Therese Askarbek
Senior Thesis | 2024
Heterosexual Relationships and Existential Freedom
Therese Askarbek
Existentialism largely emerged as a philosophy in the mid20th century and was popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, as well as their other French contemporaries. Most philosophers at the time failed to consider and analyze how a person’s existential situation could be changed by power structures, which is evident by the absence of gendered or racial language in their works. Simone De Beauvoir, among others, was one of the first female philosophers to consider the specificity of a woman’s existential situation and how it might differ from a man’s. In the Second Sex and The Woman Destroyed she explores from a largely philosophical standpoint how women are not the only inhibitors to their existential liberation and how men can prevent them further from recognizing their own “bad faith” (Sartre, p. 25) and lack of “lucidity” (Solomon, p. 197).
Around the same time as this philosophy became popular, cinema took hold of the world as a powerful art form. After the “Golden Age” of Hollywood that dominated the 1950s and 1960s, the French created a cinematic movement in response to it termed “The French New Wave.” Aside from their similar cinematic styles, French New Wave films often dealt with less superficial topics than big budget Hollywood films such as existential quandaries. Though the French New Wave has technically “ended,” its innovation and radicalism has inspired and influenced countless directors and screenwriters since. The films I will discuss in connection to women’s existential situation, such as Francis Ha, are stylistically and thematically influenced by both the writings of De Beauvoir and French New Wave films.
“All women think they are different; they all think there are some things that will never happen to them; and they are all wrong” reflects Monique in The Woman Destroyed (De Beauvoir 136). Most women can attest to experiencing an unexpected
betrayal from the men in their lives, whether it be from a misogynistic dig or an imposed expectation of fulfilling constricting gender roles in some way. In Monique’s case, she is a woman scorned by her husband of many years who has left her for another woman early in the novella. Following this betrayal, Monique spends the rest of the novel reevaluating her past, her selfhood, and largely considering what to do as a 44-year-old woman without a job. As Monique navigates her way to creating a different future for herself, De Beauvoir raises important questions about women’s liberation, self-determination, and existential situation under a patriarchal society. How can a woman achieve existential freedom? Is it possible in a world governed by men with oppressive standards? Can a woman be liberated while engaging in long term romantic relationships with men? Through a De Beauvoirian perspective, I will consider women’s existential situation through the characters in her novella along with the characters from feature films Thelma and Louise (1991) The Worst
Person in the World (2021), and Frances Ha (2012) directed by Ridley Scott, Joachim Trier, and Greta Gerwig, respectively, which provide further, more modern insight into what it means to be a modern, “liberated” woman while being attracted to one’s oppressor.
In this paper I will be discussing the dichotomy between men and women as a whole. While intersectionality is a crucial consideration in all arguments, I will only be using general notions of manhood and womanhood under patriarchy without delving into the specifics of race, class, culture, sexuality, religion, etc. There are different dynamics between Black men and white women or white women and Asian men as opposed to white women and white men, but for the sake of concision, I will narrow my focus to the simple dynamics between man and woman as a whole. This is also because my argument that of the difficulty of the oppressed gender to liberate itself existentially applies to all cases in which a person is oppressed for some part of their identity.
Because these three films feature white, heterosexual, working class (or above) relationships, these are the types of dynamics the reader may picture when reading, but it is not a must. The general arguments of the philosophers I discuss can be applied to any relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed if given the consideration and nuance that is necessary to discuss them.
I find it equally important to note that I am not necessarily advocating for political lesbianism nor complete abstinence from pursuing meaningful relationships with men in order to fulfill the somewhat vague notion of “existential liberation.” Moreso, I highlight these points to underline the importance of awareness and advocate against women losing sight of their existential agency, no matter how exhausting or painful it may be. As De Beauvoir puts it,
To fight unhappiness one must first expose it, which means that one must dispel the mystifications behind which it is hidden [...] It is because I reject lies and running away that I am accused of pessimism; but this rejection implies hope the hope that truth may be of use. And this is a more
optimistic attitude than the choice of indifference, ignorance or sham. (De Beauvoir, 1974, as cited by Popova)
Before turning to the films, it is important to consider how a woman’s path to established notions of existential liberation can be inhibited by her oppression. Sartre’s existential philosophy, explicated mainly in his book Being and Nothingness, is largely based on what he calls “bad faith” and, opposingly, “authenticity” and “transcendence”. Essentially, he believes that every person has a facticity qualities about oneself that are facts, unchangeable, such as missing a finger and they have qualities that can be changed, that are more subjective, which are also known as their “transcendence” or ability to transcend their facticity. A person’s existence is composed of these two ideas. Sartre believed that “existence precedes essence,” which can be otherwise understood as the notion that “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself” (Sartre, p. 8). He considered this the “first principle of existentialism,” that which human beings have autonomy in their
situations and do not have a predefined essence. Where Sartre introduced truly novel ideas, though, was the addition of his theories of “bad faith” and “authenticity”. He thought that people generally spend their lives refusing to take responsibility for their actions and decisions by lying to themselves about the constrictiveness of their facticity and the level of agency they really have. To achieve existential freedom, he posited, was to live in “authenticity,” confront the fact of one’s boundless individual freedom, and make their lives into whatever they desired.
