Simone de Beauvoir

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Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en;<ref>Template:Cite LPD</ref><ref>Template:Cite EPD</ref> {{#invoke:IPA|main}}; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy",<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She was also known for her novels, the most famous of which were She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954).

Her most enduring contribution to literature are her memoirs, notably the first volume, Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> (1958).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She received the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature. She was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961, 1969 and 1973.<ref>Nomination archive – Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie B de Beauvoir nobelprize.org</ref> However, Beauvoir generated controversy when she briefly lost her teaching job after being accused of sexually abusing some of her students.

Personal lifeEdit

Early yearsEdit

Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> into a bourgeois Parisian family in the 6th arrondissement.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a lawyer who once aspired to be an actor,<ref name = "IEP Biography">Mussett, Shannon. Simone de Beauvoir Biography on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 11 April 2010.</ref> and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic. Simone had a sister, Hélène, who was born two years later, on 6 June 1910. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school.

Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!"<ref>Bair, p. 60</ref> Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on her dowry, and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself.<ref name="oxfordreference.com">Template:Cite book</ref>

She first worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss, when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure in preparation for the agrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination that serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for it that she met École Normale students Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or "Beaver").<ref name = "IEP Biography" /> The jury for the agrégation narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam.<ref>Menand, Louis. "Stand By Your Man". The New Yorker, 26 September 2005. Retrieved 11 May 2010.</ref> Additionally, Beauvoir finished an exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" second to Simone Weil. Her success as the eighth woman to pass the agrégation solidified her economic independence and furthered her feminist ideology.<ref name=":0" />

Writing of her youth in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, she said: "...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual."<ref>Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Book One</ref>

EducationEdit

Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years at Template:Interlanguage link multi.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy at the age of seventeen in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the Template:Interlanguage link multi. She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote her Diplôme d'études supérieures spécialisées (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg in 1929 (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]).<ref>Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, Penn State Press, 1 November 2010, p. 3.</ref>

Religious upbringingEdit

Beauvoir was raised in a Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir began to question her faith, consequently abandoning religion in her early teens and remaining an atheist for the rest of her life.<ref name="auto">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Thurman">Thurman, Judith. Introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Excerpt published in The New York Times 27 May 2010. Retrieved 11 April 2010.</ref> To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Middle yearsEdit

File:Sartre and de Beauvoir at Balzac Memorial.jpg

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Balzac Memorial

From 1929 through 1943, Beauvoir taught at the lycée level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the Template:Interlanguage link multi (Marseille), the Template:Interlanguage link multi, and the Template:Interlanguage link multi (1936–39).<ref>Kelly Oliver (ed.), French Feminism Reader, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p. 1; Bulletin 2006 de l'Association amicale des anciens et anciennes élèves du lycée Molière, 2006, p. 22.</ref>

During the trial of Robert Brasillach Beauvoir was among a small number of prominent intellectuals advocating for his execution for 'intellectual crimes'. She defended this decision in her 1946 essay "An Eye for an Eye".<ref>David Newcastle, The Rise and Fall of Pierre Drieu la Rochlle, Gilles, Tikhanov Library, 2024, preface</ref><ref>“An Eye for an Eye”: The Question of Revenge Sonia Kirks</ref>

Jean-Paul SartreEdit

Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he intended to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so.<ref name="auto" /> She later changed her mind, and in October 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became a couple for the next 51 years, until his death in 1980.<ref>Seymour-Jones 2008, back cover.</ref> After they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis. One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".<ref>Bair, p. 155-7</ref> Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in The Second Sex and elsewhere bore little resemblance to the marriage standards of the day.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

I think marriage is a very alienating institution, for men as well as for women. I think it's a very dangerous institution—dangerous for men, who find themselves trapped, saddled with a wife and children to support; dangerous for women, who aren't financially independent and end up by depending on men who can throw them out when they are 40; and very dangerous for children, because their parents vent all their frustrations and mutual hatred on them. The very words 'conjugal rights' are dreadful. Any institution which solders one person to another, obliging people to sleep together who no longer want to is a bad one.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers.<ref name="Schneir">Template:Cite book</ref> Unfortunately, Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar who was lecturing with her<ref>Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, p. 363.</ref> chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life."<ref>Thurman, Judith. Introduction to The Second Sex, 2009.</ref>

Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" /> The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.<ref>Ursula Tidd, Simone de Beauvoir, Psychology Press, p. 19.</ref><ref>Nancy Bauer, Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy, and Feminism, Columbia University Press, 2012, p. 86.</ref> However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.

