Rai

The supreme aim of human love, like mystical love, is identification with the loved one. The measure of values and the truth of the world are in his own consciousness; that is why serving him is still not enough. The woman tries to see with his eyes; she reads the books he reads, prefers the paintings and music he prefers, she is only interested in the landscapes she sees with him, in the ideas that come from him; she adopts his friends, his enemies, and his opinions; when she questions herself, she endeavors to hear the answer he gives; she wants the air he has already breathed in her lungs; the fruits and flowers she has not received from his hands have neither fragrance nor taste; even her hodological space is upset: the center of the world is no longer where she is but where the beloved is; all roads leave from and lead to his house. She uses his words, she repeats his gestures, adopts his manias and tics. “I am Heathcliff,” says Catherine in Wuthering Heights; this is the cry of all women in love; she is another incarnation of the beloved, his reflection, his double: she is he. She lets her own world founder in contingence: she lives in his universe. (Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 784)

In masochism, she will wildly enslave herself to the male, she will tell him words of adoration, she will wish to be humiliated, beaten.  (Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 474)

To become a child again in the arms of a man brings them great satisfaction. It is the theme of this popular tune: I feel so small in your arms So small, o my love … a theme tirelessly repeated in lovers’ conversations and correspondence. “Baby, my baby,” murmurs the lover, and the woman calls herself “little one, your little one.” Irène Reweliotty writes: “When, then, will he come, the one who will be able to dominate me?” And thinking she had met him: “I love feeling you a man and better than me.” (Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 776)

She chooses to want her enslavement so ardently that it will seem to her to be the expression of her freedom; she will try to overcome her situation as inessential object by radically assuming it; through her flesh, her feelings, and her behavior, she will exalt as sovereign the one she loves, she will posit him as value and supreme reality: she will efface herself before him. Love becomes a religion for her. (Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 774)