Sartre understood the contradictions in his works, as noted by Sam Dresser who describes him as both “Sartre, the existentialist, who said that humans are condemned to be free” and “Sartre, the Marxist, who thought that history does not allow much space for true freedom in the existential sense” (Dresser). However, Sartre did not consider gender as a complicating factor in his theories. I would like to consider how womanhood complicates the existential reasoning of Sartre. While men
themselves are (mainly) the only people standing in the way of their own “authenticity,” women have people external to themselves “deceiving” them as to what they are and what they do.
A woman's journey to living “authentically” is filled with constant obstacles because of patriarchal forces. Consider this situation: a woman lives particularly frivolously and is incredibly vain. She never really thinks about the fact that she has these qualities until someone reproaches her for them. She then begins a process of introspection. Am I truly so vain? she thinks to herself. She asks her brother, her friend, and her mother the same question and gets variations of a similar response: Women are naturally vain. There is nothing you can do about it. It is inherent. She slowly becomes convinced that her vanity is not within her control, that it is not her fault she was born that way. Thus, that attainment of authenticity is thwarted once more.
Now, let us examine Camus’ path to existential freedom. He believed that people have to come to embrace the “Absurd”
(the tension between one’s inherent desire for meaning and a world that is indifferent to any meaning) in order to be truly free. They must first reflect and end their “mechanical” life where one “go[es] through the motions,” unappreciative of their time on Earth which comes through weariness of the eventual monotony of life. This “ending” of the mechanical life “inaugurates the impulse of consciousness” this “conscious” state he calls the “awakening” (Solomon, p. 191). A person then is faced with three options: suicide, philosophical suicide, or recovery. When one chooses to recover, they must actively begin to live life with the awareness of its meaninglessness and be “lucid,” or revolt against philosophical suicide. Womanhood complicates this position as it is much more difficult to end the mechanical life and maintain consciousness and lucidity when achieving those means accepting the cruel reality of oppression. Where for men, gaining consciousness is liberatory, for women it simply means they are
aware of the meaninglessness of their oppression, objectification, and purpose they serve in society.
To begin examining these questions, it is essential to understand Monique’s path to reaching existential freedom in the final pages of the novella and how her marriage to Maurice relates to it.
Although the theories of De Beauvoir’s contemporaries, Sartre and Camus, appear in the story, her position as a woman and feminist places her at a different vantage point from them. Much of Monique’s “inauthenticity” is influenced by the patriarchy, which confines her to her facticity and causes her to rely on men to decide how she should act and view herself. At the beginning of the novella, Monique’s only function is to be a homemaker and a wife to Maurice. Since her daughters are grown and have left the house, when Maurice tells her that he is seeing someone else, she realizes that he has left her “empty-handed, with no occupation, no other interest in life apart from [him]” (p. 207). Moreover, she is impacted not only materially, but psychologically. She has “lost
[her] own image” having been seeing herself “only through his eyes” and spirals the rest of the novel, unable to perceive herself and make decisions about her life without Maurice (pp. 239, 181).
After Monique first fell in love with Maurice and quit her studies, she became complacent and “stupid” and slowly fell into a loveless marriage (p. 217). Though their union began with both “wildly passionate” and “steady, sober” love, it eventually turned insidious. She became conjoined with Maurice and their relationship mirrored that of most relationships of the time, with the power and autonomy in the hands of the man. In sum, their love could not save her from existential constriction due to patriarchy.
When Monique visits Lucienne at the end of the story, she provides an important contrast to Monique’s situation. Lucienne, who “need[s] freedom,” takes the position that to achieve liberation, a woman must avoid married love and emotionally involved romances with men because “you know where that gets
you” (as far as Monique’s current predicament) (pp. 163, 247).
