The Brutish Life of Subjection:A Feminist Reading of Sartre’s No Exit*

Katherine KurtzVillanova University

* The title is excerpted from a quote by Simone de Beauvoir in the Author’sIntroduction to The Second Sex: “Every time transcendence falls back intoimmanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the ‘en-soi’ —the brutish life of subjection to given conditions — and of liberty intoconstraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if thesubject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration andoppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil.” Simone de Beauvoir,introduction to The Second Sex, transl. and ed. H.M. Parshley (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), liv.

The key phrase here might well be“Hell is the others,” at leastinasmuch as, ensnared in theOther’s look and obsessed with hisjudgment, we seek—in vain and inbad faith—for our justificationthrough him or against him.

—René Lafarge1

ESTELLE [indicating GARCIN by a slightmovement of her head;]: But I wishhe’d notice me, too.

—J.P. Sartre, No Exit2

I. INTRODUCTION

When most critics write about Sartre’s No Exit, their

attention is turned to that infamous slogan “Hell is—Other

people” and debating either the inevitability or escapability of

the inauthenticity of human relations.3 This attention is well-

warranted; the problem of Being-for-Others as it is presented in

the play is complex and richly written, and to gloss over this

aspect of the play would be to miss an integral piece of No Exit.

However, it is by no means the only warranted reading, nor the

only question worth pursuing. The question that will guide this

1 René Lafarge, Jean-Paul Sartre: His Philosophy, transl. Marina Smyth-Kok(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), 127.2 Jean-Paul Sartre, “No Exit,” in No Exit and Three Other Plays, transl.Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 21. Originallyperformed as Huis Clos in 1944.3 See, for instance, Fell (1965); Lafarge (1970); Manser (1966); Solomon(2006).

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paper is more nuanced than the one often debated. It is also one

that is obscured by the typical ways of approaching the deep

philosophical content of the play, i.e., those which contest the

broader thesis of the doomed nature of human relations, leaving

undisturbed the intricacies of bad faith and the specificity of

choices that people make therein.

For argument’s sake, No Exit is a dramatization of the

problematic situation of Being-for-Others, that is, of the

harrowing experience of one’s being an object for another

consciousness, and of being unable, ultimately, to control how

one is constituted under the eyes of this ever-present and free

Other. Given this situation, one can nevertheless attempt to fix

the image of oneself that exists in the Other in a way that one

favors. That is, I can try to make it such that you perceive me

in the way that I want to be perceived. As Sartre says, “In

vanity I attempt in my capacity as Object to act upon the Other.

I take this beauty or this strength or this intelligence which he

confers on me—in so far as he constitutes me as an object—and I

attempt to make use of it in a return shock so as to affect him

3

passively with a feeling of admiration or love.”4 For one in bad

faith, this is a viable strategy. And it is precisely what the

three main characters in No Exit do. Of course, they do not make

it easy for each other, and this is part of the fun of the plot.

In any case, it is in the midst of this strategizing that our

question emerges.

One of the play’s characters, Estelle Rigault, makes a

curious choice with regard to her project of bad faith. As it

will be discussed in more detail later, Estelle’s bad faith has

to do with her need to be constituted by an Other in the mode of

an object to be possessed, regarded, admired, etc. For all

intents and purposes, Estelle wants to be objectified. As such,

Estelle requires the assistance of another subjectivity to do so.

It would seem that either of the other two characters, Inez or

Garcin, would be suitable for this task. According to Sartre’s

discussion of “the Look” from Being and Nothingness—the

foundation upon which No Exit was built—all that is required to

make an object of one consciousness is another act of4 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, transl. Hazel E. Barnes (New York:Washington Square Press, 1956), 386. Originally published as L'Être et lenéant (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1943). Subsequently, references from Beingand Nothingness will be denoted by “BN” followed by the page number fromBarnes’ translation.

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consciousness. However, in the room with the other two, it is

Garcin’s gaze that Estelle wants, and not Inez’s. It is not

immediately obvious why this is the case. The play’s ostensible

reason for Estelle’s choice is that Estelle needs a man (and Inez

is a woman), that Estelle requires a man’s affirmation. But

according to Sartre’s theory of the look, both Inez and Garcin

are equally capable of offering her their objectifying gazes;

that is to say, in Being and Nothingness we are given no criteria

for differentiating between the look of the two sexes.

Estelle’s decision warrants an explanation, and the leading

interpretations of No Exit are not suited to provide an answer.

One might offer the immediate answer that Estelle merely wants

Garcin’s affirmation because she desires him, that he is of her

preferred gender as a (presumably heterosexual) woman, and Inez

is not. But I do not think that this facile solution is the way

to pursue the dynamics of the situation. What motivates the

choice to submit to another, to forfeit one’s subjectivity in

favor of being in the mode of an object for the other? And under

what conditions does one choose a particular kind of subjectivity

over another for this purpose?

5

In this paper I will argue that Estelle’s choice of Garcin

over Inez to objectify her reveals a difference between the

masculine and the feminine subjectivity when it comes to the

power to constitute one’s identity, a difference that was not

parsed out in the theoretical description of the look in Being

and Nothingness, but one which Sartre nevertheless is attentive

to in the dramatization of No Exit. Namely, it is not enough for

Estelle to be an object for another; she wants to control the

object that she is for the Other and to be a certain type of

object, and Inez’s subjectivity will not work for Estelle’s

purposes in the way that she wants.

