Episode 22: From Maturity to Old Age – Crisis, Desire, and Disillusionment
Description
In this episode of Second Sex, we explore Chapter 9 of the Situation section from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (pages 702–723 in most editions), where she turns her attention to the often-overlooked experience of women transitioning from maturity to old age.
De Beauvoir argues that aging for women is not a gradual process, but a series of abrupt crises, marked by events like menopause and intensified by a culture that equates female value with youth, beauty, and fertility. We examine how some women respond—reaching for lost passions, entering new relationships, and, in some cases, expressing unexpected desires, including same-sex attractions.
The episode also explores the shifting familial roles of mothers and grandmothers, highlighting how older women may either retreat into nurturing identities or struggle with emotional overreach and control in their relationships with adult children. Finally, we discuss de Beauvoir’s critique of the bourgeois woman’s later years, often consumed by trivial routines, social games, and existential loneliness.
Join us as we navigate this raw and complex chapter that questions what it means to age as a woman in a world that refuses to see beyond the surface.
United States