Using her mother as a cautionary tale, she makes sure not to sacrifice her selfhood and her existential freedom by falling in love with a man. While she is correct in advising her mother to move forward, there is a flaw in her philosophy her meaningless flings do not make her feel fulfilled romantically. Though she succeeds in “standing on [her] own feet,” when she is asked whether or not she is happy by Monique, she responds “there you are, that’s one of your words. It really has no meaning as far as I’m concerned” (p. 250). In the process of gaining freedom from the controlling grip of men in monogamous relationships, she loses touch with a valuable part of what would make her feel wholly fulfilled. Monique seems to concur with this understanding, calling Lucienne’s way of living an “arid sort of an existence” (p. 250). And so, as Monique stands at the precipice of true existential freedom at the very end of the novella, she still values romantic
love and commitment, therefore putting her liberation in a precarious position.
Ridley Scott’s controversial box-office hit, Thelma and Louise (1991), ends similarly with liberation at a precarious position. It follows titular characters Thelma, a young housewife with an abusive husband, and Louise, her older friend who is in a committed relationship with a morally ambiguous man named Jimmy, as they travel from Arkansas down to Mexico after Louise shoots a man dead for trying to rape Thelma on their weekend trip. While the movie was directed by Ridley Scott, the screenplay was written by a woman, Calli Khouri, and it was loosely inspired by her personal experiences. Though the film closely follows the screenplay (oftentimes verbatim), there are points where the screenplay and the film interestingly differ. The differences arise mainly in reference to Khouri’s tendency to not ‘pull her punches’ in her characterization of men, a contrast to Ridley’s kinder characterizations.
The film begins with Thelma, who more or less passively accepts her constricted existence, and Louise, who is much more headstrong and liberated, working as a waitress at a diner and unmarried. Both women grow immensely throughout the film both in learning to discover their “transcendence” and live authentically, as well as in awakening their consciousness to live lucidly. As their journey progresses, they literally and figuratively distance themselves from “civil society” they stop applying makeup, allow their faces to get dirty, change from dresses to jeans, and quite understandably, stop wearing bras. Thelma, in particular, becomes more brazen and active in her opposition to patriarchal constriction, telling Darryl at a pivotal moment “You’re my husband, not my father, Darryl, [...] Go and f*** yourself” (00:39:05). She, who was basically dragged, kicking and screaming, for the ride after Louise shot the rapist, eventually began to take initiative in their escape and joined Louise in completely disregarding the “world of men.”
The men in Thelma and Louise are always a presence in every beat of the film, if not actually present. Khouri, in her screenplay, wrote four main male characters and a few side characters, all somewhat of a caricature of certain types of men. There is Daryll, the “infantile” (in Thelma’s words) man who expects everything from his wife and nothing from himself; there is the “nice guy” at the bar who smiled to her face as he spiked her drink; there is the young, attractive guy who almost changed her mind about men through his charm and kindness and then robbed Thelma blind in the morning while she was sleeping (less of a “type” than the others). There is the “nice enough” guy that Louise considers settling for, who only desires commitment once she threatens to leave. And finally, there is the truly kind man, in this case the head investigator chasing after them, who realizes the evils of patriarchy much too late to save them and upholds it throughout for the sake of the “Law” despite his good intentions. This seeming over-explication of both the women and men,
without delving into the relationships may seem unimportant, but it is vital to understand the nuances of the characters in Khouri’s world, who make up her decisive allegory.
Thelma and Louise, at its core, is an existential film. It is literal, obvious, and enticingly vulgar about the harms of the patriarchy. It begs the question: how does a woman live with a feeling of autonomy, unaccepting of abuse and yet also sleep with the enemy (literally)? Thelma, after slowly internalizing the seriousness and reality of the situation, reflects to Louise,
I guess I always thought the worst thing that could happen would be to end up old and alone in some crummy apartment with one of those little dogs. Well, to be honest, the idea of getting old with Darryl was kinda startin' to get to me … It's bad enough I have to get old, but doin' it with Darryl around is only gonna make it worse. (Khouri 96)
Women have long been taught that the worst thing to be is a “spinster” a woman who has not yet ‘settled down’ and/or joined domestic life past the “appropriate” age as defined by the time. They are often told that they’ll be old, alone, and living with
many cats, which is an apparently worse alternative than domestic servitude. Thelma, as many women do, rightly understands that becoming a “spinster” is absolutely not the worst ending for a woman in life it is a preferable alternative. By the end, Thelma tells Louise she feels “wide awake. I don't remember ever feelin' this awake. Everything looks different. You know what I mean? Everything looks new. Do you feel like that? Like you've got something to look forward to?” (1:47:52). She feels liberated, like she stands on the proverbial precipice of the open abyss, intensely aware of life, death, and how she relates to them. This perfectly exemplifies how one might feel in the Camusian process of ‘awakening’ wherein a person finally enters into rebellion against the Absurd. It is equally exemplary of a distancing from Friedrich Nietszche’s description of a ‘Godless’ person who has no other philosophical recourse to give their life meaning; it is of note that Nietszche greatly influenced Camus. In The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Godless’ nihilistic man asks: “Are we not
straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?” (Nietzsche, p. 25) Without Sartre’s or Camus’ liberatory paths to freedom, the third stance (which Thelma has in the beginning) is simply damning nihilism, a stance which makes the world feel cold and distanced.