I will begin with a close reading of Sartre’s play according

to the theory of the look put forth in Being and Nothingness. The

subsequent reading of No Exit is one that is enhanced by a

feminist lens, and so in this paper I will make a case for why

the feminist reading is warranted before delivering such a

reading. Prompted by my initial question, the reading will be

brought to fruition with the help of Simone de Beauvoir—Sartre’s

close contemporary and interlocutor, and paragon of feminist

scholarship—, Julien S. Murphy, who mobilizes Sartre’s concept of

6

the Us-object in the service of feminine consciousness in “The

Look in Sartre and Rich,”5 and Phyllis Sutton Morris, whose work

on objectification in Sartre’s phenomenology of consciousness in

“Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective”6 insightfully

brings the topic into a feminist register.

II. FRAMING RELATIONSHIPS IN BAD FAITH: A CHARACTER STUDY

Before using a feminist viewpoint to shed light on the

characters in No Exit, we must first explore the characters and

relationships that Sartre wished to convey. Underpinning this

dramatization and laying the foundation for the philosophical

themes presented in No Exit is Sartre’s monumental work—and self-

proclaimed eidetic of bad faith—Being and Nothingness. To be more

specific, in No Exit Sartre draws heavily upon his lengthy

discussion in Being and Nothingness of “The Look,” which reveals

to us the ontological indebtedness of our Being-for-Others: “To

be looked at is to apprehend oneself as the unknown object of

unknowable appraisals—in particular, of value judgments. . . .

5 Julien S. Murphy, “The Look in Sartre and Rich,” in The Thinking Muse:Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, ed. Jeffner Allen and Iris Marion Young(Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1989), 101-112.6 Phyllis Sutton Morris, “Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective”in Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre (University Park: Penn StateUP, 1999), 64-89.

7

Thus being-seen constitutes me as a defenseless being for a

freedom which is not my freedom.”7 The look is a disconcerting

look, for Sartre. The language of oppression registers strongly

in Sartre’s description. Sartre goes as far as to say that “we

can consider ourselves as ‘slaves’ in so far as we appear to the

Other.”8 This enslavement directly refers to another

consciousness’ capability to constitute me over and against my

own freedom:

I am a slave to the degree that my being is dependent at thecenter of a freedom which is not mine and which is the verycondition of my being. In so far as I am the object of valueswhich come to qualify me without my being able to act on thisqualification or even to know it, I am enslaved [. . .] I am indanger. This danger is not an accident but the permanent structureof my being-for-others. (BN 358)

What is truly frightening is that this objectifying power of the

look is not some accident, but is a fundamental and permanent

structure of our being.

Prompted by the look of the Other, one is free to respond in

a number of ways. One of the strategic responses is to attempt to

affect the Other in such a way that I receive my justification

through or against him. Sartre describes it at length:

The feeling is entertained in the mode of bad faith, and itsinternal development leads it to disintegration. In fact as I

7 BN, 358.8 BN, 358.

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play my assumed role of my being-as-object, I attempt to recoverit as an object. Since the Other is the key to it, I attempt tolay hold of the Other so that he may release to me the secret ofmy being. Thus vanity impels me to get hold of the Other and toconstitute him as an object in order to burrow into the heart ofthis object to discover there my own object-state.9

In other words, I try to entreat the Other with a specific image

of myself in order to recapture from him my very being as such.

But this strategy is ultimately futile, as Sartre notes:

This is to kill the hen that lays the golden eggs. By constitutingthe Other as object, I constitute myself as an image at the heartof the Other-as-object, hence the disillusion of vanity. In thatimage which I wanted to grasp in order to recover it and mergewith it my own being, I no longer recognize myself. I must willy-nilly impute the image to the Other as one of his own subjectiveproperties. Freed in spite of myself from my object-state, Iremain alone confronting the Other-as-object in my unqualifiableselfness which I have to be forever without relief.10

Thus this strategy is doomed from the start. Once I constitute

the Other as an object in order to use him to lay hold of my own

being, my being is tainted within him, and no longer suits my

purposes.

It is this doomed project which we witness played out by the

characters of No Exit. They all need each other to aid in their

own bad faith, or flight away from authentic Being-for-itself. At

the same time, however, they each uniquely test the others’ bad

faith. That is, they test each other’s self-deceptions by

9 BN, 386-7.10 BN, 387.

9

continuously prompting their choices in bad faith.11 They don’t

merely prolong or assist each other’s bad faith in this way; what

they do is more torturous: they continually test the limits of

each other’s lie. The result is that they all participate in each

character’s being continuously at a psychological/existential

breaking point.

Garcin needs Inez to affirm that he is not a coward, but a

hero. He witnesses a semi-collapse of his ego when it dawns on

him that just because he had built up the image of himself as a

hero does not fortify him against acting like a coward:

GARCIN: ...Can one possibly be a coward when one’s deliberatelycourted danger at every turn? And can one judge a life by a singleaction?INEZ: Why not? For thirty years you dreamt you were a hero, andcondoned a thousand petty lapses—because a hero, of course, can dono wrong. An easy method, obviously. Then a day came when you wereup against it, the red light of real danger—and you took the trainto Mexico.12

In this scene, we witness a manifestation of bad faith in which

one subjectivity tries to constitute a chosen image of itself by

securing that image through the eyes of another. That is, a

11 According to Sartre, one cannot be constantly in bad faith, or constantlybe in the mode of bad faith, because this is not true to the radical break inbeing that constitutes the being of the for-itself. Even in bad faith, onemust continually choose to flee. Therefore even in No Exit, there is noconstant state of bad faith; the characters must continuously reassert theirchoices to be in bad faith.12 Sartre, “No Exit,” 43.

