Simone de Beauvoir. The second floor (№ 451929)

Enslaved by her husband, children, family, home, she [a woman] experiences a heady sense of freedom, finding herself alone, with herself on a hillside, surrounded by nature; here she is not a wife, not a mother, not a housewife; she is human; she contemplates peace and tranquility and understands that she is a being endowed with consciousness and unlimited freedom. Before the secret water, before the peaks directed to the sky, male superiority fades; when she crosses heather-covered glades, plunges rivers into river water, she lives for herself, not for someone else. A woman who has managed to maintain independence in spite of bondage, and in Nature itself will passionately love her own freedom.