening this book is like opening Pandora's box - there is no end to what you may find inside.

Great book, shame about the editing, 04 Feb 2004
This book is both absorbing and informative, giving an excellent account of what it is to be a woman as Other. I would normally give the work five stars, but I am prevented from doing so by the way the text has been translated and edited. Big, important and interesting parts have been lost through poor and reductive editing. Let me give an example: in the chapter “Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France” the paragraph on page 133 starting with the words “Woman still retained a few privileges in the Middle Ages…” has been heavily reduced, excluding de Beauvoir’s account and use of the Songes du Verger, a vitriolic and misogynous text vilifying women.

As such this edition of the Second Sex is highly educational to all newcomers, but the shoddy editing will disappoint people already acquainted with this work, for it has robbed the book of some of its ideas and bite.

Amazing study of gender difference and similarity, 07 Feb 2003
De Beauvoir takes us on an epic tour from the dawn of the human race to the contemporary world of 1940's commerce and culture, through the internal workings of the body to how others perceive them via the beliefs, thoughts and prejudices of societies throughout the world. Her breadth and depth of research is an attempt to answer one simple question- why are women constantly seen as inferior to men, in effect the "second sex"?
Such a question is almost impossible to answer but at just under seven hundred pages of intelligent writing TSS gets as close to the quick as any women's study or feminist book has got before or after its publication. Questioning every one of the "labels" attached to the human female De Beauvoir pulls apart traditional thinking on issues such as the "innate" maternal instinct, women's intellectual capacity and physical strength and make-up. Every chapter is a definitive case in itself and De Beauvoir's collection of facts, statistics and case studies are unshakable in their accuracy. Her conclusions are well thought through and easy to follow and it is only the sheer amount and wealth of information she gives us that can seem overwhelming at times.
The very fact that a woman has written such a masterpiece is evidence enough that women are as intellectually equal to men but it is sadly revealing of our patriarchal society that gives TSS less reverence than it deserves. Since the 1940's many other theories have developed in the area of gender studies so TSS is no longer the "one text that covers all". Supplementing TSS with more recent works such as those by Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Kate Millet will give you a more general picture of feminism but it still remains the greatest and most complete work on women's studies and possibly the most important book to come out of the twentieth century.
This is essential reading for any self-respecting individual, male or female, although its size and density means it is probably better to read this segments at a time.

Excellent and inspiring., 04 Dec 2004
This book has so much more to offer than simply a treatise on the feminist needs of creative women (although this is a very important topic, and as relevant now as when Woolf wrote her essays); it also offers excellent advice on the art of writing well, and the need for a good writer to resist the urge to use their craft as a stage from which to proclaim their views. I already know this book will have a profound effect on my own writing, and for that alone it thoroughly deserves five stars.

Gets to the point eventually..., 17 May 2004
I found this book slightly tiring and difficult at times, but finishing it can see Woolfs point about women coming up trumps.

No introduction or illustrations.

Concise and Invigorating, 16 Mar 2003
Asked originally to deliver a talk on Women and Fiction in 1928, Virginia Woolf eventually produced this longer essay which expands its subject to cover education, marriage, property and money. She moves backwards through literary history, examining the women who have written, often against great opposition, and the female characters that have been written, mostly by men, and finds a startling anomaly: "Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant."

Unlike many feminist authors, Woolf does not argue for tearing down the achievements of male authors. In fact she argues that both sexes should write androgynously, in order to find the proper reality of things, but at its heart it is a feminist essay. At the time Woolf was writing women had been granted many more freedoms than their mothers, but still had a lot to fight for, and she urges women to do so, albeit for the realm of intellectual freedom and the pleasure of writing for a living. (I have no doubt she would do the same today, despite all our apparent advances.)

She knew she was one of the fortunate (she was left five hundred pounds a year by her aunt, giving her economic independence) and she famously concludes that a women must have a room of her own and money of her own in order to write. But why? It is not so that there are idle hours to be filled by writing - it is because writing well and truthfully can only be properly achieved when a woman is not railing against the bounds of poverty, dependence, social exclusion and disapproval.

The essay is, however, also art. Unlike a dry academic paper it skips lightly and often with humour from subject to observation, and demonstrates with her usual deftness how the real world produces new trains of thought in a person, just as a person's thoughts can mean interpreting the world in a new way. The very construction of the essay is an example of the work she is promoting, to attempt "to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life." Because of this, and the sheer energy of the writing, it is a work that deserves a reading, no matter what your sex or station or ambition. And if you are a woman intending to write, be it a novel, travelogue or PHD you really ought to give up a couple of hours to read this; you are almost certainly guaranteed a new enthusiasm for your task.

