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which commonly leads to a loss of social and personal identity, the variety of alienation unique to the experience of women. Her works of fiction focus on women who take responsibility for themselves by making life-altering decisions, and the many volumes of her own autobiography exhibit the application of similar principles in reflection on her own experiences. This review is devoted to the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. At the very beginning, we owe it to the author to cite the most famous sentence from the book, in the free translation of the language I am writing in: "women are not born, but made". Perhaps the greatest merit of The Second Sex lies precisely in the fact that so many people today have no difficulties understanding this sentence, despite the generally accepted rule that newly born babies are first differentiated by their sex. The Second Sex is a comprehensive, fundamental work. Simone de Beauvoir explains in the introduction with how much hesitation she undertook to write a book "about a woman". Yet, she did precisely that, and the book is still the only of its kind. The cited sentence has with time expanded into books that would fill several libraries. The work of Simone de Beauvoir is a canonical, classical work: fifty years is a long enough distance for such a qualification, but not long enough for so-called "undeniability", which is usually attributed to classical works. No matter to what extent the very idea of a canonical work is deeply alien to the world of female studies and feminist activism, The Second Sex has acquired precisely this status with them. The Second Sex can be read in the most varied languages of the most varied cultures. This is the real definition of classical works: not their eminence and perfection, but the fact that for some unfathomable reasons they function equally well both in the context in which they were created and far away from it. Our aim here is to explore these reasons. The Second Sex is undoubtedly the fruit of research of many years. However, if we wanted to explain the topical quality of the book with the reliable and objective nature of the scientist's outlook, we would have to suppress the precise view chosen and described by Simone de Beauvoir. This view is existentialist morality. Not so long ago, existentialist philosophy and existentialist morality were the subject of general interest: both disputed and accepted. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were known not to show any interest in theory. The personality of Simone de Beauvoir provoked quite disproportionate hostility for a long time, bigger than that evoked by the truly controversial Sartre. The "feminist icon" at a later date, Simone de Beauvoir was largely defined as Sartre's chaperon. Regardless of how passionately they claimed that their life decisions were not paradigmatic and that everybody was "condemned to freedom" and responsible for themselves, whatever they did was perceived as haughtiness by those constrained either through their own or other people' fault. The posthumously published letters of Simone de Beauvoir's to Nelson Algren, the American writer, are simple, romantic and full of general points. This provokes sneers, because in her letters to Sartre there are unflattering remarks on rejected lovers, and even her woman lover is seen as having monstrous nature in the eyes of commentators. Believing in the transparent and abhorring the "cesspool of inner life", Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir lost the protection of their privacy. Their radical theoretical and public activities and their constant readiness for change made their views less existentialist than Camus' Olympian generalisation and elevation of existentialist position. The Second Sex was translated into the Croatian language relatively late, thus confirming the fact that this book depends neither on a trend nor, indeed, on existentialism. However, existentialism is the inherent part of the book. The analysis of the first volume consists of a vehement denial of determinism: unchangeable articulation of the female as the other, the dependent and the relative. A part on "Doom" expounds on biological facts, followed by an account of the teachings of psychoanalysis, and then expostulations of views of historical materialism.