In the essay on The Second Sex her position is kind of like—yeah, okay, great, but who exactly is supposed to do the housekeeping? Mary herself fumed: “Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships—someone always wins.” Perhaps they felt they were pragmatists. Yet Hardwick later reversed, or at least altered, her eyerolling stance on both feminism and Simone de Beauvoir, a sort of latent or revived consciousness perhaps brought about by the end of her marriage.