Wonderful essay, demonstrating fantastic cultural insight., 05 Apr 2001
'A Room of One's Own' is an extremely readable essay. It's a delightful read and the classification of it as an 'essay' should not put anyone off as it is as entertaining as any of Woolf's prose. Once I started reading it I could not stop. Woolf flirts with you through her narrative, drawing you in to her thought processes, enticing you to follow her narrator on a journey of the mind as she wanders about 'Oxbridge' and London. Woolf demonstrates great insight, forseeing the future for women and their involvement in the arts with great accuracy. Through her narrative she also introduces a new discourse, one that she encourages other women to take up in order to free themselves from the masculine domination of literature. Inspirational.

An eye opener, 15 Aug 2008
I found this book incredibly illuminating. I have experienced, as a young person growing up, both my parents views on sex etc and my friends- both highly contrasting. This book has helped me to understand why nowadays somethings are accepted that would have been seen in a worse light years ago.
Levy writes in an easy to read prose (unlike me) and the book works in chapters linking together different ideas.
I definitely will be looking at this one again. Highly recommended!!

Sisters are doing it to themselves, 10 Mar 2008
Few things in life bug me more than twentysomething women sneering at feminism. Because they're usually doing it over a glass of wine in the pub, on their way home from work, and looking forward to a bit of strings-free 'how's your father' at the weekend. We ought to run some kind of boot camp where they can all go live as fifties housewives for a fortnight, and THEN decide if feminists were all dungaree-wearing, moustachioed lesbians who did nothing but sit about braiding their leg hair. Hello, girls? That job you've got, that pub you're sitting in, the university you went to, the contraception in your purse... in a world where feminism never happened, you'd be home every night baking apple pie and starching your husband's underpants.

But even more galling are the 'new feminists', or female chauvinist pigs as Ariel Levy calls them. Under the magic umbrella of feminism, any kind of behaviour (yes, really, ANY kind) can become 'empowering', that catch-all word that's somehow come to mean you can make shedloads of money out of it. This is the 'new' feminism, and anyone who doesn't actually think it's that cool for women to sell their bodies needs to get with the programme, grandma. Yes, that's right, it's actually 'feminism' in action on those 'music' videos and late-night TV 'programmes' that your boyfriend is probably sorta partial to. That's funny because it used to be degradation, but the adult industry has got one mother of a marketing programme going on. As Levy points out in this well-paced readable book, young women today are afflicted with Uncle Tom syndrome, joining their male friends in the strip clubs and sex shops, and idolising adult stars like Jenna Jameson. Levy reminds us that women like Jameson, glamorous as they might be, are actually prostitutes. No girl in a million years would want to emulate a crack-addled backstreet whore, but plenty of them want to live as brainless blow-up dolls for some reason. Men have once again sold us an image of ourselves, and we women are falling over each other (and maybe pushing and shoving a bit) to buy it.

Levy writes smoothly and well in a poppy, fairly lightweight style with some useful statistics (most sobering of all the high percentage of childhood abuse victims working in the adult industry, including Jameson herself). Your blood may boil at some points on reading this, but she's always level-headed and measured in her assessment of the situation. Levy herself is strikingly attractive (although admittedly not blonde, nor sporting mammary glands the size of basketballs) so the naysayers arguing that it's all sour grapes need to wake up and smell the... KY, or whatever. I have an 8 year old daughter and this is not the world I want her to grow up in. Buy this, read it, pass it around to your friends (male and female) and maybe get a bit of consciousness-raising going on like it's 1970 again. I hope Levy's working on a sequel though, because oops she somehow forgot to present a single, solitary idea about how to actually change any of this. So just read it as a straightforward, entertaining 'state of the nation' style book... and then maybe cancel that brazilian after all, if it's actually really painful and you're only doing it for your boyfriend's sake. One small step for womankind...

An excellent call for sanity, 07 Feb 2008
I found myself reading parts of this book aloud to friends - it is clever and funny on top of its razor-edge insight. Levy's language is simple but evocative, full of witty descriptions of products, behaviours and ideas that desperately deserve the mocking.

It doesn't contain a clear agenda for improvement, which is a mild disappointment. I hope that not too many readers end the book feeling powerless to be agents of change.