10

subjectivity attempts to solidify its identity with the

affirmation of that identity in another (competing) subjectivity.

Garcin is plagued with the gnawing feeling that, despite his

attempts to convince himself otherwise, his motivation to flee

the war was fueled by cowardice, and not pacifistic integrity or

heroic bravery. But in order to have adopted the idea that he is

a hero, Garcin must have, as Inez points out, “condoned a

thousand petty lapses” to do so. In other words, Garcin must have

ignored all the ways in which he is not a hero. His continuous

mistreatment of his wife, for example, is something that Garcin

never allowed to infringe upon the idea of himself as a hero;

Garcin-the-heroic-journalist trumps Garcin-the-wife-abuser.

He himself is undecided about whether or not in the end he

was a hero or a coward. He believes he had his reasons to flee

the war—his pacifistic convictions, they would have jailed him if

he refused to fight, etc.—but at the same time, he asks himself,

“but were they the real reasons?”13 The problem for Garcin is

that, for the being that is what it is not, i.e., the human

being, there can be no synthesis of the for-itself with the in-

13 Ibid., 37, emphasis added.

11

itself. That is, the being of the for-itself will necessarily

always be open and vulnerable to that radical spontaneity which

prevents that being from the wholeness of identity that the one

in bad faith seeks. Given this, Garcin’s only way to constitute

himself “definitively” as a hero is to receive this affirmation

through another. Estelle does not play this game with him; she

tells Garcin that only he can know for sure what motivated his

action and therefore only he can judge: “How can I say? . . . I

can’t put myself in your skin. You must decide that for

yourself.”14 Therefore Garcin needs Inez to confirm that he is

not a coward.

However, the withholding of this confirmation is exactly how

Inez derives her pleasure. Furthermore, if she can prey upon

Garcin’s vulnerability here, so much the better. Inez is a self-

proclaimed sadist—“When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on

without making people suffer”15—and if any one of the characters

personified Sartre’s “look,” it would be her. When it is her turn

to tell the other two the reason why she is in Hell, Inez

reflects on her experience with Florence and says, “I crept

14 Ibid., 37.15 Ibid., 26.

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inside her skin, she saw the world through my eyes.”16 The

experience of seeing the world through the eyes of another, or

more specifically, of being aware of oneself as an object for

another’s consciousness and seeing oneself thusly, characterizes

precisely what Sartre means in his section on “The Look” in Being

and Nothingness.

The theme of the look is cleverly written into the early

dialogue between Inez and Estelle, in which Inez tries to

innocuously convince Estelle to allow Inez to be her mirror:

ESTELLE: Oh dear! My lipstick! I’m sure I’ve put it on allcrooked. No, I can’t do without a looking-glass for ever and ever.I simply can’t.INEZ: Suppose I try to be your glass? Come and pay me a visit,dear. Here’s a place for you on my sofa.[ . . . ]INEZ: Sit down. Come closer. Closer. Look into my eyes. What doyou see?ESTELLE: Oh, I’m there! But so tiny I can’t see myself properly.INEZ: But I can. Every inch of you. Now ask me questions. I’ll beas candid as any looking-glass.17

Inez derives pleasure from being the cause of suffering of

others, but in order to execute this in a satisfactory way, she

first needs to make others dependent on her. Once this occurs,

Inez becomes the medium through which others see themselves as

weak, corrupted, imperfect beings, or otherwise exploits their

16 Ibid., 26.17 Ibid., 19-20.

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trust until they completely break down; in reference to Florence

and the man she turned Florence against, Inez says, “I used to

remind her every day: ‘Yes, my pet, we killed him between us’ . .

. For six months I flamed away in her heart, till there was

nothing but a cinder. One night she got up and turned on the gas

while I was asleep. Then she crept back into bed.”18 Alternately,

she can torture the other who now depends on her by removing or

threatening to remove herself as the source of their access to

themselves:

INEZ: Hullo, what’s that— that nasty red spot at the bottom ofyour cheek? A pimple?ESTELLE: A pimple? Oh, how simply foul! Where!INEZ: There. . . . You know the way they catch larks—with amirror? I’m your lark-mirror, my dear, and you can’t escapeme. . . . There isn’t any pimple, not a trace of one. So whatabout it? Suppose the mirror started telling lies? Or suppose Icovered my eyes—as he is doing—and refused to look at you, allthat loveliness of yours would be wasted on the desert air.19

To articulate this play in the language of bad faith, Inez makes

others dependent upon her by tricking them into allowing her to

become the source of their necessity.

Estelle is the first obvious choice for Inez’s game, since

Estelle exhibits a need to be seen in order to feel necessary. At

one moment in the play, after being unable to produce a mirror in18 Ibid., 26.19 Ibid., 21.

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which to check her appearance, Estelle sways dizzily as if about

to faint: “I feel so queer. [She pats herself.] Don’t you ever

get taken that way? When I can’t see myself I begin to wonder if

I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it

doesn’t help much.”20 Estelle’s need to continuously re-confirm

her existence expresses itself as an obsession with mirrors:

I’ve six big mirrors in my bedroom. There they are. I can seethem. But they don’t see me. They’re reflecting the carpet, thesettee, the window—but how empty it is, a glass in which I’mabsent! When I talked to people I always made sure there was onenear by in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. Andsomehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as others saw me . . .21

Estelle is not only preoccupied with being able to see herself

reflected in mirrors, she must see herself as others see her.