Louise’s situation with Jimmy is much less outwardly problematic. In fact, Jimmy comes off quite well in the film and the viewer gets the feeling that Louise would have happily stayed with him, even married him, if not for that little fact of her killing an attempted rapist. But in Khouri’s screenplay, Jimmy clearly wants to be with her because he feels her sense of autonomy, of freedom, and wishes to trap her under his gaze. Because he finds her distaste for marriage and devotion almost mythical, he perceives her as a wild animal he needs to cage. Louise is not perfectly normal not every woman would have acted as she had. But, as a waitress with a stable job, friends, and a generally “sane” disposition, she is not
an “crazy” character. She knows how Jimmy perceives her though, and after his unexpected proposal, she asks “Why now?” They had been together for years, but he never proposed before. His response only confirms what she already understands, which is that he “get[s] the feeling like [she’s] gonna split permanently” and needs to lock her down. She then rightly responds, “that’s not a good reason to get married” (00:55:22 - 00:56:00). Though he may generally do as she asks and is relatively kind, he still traps her into a false perception of herself, which she cannot accept. Not only does he infantilize her a full-grown woman when he says such things like “Now, my little coconut, what seems to be the trouble here? Tell Daddy everything,” he outright tells her he only wants to get a job and get married now that he feels her pulling away (Khouri, p. 60). Note that the quoted line was removed from the film, and Jimmy ended up coming off rather kind and valorous in the final cut, a possible testament to the difference between the intentions of a male director and female screenwriter.
Interestingly, though, Louise, in some ways, goes through a backwards process of existential reckoning, as she is shown to have wanted to ultimately accept Jimmy’s proposal if not for her
… predicament. De Beauvoir, building on Sartre’s theories on transcendence, offers a possible explanation for this slightly confounding turning point for Louise. She posits that every person has an inherent desire for transcendence, and because a woman cannot achieve total transcendence as a man can, she chases “indirect transcendence” by binding herself to him. “Her wish … is much more ambiguous: she wishes, in a contradictory way, to have this transcendence” (De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 848). So, despite the ways in which a woman can escape her immanence or subjectivity by not having a relationship with a man, she may also feel that she can achieve objectivity (and, of course, certain material privileges) by binding her soul to a person that has it.
Ultimately, the harrowing ending of Thelma and Louise is grounding, sending the blatant message that women cannot escape
the utter constriction of male relationships, no matter how “decent” they may be, and can only achieve that small moment in this case the 10 seconds they get driving off the cliff knowing they’re escaping right before death. Relationships, though varyingly, are equivalent to a prison, and the only way to liberate oneself is to die or to literally drive off the cliff. Monique, though much more figuratively, has that fulfilling ‘driving off the cliff’ feeling once she realizes at the end of the story that Maurice has inadvertently freed her from his male gaze, which would almost certainly go away the moment she began pursuing another relationship (which she planned to).