Allegations of sexual abuseEdit

Beauvoir was bisexual, and her relationships with young women were controversial.<ref name="Lise1">Template:Cite book</ref> French author Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (Memoirs of a deranged girl, published in English under the title A Disgraceful Affair) that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s.<ref>Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (1994, LGF – Livre de Poche; Template:ISBN/2006, Balland; Template:ISBN).</ref> Sartre and Beauvoir both groomed and sexually abused Lamblin.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Bianca wrote her Mémoires in response to the posthumous 1990 publication of Jean-Paul Sartre's Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres: 1926-1963 (Letters to Castor and other friends), in which she noted that she was referred to by the pseudonym Louise Védrine.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended again from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in 1939.<ref>Tête-à-tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Hazel Rowley, HarperCollins, 2005, pp. 130–135, Template:ISBN; Template:ISBN.</ref> Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 13 until 1945, when it became 15)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Beauvoir's licence to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.<ref>Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, Paul Johnson, Harper Perennial, 1988, pp. 238–38, Template:ISBN.</ref>

Beauvoir described in La Force de l'âge (The Prime of Life) a relationship of simple friendship with Nathalie Sorokine<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> (in the book referred to as "Lise Oblanoff").<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Sorokine, along with Bianca Lamblin and Olga Kosakiewicz, later stated that their relationships with Beauvoir damaged them psychologically.<ref name="Lise1" />

Later yearsEdit

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Antonio Núñez Jiménez, Beauvoir, Sartre and Che Guevara in Cuba, 1960.

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Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Beauvoir, Sartre and Claude Lanzmann in Cairo, 1967.

Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in the United States<ref>de Beauvoir, "America Day by Day", Carol Cosman (Translator) and Douglas Brinkley (Foreword), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Template:ISBN.</ref> and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Her 1955 travels in China were the basis of her 1957 travelogue The Long March, in which she praised the efforts of the Chinese communists to emancipate women.<ref name="Crean">Template:Cite book</ref>

She published several volumes of short stories, including The Woman Destroyed, which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging. She lived with Claude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> but perhaps her most famous lover was American author Nelson Algren. Beauvoir met Algren in Chicago in 1947, while she was on a four-month "exploration" trip of the United States using various means of transport: automobile, train, and Greyhound. She kept a detailed diary of the trip, which was published in France in 1948 with the title America Day by Day.<ref>Algren was her guide through the Chicago underworld, among drug addicts and petty thieves. Template:Cite book</ref> She wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Algren won the National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's most prestigious literary prize for The Mandarins, in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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Algren in 1956

When Beauvoir visited Algren in Chicago, Art Shay took well-known nude and portrait photos of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote a play based on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship. The play was stage read in 1999 in Chicago.

Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Force of Circumstance (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: After the War and Hard Times), and All Said and Done.<ref name="iep.utm.edu" /> In 1964 Beauvoir published a novella-length autobiography, A Very Easy Death, covering the time she spent visiting her aging mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Her 1970 long essay La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age) is a rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about the age of 60.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement. She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Signatories were diverseTemplate:Clarify as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, and Beauvoir's sister Hélène. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France.