Furthermore, Estelle exhibits a strong need to control the

image that others see. But what Estelle wants is to control both

what is seen and how it is seen by others:

ESTELLE: Are you sure it looks all right?INEZ: You’re lovely, Estelle.ESTELLE: But how can I rely upon your taste? Is it the same as mytaste?22

Estelle is worried that Inez cannot, by virtue of not being

Estelle, be able to judge Estelle(’s appearance) as Estelle would

20 Ibid., 19.21 Ibid., 19.22 Ibid., 20.

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have it. In other words, Estelle’s challenge is that she is

chasing the mode of being of an object, the in-itself, insofar as

she wants to be what she is—a beautiful, desirable, and proper

woman—all the while ignoring that she is not this thing (she must

not be, for she has had to take pains to create this illusion).

She wants others to see her (i.e., she wants to be the object of

the other’s consciousness), but only in the way that she chooses.

And for Estelle to take pleasure when others do regard her for

her loveliness in the way that she has played at, she must forget

all the work she has done for this to happen, all the ways in

which she is not the innocent, pure, lovely “glancing stream”

that she would like to be. This is one facet of Estelle’s self-

deception.

Excruciatingly aware as she is of being seen by others and

the power of the other’s look to constitute her, a look that is

ultimately outside of her absolute control, she is wary of

letting Inez get the better of her:

INEZ: I have your taste, my dear, because I like you so much. Lookat me. No, straight. Now smile. I’m not so ugly, either. Am I notnicer than your glass?ESTELLE: Oh, I don’t know. You scare me rather. My reflection inthe glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Likesomething I had tamed. . . . I’m going to smile, and my smile will

16

sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it willbecome.23

While Estelle does have a need to be viewed, she nevertheless is

acutely aware that she cannot fix her reflection in Inez’s eyes

as she could witness her reflection in a mirror. Moreover,

Estelle seems tacitly aware that Inez has her own stake in what

she will “reflect” back to Estelle. This, of course, would have

the potential to spoil Estelle’s game and be torturous to her.

The weakness of Inez’s perspective, however, is that she is

actually always dependent upon the willingness of another to

grant her that other’s subjectivity as an object for her

consciousness. Inez describes herself: “Like a live coal. A live

coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out.”24 This is

Inez’s weakness. Once the other refuses to grant her recognition,

her position crumbles, for her bad faith is that she can only

constitute herself through the demands she makes on the being of

another. Therefore, Inez needs Estelle. Inez’s dependency becomes

evident when Estelle chooses to seek attention from Garcin,

rejecting Inez as a viable source of that attention. At one point

Estelle says to Garcin, “Don’t listen to her. She has no eyes, no23 Ibid., 20-1.24 Ibid., 26.

17

ears. She’s—nothing,” to which Inez desperately protests,

“Estelle! Garcin! You must be going crazy. You’re not alone. I’m

here too.”25 To ignore Inez is to deprive her simultaneously of

the satisfaction she gets from causing others to suffer, and of

her need to constitute herself through the submission of another

being-for-itself. Furthermore, this deprivation, because it

removes the means by which Inez is accustomed to flee, creates an

opportunity that pits Inez face-to-face with the anguish of her

being and the mechanisms by which she facilitates her bad faith.

The close reading of the characters in bad faith given thus

far has been according to the theoretical description of the look

given by Sartre in Being and Nothingness. But there are a few

aspects of the play for which Sartre’s theory of the look alone

cannot account. For one, Sartre’s account of the look is always

played out in a dual dynamic, that is, with two persons; how is

this complicated when there are not two, but three, as there are

in No Exit? Second, Sartre’s harrowing examples of the look

(spying through the keyhole, rustling in the bushes, hiding in

the shadows—examples of war and espionage) are all male examples.

25 Ibid., 35.

18

How are we to account for the look when it is male-female? Or

female-female? And third, we still have not been able to

adequately answer the question of why Estelle chooses Garcin, and

not Inez, to objectify her, or furthermore, under what pretense

any subject would willingly give themselves over to

objectification by another.

III. A FEMINIST READING OF NO EXIT

A. WHY NO EXIT WARRANTS A FEMINIST READING

A feminist reading of No Exit can augment those aspects of

Sartre’s philosophy which are present but unaccounted for in the

play. Not only this, but the predominant reading of No Exit as

an existential identity play has limited the way that many

readers approach the philosophical content of the material, to

the effect that other readings are obscured.

This idea comes out of a tangential point made by Robert C.

Solomon in Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts.26 In his chapter on No

Exit, Solomon foregrounds the dead possibilities of the

characters, arguing: “No Exit gives us a very poignant and

26 Robert C. Solomon, “No Way Out: Sartre’s No Exit and ‘Being-for-Others,’”in Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 177-195.

19

insightful reason why we should fear death, and that is the total

loss of control of our own identities.”27 Thus Solomon’s glean on

the play, and the central message therein, is the fairly

conventional thesis that the hellishness of No Exit, and hence,

of Being-for-Others, is the inability to control one’s self-

identity. But at the very end of the chapter, Solomon muses:

Perhaps this burning ‘existential’ question of self-identity alsobetrays, unintended, that all of this is typical male narcissism,and the real identity questions are more subtly settled by women,whose identities are routinely swept to the sidelines, whoseobsessions are therefore not so merely self-absorbed, who are moregracefully accepting of Being-for-Others as the human lot inlife.28