Powerful stuff, 19 Jan 2008
Ever felt there was something slightly 'off' with the way female sexual bravado, and even promiscuity, is held up as empowering, and even 'feminist'?

This book is brilliantly argued and hugely important for all women to read. Not only that but it is so entertaining and snappy, it can be read in a couple of sittings. If you are interested in modern feminism, but are put off by the hundreds of scary academic looking books, then this is the book for you. And this is meant as a compliment to the author.

I think if every women and girl read this, we would all be alot closer to TRUE empowerment and liberation (not just sexual), and therefor real happiness.

Essential, 06 Aug 2007
I wrote a review stright after reading this book, but somehow it didn't make it on. However even though a few months have passed I still think this is one of the best books on any subject ever written. The flow, tone, balance and research is impeccable. Levy puts just enough of herself into it to make you feel like it is personable but not too much. On the subject matter itself - What a voice in the wilderness. When all you see around you are young girls wanting to grow up to be Page 3 models and lap dancers this is an essential and timely book. What I really loved is Levy's pointing out that the appearance of being sexually available is not the same as being sexually empowered.
The only thing lacking for me was an international flavour. How does the same phenomenon play out in the UK for example with Page 3 culture and laddettes? Overall, outstanding.

Dated in Places but still required reading, 20 Nov 2007
This book by Gilbert and Gubar was groundbreaking literary criticism when it was first published, and paved the way for an explosion in feminist literary criticism that allowed much existing work to be re-evaluated and enriched by what women had to say
I recently re-read this work, and have to say that some of it is now dated, and the enormous preface to the recent edition does not really add anything to the main body of text, although it does go some way to setting the scene for the research. It seems dated because what Gilbert and Gubar once fought for is now taken for granted by so many, which just shows the success of their achievements.
The majority of the work on the 19th Century novels themselves, particularly the work of Charlotte Bronte is invaluable and always enriching and interesting. Nobody should be able to read these novels without reading these essays because they just make so much sense. The central tenet about the writer and their ability to express the unexpressible aspects of themselves through their literary creations and in particular the character of Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre, is still breathtaking and brilliant. A must read for any serious students of nineteenth century literature.

Feminist lit-crit of the highest order, 26 May 2001
This is the sort of criticism that expands your impression of literature. The authors cast a fresh light on classic women's writing - Austen, the Brontes, etc - by examining how a woman writer's self-perception is shaped by patriarchy and a mysoginistic tradition, and that the anxiety caused by being 'unfeminine' can be found within the writing. It's also well written enough to be read for fun.

A great insight into Victorian feminism, 03 Oct 1999
A must for anyone interested in the feminist aspects of Victorian writing. Gilbert and Gubar explore the writings of canonical Victorian women such as Austen, Eliot and the Bronte sisters with an insight sure to fascinate the academic or just the interested everyday reader.

Women's Lives in Georgian England, 24 Jul 2007
Many books can be found outlining Georgian political history and more than one biography has been written on Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, but the everyday lives of genteel women have had less attention. In this book, Vickery uses surviving letters, diaries, accounts and pocketbooks of a selection of Georgian women living genteel lives in Northern England. I found the book interesting, but fairly heavy going in places. Any modern woman reading the chapter on childbirth will be glad to live in the current age! This is a good insight into everyday life and the role and functions of women within society. However, the type in my copy I found to be quite small, and so a little hard on the eyes. Chapters are also quite long with few breaks in the text. Vickery has also devoted a significant proportion of the book to notes and appendices, where she lists senders and recipients of letters referred to in the main text and other information on the original source material. Interesting, but a fairly scholarly book.

Vital reading, 25 Oct 2000
If you are a scholar of the eighteenth century and you have not read this book, then make it your top priority. It is, quite simly, the most illuminating history book of some time, and fantastically repositions the role of women in this period. Social history for the academic and lay person alike, Brilliant!!