When asked in a 1975 interview with Betty Friedan if she would support a minimum wage for women who do housework, Beauvoir answered: "No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction", further stating that motherhood "should be a choice, and not a result of conditioning”.<ref>"Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma". Interview with Betty Friedan, The Saturday Review (pp. 12-21), June 14, 1975.</ref><ref>Betty Friedan, 1998, “It changed my life: Writings on the woman’s movement”, p. 397-398. ISBN 9780674468856</ref>

In about 1976, Beauvoir and Sylvie Le Bon made a trip to New York City in the United States to visit Kate Millett on her farm.<ref>Appignanesi 2005, p. 160.</ref>Template:Clarify

In 1977, Beauvoir signed a petition along with other French intellectuals that supported the freeing of three arrested paedophiles.<ref name="Krizman">"Sexual Morality and the Law", Chapter 16 of Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Edited by Lawrence D. Krizman. New York/London: 1990, Routledge, Template:ISBN, p. 275.</ref><ref name="Henley">Template:Cite news</ref> The petition explicitly addresses the 'Affaire de Versailles', where three adult men, Dejager (age 45), Gallien (age 43), and Burckhardt (age 39) had sexual relations with minors of both sexes aged 12–13.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

When Things of the Spirit Come First, a set of short stories Beauvoir had written decades previously but had not considered worth publishing, was released in 1980.<ref name="iep.utm.edu" />

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Beauvoir's and Sartre's grave at the Cimetière du Montparnasse.

In 1981 she wrote La Cérémonie des adieux (A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of Adieux, Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication.Template:Cn|

She contributed the piece "Feminism - Alive, Well, and in Constant Danger" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.<ref name="global">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir Sylvie Le Bon, unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.

Sylvie Le Bon-de BeauvoirEdit

Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir and Simone de Beauvoir met in the 1960s, when Beauvoir was in her fifties and Sylvie was a teenager. In 1980, Beauvoir, 72, legally adopted Sylvie, who was in her late thirties, by which point they had already been in an intimate relationship for decades. Although Beauvoir rejected the institution of marriage her entire life, this adoption was like a marriage for her. Some scholars argue that this adoption was not to secure a literary heir for Beauvoir, but as a form of resistance to the bio-heteronormative family unit.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

DeathEdit

Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing.<ref name="Bergoffen">Template:Cite journal</ref>

The Second SexEdit

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The Second Sex

The Second Sex, first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient").<ref>Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 267.</ref> With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential" Other.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined as inferior to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", while Thomas Aquinas referred to women as "imperfect men" and the "incidental" being.<ref name="marxists.org">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She quotes "In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Chapters of The Second Sex were originally published in Les Temps modernes,<ref>Appignanesi 2005, p. 82</ref> in June 1949. The second volume came a few months after the first in France.<ref>Appignanesi 2005, p. 89</ref> It was published soon after in America due to the quick translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with the French language, and a minimal understanding of philosophy (he was a professor of biology at Smith College), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message.<ref name="Moi, Toril 2002">Moi, Toril "While We Wait: The English Translation of 'The Second Sex'" in Signs 27(4) (Summer, 2002), pp. 1005–35.</ref> For years, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars.<ref name="Moi, Toril 2002" />

Only in 2009 was there a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in 2010, reinstating a third of the original work.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of The Second Sex,<ref>Beauvoir, Simone de. "Woman: Myth and Reality".
** in Jacobus, Lee A. (ed.). A World of Ideas. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2006. 780–95.
** in Prince, Althea, and Susan Silva Wayne. Feminisms and Womanisms: A Women's Studies Reader. Women's Press, Toronto 2004 p. 59–65.</ref> Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by the application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.Template:Citation needed

Despite her contributions to the feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and her beliefs in women's economic independence and equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to call herself a feminist.<ref name="oxfordreference.com" /> However, after observing the resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beauvoir stated she no longer believed a socialist revolution to be enough to bring about women's liberation. She publicly declared herself a feminist in 1972 in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 2018, the manuscript pages of Le Deuxième Sexe were published.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Other notable worksEdit

She Came to StayEdit

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Beauvoir published her first novel She Came to Stay in 1943.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during the early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and married Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation – the relationship between the self and the other.Template:Citation needed

In the novel, set just before the outbreak of World War II, Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.Template:Citation needed