Solomon makes a salient point. Perhaps there is a specific

subjectivity for whom the loss of one’s capacity to control their

self-image or identity is particularly terrifying: the male

subjectivity. Women, as Solomon insightfully notes, are in a

sense already accustomed to having their identities determined

for them. The ontological category of Woman has for centuries

been defined as the quintessential Other of mankind. Furthermore,

in everyday experiences, women, more so than men, are acutely

aware of the fact of their being constituted by the look of

27 Solomon, 179.28 Solomon, 195.

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others. Objectification is a normal, daily phenomenon for women,

and one that carries with it a peculiar threat.29

Women can never be as self-absorbed in the question of self-

identity that Solomon describes above, because to be a woman is

to be doubly-conscious—conscious of being a self, on the one

hand, and conscious of being the Other. As Simone de Beauvoir

puts it in the introduction to The Second Sex:

What peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she—afree and autonomous being like all human creatures—neverthelessfinds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume thestatus of the Other. . . . The drama of woman lies in thisconflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject(ego)—who always regards the self as the essential—and thecompulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential.30

As such, the harrowing experience of being constituted by

another, as it is presented in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and

No Exit, would not be as disconcerting or terrifying to the women

in Sartre’s audience as it would be to the men, for the simple

fact that the men would not be as used to the feeling of

powerlessness when it comes to constituting oneself. What is

more, Solomon’s reflection suggests that perhaps we should look

29 According to Iris Marion Young, this is the threat of invasion of her bodyspace, in its most aggressive form, of rape. “Throwing Like a Girl” in TheThinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, eds. Jeffner Allen andIris Marion Young (Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1989), 67.30 Simone de Beauvoir, introduction to The Second Sex, liv, emphasis added.

21

to women and how women have dealt with the “burning ‘existential’

question of self-identity,” as if in the subtle ways in which

women already have had to face such a question, in their

cultivated resourcefulness, one may bear witness to their unique

and clever ways of living one’s “situation” and the condition of

Being-for-Others.

But to take Solomon’s suggestion to heart is not, I argue,

to doom Sartre’s perspective to male narcissism. Quite the

contrary, Sartre gives us not one but two female figures in his

play in which we can observe distinct strategies for women

walking the line of self-identity and objectification in the

experience of Being-for-Others. Though, it should not be

understated, both of these projects will be in bad faith. By

playing off Garcin’s naïve and narcissistic male egoism, Inez and

Estelle look ingenious by comparison. Sartre might not have

included women in his famous examples in Being and Nothingness,

but he does so in No Exit, and we would do well to interrogate

the differences therein. For these reasons, a feminist reading of

No Exit is warranted.

B. THE TRIANGULATION OF THE GAZE: THE US-OBJECT

22

As we have seen in the prior analysis, the relationship

between Inez and Estelle is complex and evolves throughout the

course of the play. One thing that remains constant between the

two, however, is that they are always in the presence of a third

party, Garcin. In scripting an instantiation of the “eternal

triangle,” Sartre primes the audience to group and differentiate

the characters on the basis of sex. That is, the familiar pattern

of “two women, one man” or “two men, one woman” precedes the

audience’s cognition of this particular arrangement of

personalities. No other way of differentiating between the three

is as immediately ostensible as grouping them in these terms;

Sartre has given us characters who are, with regard to the

multiplicity of social categories (race, gender, class,

ethnicity, age, ability) available, strikingly similar.31 So

despite their singular differences, Estelle and Inez are

nevertheless grouped together as women contra man.

31 Rhiannon Goldthorpe highlights this point in Sartre: Literature and Theory,specifically in the chapter on No Exit, “Huis Clos: Distance and ambiguity.”He uses the characters’ similarity, specifically class similarity, as abackdrop to foreground the nuances in Sartre’s comments on the life of theintellectual, petite, and grande bourgeoisie. Rhiannon Goldthorpe, “Huis Clos:Distance and Ambiguity,” in Sartre: Literature and Theory (New York: CambridgeUP, 1984), 84-96.

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One way of framing this relationship between the three

characters is to try on Sartre’s model of Us-object in the mode

of feminine consciousness. In “The Look in Sartre and Rich,”

Julien S. Murphy applies Sartre’s theory of “the look” in Being

and Nothingness, in conjunction with works from feminist poet

Adrienne Rich, to describe women’s experience of devaluation in

the context of patriarchy.32 Murphy’s project is useful for this

paper in the way that she invokes Sartre’s description of the

emergence of the “Us-object,” which comes into existence through

the look of the Third: “The emergence of the Us-object from the

look of the Third entails a change in perception in which the Us

acts, in light of its awareness of the gaze of the Third, to

bring forth its own, new eyes.”33 Murphy utilizes the Us-object

to talk specifically about how feminine consciousness can be born

out of the oppressive, objectifying gaze in ways that transcend32 Murphy takes a mostly positive gloss on the possibilities within thedynamic of the look for liberation of the oppressed. While it is true that thelook originally and often manifests itself as directed towards an Other in away that is seen as limiting the Other’s possibilities, fixing the Other in mygaze (and vice versa), Murphy nevertheless finds flexibility in thereciprocity of the look. That is, each person is capable of receiving andreturning the gaze, and by stepping into the roles constructed by the Otherfor me, which Sartre calls “unrealizables,” as part of a political project offreedom (Sartre, 675). For instance, women can, according to Murphy, freelytake up their situation as women to advocate for the liberation of each otherthrough the category of woman.33 Murphy, “The Look in Sartre and Rich,” 105.

24

the limitations of that gaze and become an opportunity for

solidarity. In the context of No Exit, by accounting for a third

presence we are able to proceed more robustly than before, when

we could only theorize a dual relationship dynamic. Thus the Us-

object should allow us to parse out the triangulation of the

gaze, in the midst of which emerges Estelle and Inez as the ‘Us,’

as women, in the presence of and as the object for the male,

Garcin’s, gaze.

