Becoming a Woman: an analysis of the character Bella Baxter from Poor Things through the thought of Simone de Beauvoir

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between the character Bella Baxter, from Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Poor Things (2023), and Simone de Beauvoir’s ontology of the female body. The guiding research problem asks: in what ways does the female body interfere with the construction of women’s identity and autonomy? According to Beauvoir, the body does not represent a natural essence, but rather a field of historical and cultural construction, shaped by social values that reduce women to the condition of object and “Other,” in opposition to man, defined as Subject and Absolute. In this sense, Bella’s narrative dramatizes the tension between immanence, experienced in passivity and dependence, and the pursuit of transcendence, characterized by action, freedom, and the construction of individual projects. Throughout the storyline, Bella transitions from an initial state of submission, in which her existence is controlled by male figures, to a process of self-determination in which she claims her autonomy and the appropriation of her body. This trajectory reflects Beauvoir’s critique of patriarchal structures that associate women exclusively with the body and with immanence, while simultaneously highlighting the possibility of overcoming such constraints through the affirmation of transcendence.