Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir (
January 9,
1908 –
April 14,
1986) was a
French author and
philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her
1949 treatise
Le Deuxième Sexe (
The Second Sex), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary
feminism.
Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908 in
Paris to Georges Bertrand and Françoise (Brasseur) de Beauvoir. The elder of two daughters of a conventional family from the Parisian 'bourgeoisie', she depicts herself in the first volume of her autobiography (
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) as a girl with a strong commitment to the patriarchal values of her family, religion, and country. From the outset, she is subject to the opposing influences of her agnostic father and her devoutly Catholic mother. The two formative peer-relationships of her childhood and adolescence involve her sister Hélène (whom she calls Poupette) and her friend Zaza. She traces back to her relationship with Poupette, whom she sought to teach and influence from an early age, her taste for teaching, and it is the tragic life and death of Zaza that forms the subject matter for her first, unsuccessful, literary endeavours.
After passing the baccalauréat exams in mathematics and philosophy, she studied mathematics at the
Institut Catholique and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie, then philosophy at the
Sorbonne. While at the Sorbonne, she met
Jean-Paul Sartre in
1929, who was taking courses there while enrolled at the elite
École Normale Supérieure. It is a common misconception that de Beauvoir studied at the Ecole Normale. She was, however, well acquainted with the school and its curriculum, thanks to Sartre and others within their philosophic circle.
In 1929, de Beauvoir also became the youngest person ever to obtain the
agrégation in philosophy. Sartre was first that year, but she was a close second. Certain people hold that de Beauvoir was in fact first in philosophy: they simply placed
Sartre first due to the obvious aspect of being a man. While at the Sorbonne, she acquired her lifelong nickname,
Castor (the French word for "beaver")—a
pun derived from the resemblance of her surname to "beaver".
In
1943, de Beauvoir published
L'Invitée (
She Came to Stay, 1943), a fictionalized chronicle of her lesbian relationship with
Olga Kosakiewicz, one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where she taught during the early 30s. The novel also delves into the complex relationship between de Beauvoir and
Sartre, as well as how that relationship was affected by the
ménage à trois with Kosakiewicz.
At the end of World War II, de Beauvoir and Sartre edited
Les Temps Modernes, a political journal Sartre founded along with
Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. De Beauvoir used
Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and remained an editor until her death.
Although her book
Pour Une Morale de L'ambiguïté (
The Ethics of Ambiguity,
1947) has been little noticed, it is perhaps the most accessible point of entry into
French existentialism. It was one of the better works of Beauvoir. Sartre never wrote anything on ethics,
Camus did nothing, neither did
Merleau-Ponty,
Kierkegaard or any other existential philosopher. Its simplicity keeps it understandable, in contrast to the apparent difficulty that some experience when reading Sartre's highly analytical
Being and Nothingness. The ambiguity about which de Beauvoir writes clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existential works such as
Being and Nothingness.
De Beauvoir was uninhibitedly bisexual. However, she did not attain her first full orgasm until 1947, after meeting
Nelson Algren while on an American lecture series. In Chicago, Algren helped de Beauvoir achieve this elusive orgasm which in part inspired her to write
The Second Sex, which was originally published as a two-volume book in France. These works were very quickly published in America as
The Second Sex due to the quick translation of
Blanche Knopf (see Peter Watson's The Modern Mind, pages 421-423).
Thus in her own way, de Beauvoir anticipated the sexually-charged feminism of
Erica Jong and
Germaine Greer. Algren, no paragon of primness himself, was outraged by the frank way de Beauvoir later described her American sexual experiences in
Les Mandarins (dedicated to Algren and on whose character Lewis Brogan is based) and elsewhere, venting his outrage when reviewing American translations of her work. Much bearing on this episode in de Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death. On de Beauvoir's sexuality and the paper trail she left, see [
1].
The Second Sex
De Beauvoir's
The Second Sex, published in French in 1949, sets out a
feminist existentialism with a significant
Freudian aspect. As an existentialist, de Beauvoir accepts the precept that
existence precedes essence; hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis focuses on the concept of
The Other. It is the (social) construction of Woman as the quintessential Other that de Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression.
De Beauvoir argues that women have historically been considered deviant, abnormal. She submits that even
Mary Wollstonecraft considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. De Beauvoir says that this attitude has limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they are a deviation from the normal, and are outsiders attempting to emulate "normality". For feminism to move forward, this assumption must be set aside.
De Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, reducing male consciousness to immanence.
Her
1970 The Coming of Age is a very rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about age 60. In
1981 she wrote
La Cérémonie Des Adieux (
A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years. She is buried next to him at the
Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Since her death, her reputation has grown, not only because she is seen as the mother of post-
1968 feminism, especially in academia, but also because of a growing awareness of her as a major French thinker,
existentialist and otherwise. She is seen as having influenced Sartre's masterpiece,
Being and Nothingness, while also having written much on philosophy that is independent of Sartrean
existentialism.
Some of Simone de Beauvoir's other major works include,
Les Mandarins (
The Mandarins,
1954);
Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée (
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter,
1958).
She Came to Stay, (
1943)
Pyrrhus et Cinéas, (
1944)
The Blood of Others, (
1945)
Who Shall Die?, (
1945)
All Men are Mortal, (
1946)
The Ethics of Ambiguity, (
1947)
The Second Sex, (
1949)
America Day by Day, (
1954)
The Mandarins, (
1954)
Must We Burn Sade?, (
1955)
The Long March, (
1957)
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, (
1958)
The Prime of Life, (
1960)
A Very Easy Death, (
1964)
Les Belles Images, (
1966)
The Woman Destroyed, (
1967)
The Coming of Age, (
1970)
All Said and Done, (
1972)
When Things of the Spirit Come First, (
1979)
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, (
1981)
Letters to Sartre, (
1990)
A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren, (
1998)
Translations
Patrick O'Brian was de Beauvoir's principal English translator, until he attained commercial success as a
novelist.
Sources
*Bair, Deirdre, 1990.
Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. New York: Summit Books.
* The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Simone de Beauvoir by Shannon Mussett. Includes a bibliography of her work in English translation.
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Simone de Beauvoir by Debra Bergoffen. Extensive bibliography.
*
Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
*
A Finnish admirer.*
Stand By Your Man: The strange liaison of Sartre and Beauvoir, by Louis Menand.
The New Yorker.
*
The Second Sex: Significant Other.English Translation online
The Ethics of Ambiguity.