One of the possibilities for the Us perceiving the look of

the Third (granted, it is a possibility in bad faith), is to fall

back into the constructs posited for the Us-object. Quoting

Marilyn Frye, Murphy says to do such would mean that “she has

assumed his interest. She now sees with his eye, his arrogant

eye.”34 What exactly constitutes “his interest”? For Murphy the

patriarchal gaze fixes women in three ways: it “distances women

from positions of power, focuses on women as objects of male

sexual desire, and seeks the destruction of women as free

subjects.”35 To “assume his interest,” to see with “his arrogant

eye” would then be for woman to turn the objectifying gaze toward

34 Ibid., 105.35 Ibid., 104.

25

herself, but to see herself as she is seen, as the alienated and

passive object of “his” sexual desire.

Though they both emerge as the subjugated, Us-object “Woman”

through the triangulation of the patriarchal gaze, Estelle and

Inez ostensibly exhibit the alienation brought on by their self-

objectification in very different ways. Therefore, it begs to be

reckoned that falling back onto the constructs posited for the

Us-object can manifest in (at least) two ways, though both will

be in bad faith. These responses, or strategies, map onto the

behavior that Estelle and Inez demonstrate. Respectively, there

is the first, in which the objectification and subjection of the

self is chosen, even invited, and the second, in which the self

denies her own subjugation, and instead wills the subjection of

those who would have her submission, all the while envious that

she cannot seamlessly adopt the position of he whom she abhors.

These responses will be taken in turn.

C. ESTELLE & INEZ: TWO RESPONSES IN THE LIFE OF SUBJECTION

What form does self-objectification often take, and what

motivates the choice? At the conclusion of “Throwing Like a

Girl,” Iris Marion Young describes the phenomenon in which a

26

woman lives her body as both subject and object under the male

gaze: “The source of this objectified bodily existence is in the

attitude of others regarding her, but the woman herself often

actively takes up her body as a mere thing. She gazes at it in

the mirror, worries about how it looks to others, prunes it,

shapes it, molds and decorates it.”36 Thus, one of the

possibilities for the consciousness who becomes object for

another, or for the objectified person, is to adopt toward

themselves that very same view—to accept and take up for oneself

one’s objectification. Of the main three characters in No Exit,

Estelle is the one who seems to most fit the description of a

woman in the mode of self-objectification. Of the three she is

the most concerned with regulating her immediate physical

appearance; we have already noted how she attempts to constitute

an image of herself as the beautiful, fragile, desirable

femininity through the others’ subjectivity.

The question is what is to be gained from adopting this

perspective, from the Us-object falling back into the constructs

36 Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl,” 66.

27

posited for them.37 In the Introduction to The Second Sex, Simone

de Beauvoir articulates this choice: “Along with the ethical urge

of each individual to affirm his subjective existence, there is

also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a thing.” She

continues:

This is an inauspicious road, for he who takes it — passive, lost,ruined — becomes henceforth the creature of another’s will,frustrated in his transcendence and deprived of every value. Butit is an easy road; on it one avoids the strain involved in theundertaking an authentic existence. When man makes of woman theOther, he may, then, expect her to manifest deep-seated tendenciestoward complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the statusof subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feelsthe necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity,and because she is often very well pleased with her role as theOther.38

The assent to self-objectification is multifaceted. On the one

hand this assent is a forfeiting of one’s subjective independence

37 In asking this question I admit that I am already taking self-objectification to be a strategy of existence, and as a strategy, one that isnecessarily freely chosen. Just how much ‘freedom’ this choice admits of,however, is up for debate. For many feminists, a woman’s self-objectificationis regarded not so much as a neutral choice that she freely adopts as it is aneffect of living within the patriarchal situation. That is, it is learned asshe comes to see the world through the patriarchal lens that organizes herexperience in a given society. Iris Marion Young, for instance, would be ofthis opinion, and the excerpted quote from “Throwing Like a Girl” does a nicejob of highlighting the ambiguity of agency when it comes to such matters.However, given Sartre’s notion of radical freedom and choice at the time ofwriting Being and Nothingness, and the primary objective of this paper asrooted in an explication of No Exit, I think it is both warranted andappropriate to explore the ramifications of self-objectification as astrategy, that is, as something chosen over another alternative. At the sametime, I do not disparage the notion that (outside of the context of Sartre)there might not always be a viable alternative, nor do I mean to suggest thatself-objectification is the best of all possible strategies.38 Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex, xlv.

28

and personal sovereignty; it is an easy way out of the “strain”—

Sartre would say “anguish”—of authentic existence. On the other

hand, the alleviation of this very strain might be motive enough

to consent to the life of subjection. Furthermore, there are

other things to be gained from a woman’s submission to man and

assent to being the object he makes of her, things that perhaps

she could not come into on her own, such as material resources,

wealth, or status.