Julie, the protagonist of The Worst Person in the World, begins her journey in the film from a position that is almost a continuation of Monique’s at the end of the novella. As a middleclass white woman in Norway, she is able to pursue her goals and to have power in her relationships with men. She spends most of her twenties flitting from medical school, to pursuing a psychology
degree, to spending the rest of her student loans on photography equipment. Her aim is to find and achieve meaningful career goals and to understand how she wants to define herself to be content with her life. She dates men casually until she meets Aksel, a politically controversial comic book writer. He is 44 years old, over a decade her senior, and just as they begin to become seriously involved, they have a blowout argument over their stances on having children. In short: he is ready to have children, and she is not. “You seem to be waiting for something, I don't know what,” he tells her (00:13:35). Despite the opportunities she has been given to pursue her goals, she still feels like something is not quite right, telling him that she “feels like a spectator in her own life” (1:03:36). This is not unlike Monique, who in the beginning of the novella describes feeling “far, far from [her] own life” (De Beauvoir, p. 123). Soon after this conversation, she turns thirty and in her birthday scene narrates the story of the generations of women that had preceded her, noting that with each
passing generation, the women had children later and later as they received more freedom and choice. She crumbles under the weight of responsibility of women before her to “make something of her life” and trembles at the thought of having children before she has done so. “I wish I could do what you do, to be able to draw and know that that is what you're supposed to do,” she tells Aksel at the end of the film, who has a hard time understanding the position she’s in (1:40:40). After she eventually breaks up with Aksel, she starts a relationship with Eivind, who she believes will finally help her feel fulfilled. Unsurprisingly, he cannot fulfill this function for her, and she ends the relationship. It is only when she visits Aksel, who is dying of cancer, and he tells her, “Now I have nothing else, no future and I can only look back” that she realizes to achieve freedom, she has to be alone (1:41:31). In the epilogue, she lives alone without a partner and feels content and liberated as a photographer, and smiles despite realizing the actress she has just photographed has a child with Eivind. Not unlike Lucienne, she
finds that the only path to existential freedom is to eliminate involved relationships with men, who are a constant threat of constrictive family life.
Frances, the titular character of Frances Ha, has many things in common with Julie she is nearing thirty, still “doesn’t have her sh*t together” and has no idea if she will succeed in her professional ventures (00:25:30). She is perhaps the most interesting example to consider though, as she does not have any long-term romantic relationships with men throughout the film. Of all these women - Monique, Lucienne, Julie, and even Sophie, she seems to have the strongest sense of self, in that she knows who and what she values in life. Having already reached such a degree of existential freedom, she is averse to the constraints put onto her by romantic relationships. She is “never going to fall for modern love”, as indicated by a non-diegetic lyric that plays twice (once in the credits), indicating some significance. She repudiates marriage standards, saying “we are like a married couple, we talk we don’t
have sex” to Benji, who she does not end up dating despite their romantic tension. Furthermore, she tells Sophie her dream is to “have lovers and no children” (00:09:51). She makes it abundantly clear that she will not sacrifice her existential freedom for a romantic relationship. She still yearns for love though, like Monique, as evidenced by her speech at the dinner party (00:49:20). Nevertheless, she takes the sacrifice in stride, honoring her priorities. An important consideration, though, is her platonic relationship with Sophie, which is arguably reminiscent of a long term emotionally involved straight relationship; like Monique with Maurice, she is deeply attached to Sophie, and goes around telling people that they “went to college together and [are] the same person” (00:24:32). The dependance is toxic, but throughout the story, she learns to love her in a ‘healthier’ way that allows for her to be independent. Despite this slight counter to the running argument against heterosexual relationship viability, there is an inherent difference between her platonic relationship with Sophie
and her romantic relationships with men where she feels she can express all parts of herself with Sophie, she cannot say the same for men. Consider the running joke between her and Benji about being “undatable” because she refuses to compromise herself and her quirks, she is deemed ill-suited and not malleable enough for a long term relationship with a man who would eventually try to constrict her self-expression and freedom to match his patriarchal conceptions. Thus, the issue in question is not monogamous, committed, long-term relationships in totality, but specifically those in which a partner has an inhibiting lens, a lens which doesn't allow the other total subjectivity.
Ultimately, despite the opinions of those who believe that all that is left of the patriarchy in the West are insignificant vestiges, the oldest living form of oppression remains a malevolent force in women’s lives. While there is a myriad of differences in women’s experiences, we all share some degree of forced objecthood. Whether it be Thelma’s abusive relationship or Julie’s
well-founded fear of being reduced to just a mother, as De Beauvoir states in The Second Sex, “man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.” In other words, woman is the object, man is the subject. No matter how a woman approaches a romantic relationship with a man, she will be uniquely and continually pushed into a predefined objecthood, a process she is continually trying to transcend. So where does that leave us? Interestingly, despite engaging with dark subject matter, all three films discussed end on a positive note Thelma and Louise feel true freedom for the first time in their lives, Julie finally feels content with her life, and Frances’ life equally falls into place. These final moments do not mean to convey an absence of problems, but rather the presence of hope that liberatory feeling that fuels us forward and onward.
Works
Cited
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