The Historical Analysis of Feminists:
Emma Goldman, Simone De Beauvoir and Shulamith Firestone
The Contradiction of Viewpoints
In this paper I will analyse the writings of Goldman, Firestone and de Beauvoir and their view points on love, marriage and on a more general level their views on the emancipation of women. I will clearly define their overall view on the topic of love as it pertains to men and to women with special attention to the similarities between the views of de Beauvoir and Firestone, and as a fellow feminist the similarity but more importantly the distinct differences between the viewpoints of Emma Goldman and Beauvoir and Firestone.
I will clearly demonstrate that Emma Goldman had held a view that was ahead of her time and still would maintain specific relevance in today’s society while at the same time show that Firestone and de Beauvoir failed to see the value in the same philosophies that they despised as a necessary part of true emancipation of women. I will show clearly how the historical time and context of the writings of Firestone and de Beauvoir may have made them relevant at the time however their singular view point and short-sightedness failed them in their ability to see past the immediate future for women and their views do not hold a true representation of a path for today’s women.
De Beauvoir states very early and clearly from the excerpt from her book “The Second Sex” that the word love means two completely different things to a man and a woman. First, that to a man love is a separate part of his life, while for women it is the base of the woman’s existence. Beauvoir seems to say that while men consciously or not regard love as a possession, and women become part of their possession or belongings however to a woman it is an irresistible form of enslavement to man, which nonetheless they take as an expression of freedom. (de Beauvoir p. 324) Beauvoir then continues to state that love has nothing to do with nature but...