While for a woman to take up this construct in her everyday

life would be highly anathema to Murphy and many other feminists

who strive to liberate women from this very situation, others

would disagree, finding potential for subversion in the

objectification of women. For example, Phyllis Sutton Morris in

“Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective” suggests that

women’s objectification by men gives them grounds to manipulate

men, taking advantage of the fact that men constitute them as

dangerous sexual objects.39 Morris borrows Sartre’s description

39 In this chapter Morris is concerned with addressing feminist treatment ofdominance-oriented forms of objectification. Morris’ treatment of the feministperspectives on the concept of objectification is really a rebuttal to thefeminist claim that objectification is always and everywhere ‘bad’ disguisedas an article on Sartre’s perceptual and social theory. However, to Morris’credit she does do justice to the complexity of Sartre’s philosophy ofrelation to others. Of the four different forms she identifies—the first three

29

of dangerous “psychic objects” to map onto this form of

objectification: “In this case, the other is recognized as a

conscious physical being, with desires and goals that may be

dangerous to the perceiver.”40 By contrast to feminists such as

Iris Marion Young, who think that the feeling of power women may

feel from their being sexually objectified is nevertheless not a

genuine power, Morris maintains that women do wield a legitimate

(not to mention potent) sexual power over men in strategically

allowing themselves to be objectified.41

Alternately, woman can fight against being constituted as

the lesser, more inferior Other, but there is much to lose in

that battle. As Beauvoir says, “To decline to be the Other, to

refuse to be a party to the deal — this would be for women to

renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance

with the superior caste.”42 This brings us to the second of the

two responses—the refusal of one’s objectification—and to Inez.

Inez exhibits a different way of submitting to the male gaze;

being objectivity of thought, treating women as parts of bodies to be used,and treating women as mere bodies lacking consciousness—Morris finds promisein the fourth, treating women as dangerous conscious objects, to groundpositive forms of objectification.40 Morris, “Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective,” 72.41 Morris, “Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective,” 73.42 Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex, xlv.

30

whereas Estelle demonstrates one who applies the male gaze to

herself, fashioning herself as a feminine object of desire, Inez

more literally adopts the male gaze as if it were her own. That

is to say that Inez, in declining to be the Other, adopts the

objectifying gaze to make objects out of others, including women

(but not herself!), and uses her subjectivity in the service of

manipulating others to assent to their own objectification.

Inez’s behavior thus constitutes an intriguing inversion,

reinforced by the fact that Sartre writes her as a lesbian.

However, Inez’s project, too, is in bad faith. For to the

extent that she denies her own subjugation, she wills the

subjection of others. She would demean the subjectivity of others

if only to confer her own superiority. But this project stems

from the insecurity of her position, from her inability to escape

her situation as Other. Inez’s continuous contempt toward Garcin

is indicative of this fact. Inez is highly perturbed by Garcin,

and not Estelle, because he is a man whose mere presence

constitutes Inez as Other by default. Indeed, it seems this is

the cause of the entire rift between them.

31

Rhiannon Goldthorpe makes a similar point in his chapter on

the play, “Huis Clos: Distance and Ambiguity,” in Sartre:

Literature and Theory. According to Goldthorpe, Inez is “one of

the embodiments in Sartre’s work of ressentiment.” Using

Scheler’s definition, Goldthorpe characterizes ressentiment as

“chiefly confined to those who serve and who are dominated,”

involving “the repression and subterranean working of revenge,

hatred, Schadenfraude, malice, the impulse to detract,

vindictiveness and spite,” in which:

‘. . . there occurs neither a moral self-conquest (such as genuineforgiveness in the case of revenge) nor an act or some otheradequate expression of emotion [. . .], and if this restraint iscaused by a pronounced awareness of impotence, [. . .] coupledwith the feeling that one is unable to act them out—either becauseof weakness, physical or mental, or because of fear.’43

The description of ressentiment fits Inez’s behavior well,

accounting for “the ferocity with which Inès [sic] seeks to

destroy the self-image of others,” as well as the condescension

that masks her envy of Garcin, and even of Estelle, reinforced by

a sense of social inferiority and impotence brought on by Inez’s

petit bourgeois, homosexual, and (I argue) female status.44

43 Goldthorpe, Sartre: Literature and Theory, 94, original emphasis. Quotedfrom Scheler’s Ressentiment, 48.44 Goldthorpe, 95.

32

Thus far we have examined what motivates the choices to

objectify oneself and others in the context of the situation of

subjugated life, as witnessed in No Exit’s Estelle and Inez.

Estelle chooses to be objectified, in one sense, because it

alleviates the anguish of being-for-itself. Inez chooses to

objectify others because by making herself necessary for others

she flees the contingency of her own facticity. But why, finally,

does Estelle choose Garcin to be objectified by, when it is clear

that Inez is not only capable of objectifying her, but would be

uniquely satisfied in doing so? We are now prepared to answer

this question.

D. HUIS CLOS: ‘BEHIND CLOSED DOORS’

Sartre’s theory of the look may not have accounted for

varying degrees of freedom, or power differentials at the level

of the mere spontaneous acts of consciousness, but in the lived

situations of the characters in No Exit, there is a clear

motivation to be objectified by one subjectivity over another.

Estelle wants Garcin’s gaze because it is only through his gaze

that she can gain access to the power of male subjectivity. Being

constituted by Inez’s gaze will not grant Estelle what she wants;

33

Inez’s freedom is not suitable for the gain that Estelle seeks.

As a woman, Inez could only offer Estelle more of the same; as

women of the bourgeoisie, they are limited by the same social and

economical structures. But more importantly, on the ontological

level, they are both the inferior Other. Not only does Estelle

not gain anything from Inez, she would risk the little control

she has—control over her image—by giving herself over to someone

who routinely destroys the self-image of those who submit to her.

Through attachment to Garcin, however, Estelle becomes one

of his objects, an object for a subjectivity that she could never

be on her own. In other words she gains through him the

superior’s power. Furthermore, through Garcin Estelle receives

her justification over and against Inez, her female competition,

which effectively differentiates her from Inez as somehow better

since she has been imbued by male superiority. Estelle chooses

Garcin because only his subjectivity would grant Estelle’s desire

to transcend her situation as woman, as Other.