She Came to Stay was followed by many others, including The Blood of Others, which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in the Resistance in World War II.<ref name="iep.utm.edu">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Existentialist ethicsEdit

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Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre in Beijing, 1955

In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); it is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as Being and Nothingness. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" />

Les Temps ModernesEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps Modernes, a political journal that Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death. However, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to leave Les Temps modernes. Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's later years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to forceTemplate:Clarify to offer his opinions.Template:Citation needed

The MandarinsEdit

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Dunes cottage where Algren and Beauvoir summered in Miller Beach, Indiana

Published in 1954, The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It is a roman à clef set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, to whom the book is dedicated.<ref name="lrb_rogin">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies.<ref name="lrb_rogin" /> Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Les InséparablesEdit

Beauvoir's early novel Les Inséparables, long suppressed, was published in French in 2020 and two different English translations in 2021, by Sandra Smith in the US and Lauren Elkin in the UK.<ref>Reviewed 23 Aug. 2021 by Merve Emre in The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/30/simone-de-beauvoirs-lost-novel-of-early-love</ref> Written in 1954, the book describes her first love, a classmate named Elisabeth Lacoin ("Zaza") who died before age 22 of viral encephalitis, and had as a teenager a "passionate and tragic" relationship with Beauvoir. According to Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir, Beauvoir never forgave Madame Lacoin for what happened, believing that Elisabeth-Zaza was murdered by the oppressive socio-cultural environment in which she had been raised.<ref>Template:Cite book Introduction.</ref> Disapproved by Sartre, the novel was deemed "too intimate" to be published during Beauvoir's lifetime.

LegacyEdit

Beauvoir's The Second Sex is considered a foundational work in the history of feminism. Beauvoir had denied being feminist multiple times but ultimately admitted that she was one after The Second Sex became crucial in the world of feminism.<ref name="Bergoffen"/> The work has had a profound influence, opening the way for second-wave feminism in the United States, Canada, Australia, and around the world.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" /> Although Beauvoir has been quoted as saying "There is a certain unreasonable demand that I find a little stupid because it would enclose me, immobilize me completely in a sort of feminist concrete block," her works on feminism have paved the way for all future feminists.<ref name="Simone de Beauvoir: An Interview">Template:Cite journal</ref> The founders of the second-wave read The Second Sex in translation, including Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Ann Oakley and Germaine Greer. All acknowledged their profound debt to Beauvoir, including visiting her in France, consulting with her at crucial moments, and dedicating works to her.<ref name="Fallaize-1998" /> Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often regarded as the opening salvo of second-wave feminism in the United States, later said that reading The Second Sex in the early 1950s<ref name="Fallaize-1998">Template:Cite book</ref> "led me to whatever original analysis of women's existence I have been able to contribute to the Women's movement and its unique politics. I looked to Simone de Beauvoir for a philosophical and intellectual authority."<ref name="Friedan-1975">Template:Cite magazine as quoted in Template:Sfnlink.</ref>

At one point in the early 1970s, Beauvoir also aligned herself with the French League for Women's Rights as a means to campaign and fight against sexism in French society.<ref name="Simone de Beauvoir: An Interview"/> Beauvoir's influence goes beyond just her impact on second-wave founders, and extends to numerous aspects of feminism, including literary criticism, history, philosophy, theology, criticism of scientific discourse, and psychotherapy.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" /> When Beauvoir first became involved with the feminism movement, one of her objectives was legalizing abortion.<ref name="Simone de Beauvoir: An Interview"/> Donna Haraway wrote that, "despite important differences, all the modern feminist meanings of gender have roots in Simone de Beauvoir's claim that 'one is not born a woman [one becomes one].'"<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" /> This "most famous feminist sentence ever written"<ref name="Mann-2017">Template:Cite book</ref> is echoed in the title of Monique Wittig's 1981 essay One Is Not Born a Woman.<ref name="Fallaize-1998" />Template:Sfn<ref name="McCann-Kim-2003">Template:Cite book</ref> Judith Butler took the concept a step further, arguing that Beauvoir's choice of the verb to become suggests that gender is a process, constantly being renewed in an ongoing interaction between the surrounding culture and individual choice.<ref name="Fallaize-1998" /><ref name="Bell-1999">Template:Cite book</ref>

In Paris, Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir is a square where Beauvoir's legacy lives on. It is one of the few squares in Paris to be officially named after a couple. The pair lived close to the square at 42 rue Bonaparte.