All that a history book should be., 03 Mar 2000
I will admit that I was given this book by a dear friend, but the gift arrived at one of those amazingly serendipitous moments when everything in one's intellectual life seems to point in a single direction. During the past two years I have been rather single-minded in my pursuit of English literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, and first on my list of "keepers" are the novels written by such figures as Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Ann Radcliffe, and of course, Jane Austen. Thus, as you can imagine, Ms. Vickery's amazing feat of scholarship has been a more than welcome discovery. At turns both light-hearted and astoundingly detailed, it does just what a history book should do, in my estimation, and that is bring the past to life. Part of the fascination of history is, no doubt, that we can see how very strange and remote another time is, but how wonderful to find a work that so adroitly shows how very much we have in common with an earlier time, and in my case, brings the experiences known only through novels to full and meaningful life. I especially appreciate the fact that the author is at pains to point out just how at odds the evidence is with accepted feminist history; this somewhat contrary approach is altogether convincing. But the highest praise I can give from my perspective as a non-historian is that The Gentleman's Daughter (I cannot help but wonder if the title does not echo Elizabeth Bennet, but I may be, at present, too dazzled by Miss Austen to settle upon any other conclusion) is dazzling and entertaining, and I beg my more scholarly companions in reading to excuse the use of the suspect term.

Powerful argument, 29 Jun 2004
This book is a powerful argument that overthrows essentialist discourse in favour of gender as a performative entity. Whilst a seminal work, and in my opinion, a very important viewpoint capable of pushing the feminist movement on by lightyears, I feel that Butler's writing style does not suit the message she puts forward. For someone who's aim is to spread a message to the masses, she writes in an overly academic style. Although I appreciate that she may have needed to do this so that bodies under the influence of a partriachy may take her more seriously, it leaves this book only accesible to the highest academics. I am currently referencing this book in an argument put forward in my thesis for my masters degree and i am having great trouble understanding the language she uses. This is a brilliant book, but I can't help but feel that her language could be made a lot simpler.

Required Reading, 02 Dec 1998
This is a densely written but repeatedly rewarding study of the constructions of gender and sex as they relate to women, lesbians and gay men, and, to follow the logic of Butler's argument, all of us. This work shows not only the relativity of our cultural understanding of femininity but also the limits of our scientific understanding of female-ness. For feminists, Butler's book offers a much-needed examination of what exactly the female subject is and how woman is defined in (or by) our particular culture. Butler goes far beyond Foucault in examining sexuality as socially contructed and, in the process, offers valuable insights to (and critiques of) the writing and thinking of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Lacan, and Wittig. The book's one flaw is a turgid, sometimes redundant prose (i.e. phrases like "judical law" and "'he' [sic]") all too common in technical and philosophical writing, especially, alas, of the postmodernist variety. But once the reader survives the first quarter of the book, he [sic] will find Butler's observations not only accessible but fascinating and, for whatever it's worth, socially important.

A hugely impressive book, 09 Apr 2008
Simone de Beauvoir was scandalised and ridiculed particularly by the church when this first came out in 1949 which must have been a disappointment for her. Perhaps a radical book at the time but very relevant to the present and this is worth reading by all women and any man who agrees that women should have a better time whilst on this planet.

The book covers many aspects of being a woman, begining when humans first roamed the earth as nomads and the tyranny of life as a woman giving birth constantly as unlike many animals humans are always fertile. Infant death and infantacide were a means of survival then and the reason why the human population was realatively small for tens of thousands of years. Then tilling the earth when the male began to domineer and own all land, passing it on to their male heirs, leaving woman to be a virtual slave to fathers and husbands, the start of male domination!

I learnt some really interesting things from reading this for example: I didn't know that reproduction was properly underrstood until the mid 19th Century, all sorts of bizare beliefs were practised prior to this revelation, people even believed that sperm contained tiny little people!!! Also discussed is how man and woman are prisoners of instinctive behaviour and really cannot help themselves to a great extent, brilliant for understanding relationships, ie why men walk away after sex in many cases but instinctively a for a woman it is the start of relationship due to the feelings of wanting to nurture a pregnancy. It also explains why in some ways a woman does not always progress due to involuntarily sabotaging their own plans ie preferring part time work or not going for the promotion due to home making instincts. Prostitution, love, ageing are all discussed in depth in this volume. A fascinating read, it sucks you in and you cannot put it down. Only one negative comment and that is that I found it very slightly depressing as there is little hope for women to be truly independant before they get old, ugly and die according to Ms De Beauvoir.

One of the great books of the 20th century, 26 Mar 2008
There is more good sense in this wonderful book than in most of the rest of all the writing by and about women. Marvellous.

encyclopaedic, 28 Mar 2006
The Second Sex is a book of mammoth proportions, displaying the intellectual prowess of de Beauviour in full swing, putting women right up there in the literary firmament. It is almost impossible to overestimate this book, and it is a shame that it never recieved its due praise whence published. However, this unfairness only concretises Beauvior's arguments upon Patriarchal attitudes. TSS is encyclopaedic in scope, and dazzling in its wealth of knowledge. Opening this book is like opening Pandora's box - there is no end to what you may find inside.