The feminist lens makes it possible to read No Exit as a

depiction of the struggle for the power to constitute oneself, by

any means necessary. Estelle cannot do this for herself. That is,

34

she cannot constitute herself on her own but she needs another’s

deliverance, a man’s freedom. Inez, however, refuses to submit to

the man’s subjectivity as superior in his capacity to constitute

himself and her. Instead, she tries to become her own means of

self-constitution. Yet she is ultimately still dependent upon

another to do this; she merely tricks them into lending her their

subjectivity to then corrupt their image of themselves. Moreover,

it is important to keep in mind that Inez does not want to

liberate Estelle, but to constitute her as she wishes, for her

own purposes of destruction. In this sense, Inez’s ressentiment

amounts to a desire to embody the male subjectivity, and the

rights and privileges that go along with it. Estelle, too, wants

access to the spoils of male subjectivity, but through possessing

or being possessed by him. Both are projects in bad faith. What

is learned is that man seems to have more freedom than woman in

this respect. Perhaps this is why, according to Beauvoir, “The

most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with

women”;45 he can pass through certain doors that are closed to

them.

45 Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex, xlix.

35

IV. CONCLUSION

Garcin might struggle openly with the burden of self-

constitution, but Estelle and Inez, as women, are already well-

accustomed to this struggle, and perhaps already comprehend its

naive futility. What is interesting about them is not that they

also struggle in the same way as Garcin, but the particular

strategies they exhibit in their bad faith, and what it suggests

about Sartre’s understanding of how the question of self-

constitution manifests differently according to gender. If we

take seriously the actions of Estelle and Inez in No Exit, then

the central problem of the play—the power of others to constitute

my being—takes on a more concrete and robust register. That is,

in No Exit the problem of Others and the dynamic of the look is

more filled out than it is in Being and Nothingness.

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre seems to overestimate the

reciprocity of the look; we are given the impression that it is

just as easy for one consciousness to ‘overpower’ the other, so

to speak, taking it as its object, than it is for that same

consciousness to, by a process of reversal, become object itself.

However, in the situations of everyday life, the dynamic of

36

oppression and objectification is often unilaterally structured.

The woman, the Negro, and the Jew are already, to an extent, at a

loss in the ability to freely constitute their own identities.

Their identities are fixed, to a degree, by virtue of the fact

that they are all already representative of the inferior,

subjugated Other in power binaries that structure human

experience. But in No Exit, we witness Sartre thinking through

this issue of the look and the power of others to constitute

one’s identity in the context of a power dynamic that is uneven:

the difference of the sexes.

The overwhelming tendency to interpret No Exit as an

unambiguous statement about the inescapable inauthenticity of

human relations (aside from being a misreading—the door is open,

after all!) overshadows the interesting nuances within those

relations. Likewise, the generalization that the loss of one’s

power to constitute oneself presents a terrifying premise for all

people does not hold for those individuals who are already devoid

of such power. One can only fear losing something that one

already has, and alternately, one cannot fear to lose something

that one does not have in the first place. Nevertheless, in No

37

Exit Sartre demonstrates how the pursuit of that power and the

strategies of a life therein are aspects of the human condition—

even if in bad faith. This sentiment rings true in the words of

Simone de Beauvoir: “It is not a mysterious essence that compels

men and women to act in good or bad faith, it is their situation

that inclines them more or less toward the search for truth.”46

This nuanced interpretation proves to be a more robust account of

the play than the one that is frequently proffered and that

stunts such an interpretation. A feminist reading, however,

delivers these insights to us.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beauvoir, Simone de. Author’s Introduction to The Second Sex.Translated and edited by H.M. Parshley, xxxvi-lv. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.

46 Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex, lii.

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Fell, Joseph P., III. “Phenomenological Theory: FirstFormulation.” In Emotion in the Thought of Sartre, 13-34.New York: Columbia UP, 1965.

Goldthorpe, Rhiannon. “Huis Clos: Distance and Ambiguity.” InSartre: Literature and Theory, 84-96. New York: CambridgeUP, 1984.

Lafarge, René. Jean-Paul Sartre: His Philosophy. Translated by Marina Smyth-Kok. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

Levy, Neil. Sartre. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2002.

Manser, Anthony. “Action and Identity: Sartre’s Plays.” InSartre: A Philosophic Study, 224-247. London: The AthlonePress, 1966.

Morris, Phyllis Sutton. “Sartre on Objectification: A FeministPerspective.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jean-PaulSartre, 64-89. University Park: Penn State UP, 1999.

Murphy, Julien S. “The Look in Sartre and Rich.” In The ThinkingMuse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, edited byJeffner Allen and Iris Marion Young, 101-112. Indianapolis:Indiana UP, 1989.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E.Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1956. Originallypublished as L'Être et le néant (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1943).

–––. “No Exit.” In No Exit and Three Other Plays, 1-46. Translated byStuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage International, 1989.Originally performed as Huis Clos in 1944.

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–––. The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness.Translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. NewYork: The Noonday Press, 1957. Originally published as “LaTranscendance de L’Ego: Esquisse d’une descriptionephénoménologique” (Paris: Recherches Philosophiques, VI, 1936-37).

Solomon, Robert C. “No Way Out: Sartre’s No Exit and ‘Being-for-Others.’” In Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection inCamus and Sartre, 177-195. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.

Young, Iris Marion. “Throwing Like a Girl.” In The Thinking Muse:Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, edited by JeffnerAllen and Iris Marion Young, 51-70. Indianapolis: IndianaUP, 1989.

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