PrizesEdit

Prix Goncourt, 1954
Jerusalem Prize, 1975
Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 1978

WorksEdit

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NovelsEdit

L'Invitée ("She Came to Stay", 1943)
Le Sang des autres ("The Blood of Others", 1945)
Tous les hommes sont mortels ("All Men Are Mortal", 1946)
Les Mandarins ("The Mandarins", 1954)
Les Belles Images ("Beautiful Images", 1966)
Malentendu à Moscou ("Misunderstanding in Moscow", 2013; posthumously published)
Les Inséparables ("Inseperables", 2020; posthumously published)

Short storiesEdit

L'Amérique au jour le jour ("America Day by Day", 1948)
La Femme rompue ("The Woman Destroyed", 1967)
Quand prime le spirituel ("When Things of the Spirit Come First", 1979)

EssaysEdit

Pyrrhus et Cinéas ("Pyrrhus and Cineas", 1944)
Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté ("The Ethics of Ambiguity", 1947)
Le Deuxième Sexe ("The Second Sex", 1949)
Privilèges ("Privileges", 1955)
- Faut-il brûler Sade? ("Must We Burn Sade?")
- La Pensée de droite, aujourd'hui ("Right-Wing Thought Today")
- Merleau-Ponty et le pseudo-sartrisme ("Merleau-Ponty and Pseudo-Sartrism")
La Longue Marche: essai sur la Chine ("The Long March: An Essay on China", 1957)
La Vieillesse ("The Coming of Age", 1970)

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TheatreEdit

Les Bouches inutiles ("Who Shall Die?", 1945)

AutobiographiesEdit

Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée ("Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter", 1958)
La Force de l'âge ("The Prime of Life", 1960)
La Force des choses ("Force of Circumstance", 1963)
Une mort très douce ("A Very Easy Death", 1964)
Tout compte fait ("All Said and Done", 1972)
La Cérémonie des adieux ("Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre", 1981)

Posthumous publicationsEdit

Lettres à Sartre, tome I: 1930–1939 (1990)
Lettres à Sartre, tome II: 1940–1963 (1990)
Journal de guerre, septembre 1939–janvier 1941 ("Wartime Diary", 1990)
Lettres à Nelson Algren ("A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren", 1997)
Correspondance croisée avec Jacques-Laurent Bost (2004)
Philosophical Writings (2004)
Diary of a Philosophy Student, 1926–27 (2006)
Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 (2008)

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ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
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Victoria Brittain et al. discuss Simone de Beauvoir's lasting influence, ICA 1989 Template:Webarchive
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"Simone de Beauvoir", Great Lives, BBC Radio 4, 22 April 2011
Kate Kirkpatrick. (6 November 2017) "What is authentic love? A View from Simone de Beauvoir" . IAI News.

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Simone de Beauvoir

Contents

Personal lifeEdit

Early yearsEdit

EducationEdit

Religious upbringingEdit

Middle yearsEdit

Jean-Paul SartreEdit

Allegations of sexual abuseEdit

Later yearsEdit

Sylvie Le Bon-de BeauvoirEdit

DeathEdit

The Second SexEdit

Other notable worksEdit

She Came to StayEdit

Existentialist ethicsEdit

Les Temps ModernesEdit

The MandarinsEdit

Les InséparablesEdit

LegacyEdit

PrizesEdit

WorksEdit

NovelsEdit

Short storiesEdit

EssaysEdit

TheatreEdit

AutobiographiesEdit

Posthumous publicationsEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

Further readingEdit

Biographies/Other worksEdit

Selected translationsEdit

External linksEdit