Great book, shame about the editing, 04 Feb 2004
This book is both absorbing and informative, giving an excellent account of what it is to be a woman as Other. I would normally give the work five stars, but I am prevented from doing so by the way the text has been translated and edited. Big, important and interesting parts have been lost through poor and reductive editing. Let me give an example: in the chapter “Through the Middle Ages to Eighteenth-century France” the paragraph on page 133 starting with the words “Woman still retained a few privileges in the Middle Ages…” has been heavily reduced, excluding de Beauvoir’s account and use of the Songes du Verger, a vitriolic and misogynous text vilifying women.

As such this edition of the Second Sex is highly educational to all newcomers, but the shoddy editing will disappoint people already acquainted with this work, for it has robbed the book of some of its ideas and bite.

Amazing study of gender difference and similarity, 07 Feb 2003
De Beauvoir takes us on an epic tour from the dawn of the human race to the contemporary world of 1940's commerce and culture, through the internal workings of the body to how others perceive them via the beliefs, thoughts and prejudices of societies throughout the world. Her breadth and depth of research is an attempt to answer one simple question- why are women constantly seen as inferior to men, in effect the "second sex"?
Such a question is almost impossible to answer but at just under seven hundred pages of intelligent writing TSS gets as close to the quick as any women's study or feminist book has got before or after its publication. Questioning every one of the "labels" attached to the human female De Beauvoir pulls apart traditional thinking on issues such as the "innate" maternal instinct, women's intellectual capacity and physical strength and make-up. Every chapter is a definitive case in itself and De Beauvoir's collection of facts, statistics and case studies are unshakable in their accuracy. Her conclusions are well thought through and easy to follow and it is only the sheer amount and wealth of information she gives us that can seem overwhelming at times.
The very fact that a woman has written such a masterpiece is evidence enough that women are as intellectually equal to men but it is sadly revealing of our patriarchal society that gives TSS less reverence than it deserves. Since the 1940's many other theories have developed in the area of gender studies so TSS is no longer the "one text that covers all". Supplementing TSS with more recent works such as those by Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin and Kate Millet will give you a more general picture of feminism but it still remains the greatest and most complete work on women's studies and possibly the most important book to come out of the twentieth century.
This is essential reading for any self-respecting individual, male or female, although its size and density means it is probably better to read this segments at a time.

Excellent and inspiring., 04 Dec 2004
This book has so much more to offer than simply a treatise on the feminist needs of creative women (although this is a very important topic, and as relevant now as when Woolf wrote her essays); it also offers excellent advice on the art of writing well, and the need for a good writer to resist the urge to use their craft as a stage from which to proclaim their views. I already know this book will have a profound effect on my own writing, and for that alone it thoroughly deserves five stars.

Gets to the point eventually..., 17 May 2004
I found this book slightly tiring and difficult at times, but finishing it can see Woolfs point about women coming up trumps.

No introduction or illustrations.

Concise and Invigorating, 16 Mar 2003
Asked originally to deliver a talk on Women and Fiction in 1928, Virginia Woolf eventually produced this longer essay which expands its subject to cover education, marriage, property and money. She moves backwards through literary history, examining the women who have written, often against great opposition, and the female characters that have been written, mostly by men, and finds a startling anomaly: "Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant."

Unlike many feminist authors, Woolf does not argue for tearing down the achievements of male authors. In fact she argues that both sexes should write androgynously, in order to find the proper reality of things, but at its heart it is a feminist essay. At the time Woolf was writing women had been granted many more freedoms than their mothers, but still had a lot to fight for, and she urges women to do so, albeit for the realm of intellectual freedom and the pleasure of writing for a living. (I have no doubt she would do the same today, despite all our apparent advances.)

She knew she was one of the fortunate (she was left five hundred pounds a year by her aunt, giving her economic independence) and she famously concludes that a women must have a room of her own and money of her own in order to write. But why? It is not so that there are idle hours to be filled by writing - it is because writing well and truthfully can only be properly achieved when a woman is not railing against the bounds of poverty, dependence, social exclusion and disapproval.

The essay is, however, also art. Unlike a dry academic paper it skips lightly and often with humour from subject to observation, and demonstrates with her usual deftness how the real world produces new trains of