(1908-1986) novelist, essayist
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris, France, on January 9. A leading feminist and existentialist (see existentialism), her works bear a clear resemblance to those of her lifelong friend, mentor, colleague, and lover Jean Paul sartre. Best known for her two-volume work The Second Sex (1949), a work in which de Beauvoir calls for the abolition of the myth of the “eternal feminine,” she is considered by many scholars working in the field of cultural studies to be the primary voice for early feminist studies. This work quickly became a classic among feminist theorists and scholars and is considered to be the founding text of gender studies.
De Beauvoir’s life history is well known, largely as a result of the publication of numerous autobiographical works such as Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), The Prime of Life (1960), Force of Circumstance (1963), and All Said and Done (1972). In these texts, she also documents the life of Sartre, Albert camus, and other influential philosophers, novelists, and intellectuals from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Educated first at private schools and then at the Sorbonne, where she received a degree in philosophy and first became acquainted with Sartre, de Beauvoir pursued a career as a teacher after receiving her degree. She left this occupation to become a full-time writer in 1943, the same year that she published her first novel, She Came to Stay (1943), which explores existential themes by examining the ways in which a relationship between two people is destroyed as a result of a guest, a young girl, who stays for an extended period of time in a young couple’s home. Although purportedly fictional, this work was based largely on de Beauvoir’s own relationship with Sartre and Olga Kosakiewicz, a former student, who came to stay with them in occupied Paris during the war. Her presence created many difficulties for Sartre and de Beauvoir within their own relationship, but it gave de Beauvoir much inspiration in her work.
Critical Analysis
Although intellectual and existential issues are a concern of all de Beauvoir’s works, she is best known for her application of existentialism to an understanding of the oppression of women. In The Second Sex she makes known her firm belief that an individual’s choices must be made on the basis of equality between the male and female, not on the basis of any essential differentiation between the sexes. The importance of choice—free will—is also a prevalent theme in many of de Beauvoir’s other works. Her Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) is devoted largely to the study of individual choices and the resultant anxieties associated with the ramifications of those choices, an underlying theme of existentialism.
In addition to feminist issues and free will, de Beauvoir was also interested in the theme of aging. She first covers this topic in A Very Easy Death (1964), in which she addresses the issue of her own mother’s death. She returns to this theme again in Old Age (1970), a work that details the indifference and lack of respect that the elderly receive from society.
Political activism is another theme in de Beau-voir’s writings, particularly those works written after World War II when she and Sartre both worked on a leftist journal. She published two novels, The Blood of Others (1945), exploring the life of members of the wartime resistance to the Nazi occupation, as well as The Mandarins (1954), which describes the struggles faced by middle-class intellectuals as they attempt to enter into the sphere of political activism. Her political views tended increasingly toward the left, and by the 1950s, she was defending communism and criticizing U.S. and Western European capitalism regularly in her works. This attitude becomes even clearer after de Beauvoir visited the United States and, on returning to France, published her observations. Her America Day by Day (1948) is a critique of the social problems caused by capitalism in the United States. While there, she also fell in love with fellow writer Nelson Algren, complicating her existing love affair with Sartre. Elements of The Mandarins reflect this new development in her life.
De Beauvoir’s final years were marked by Sartre’s death and her attempts to write about the nature of their relationship, the end result of which she eventually published in Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (1981). It was her desire to remain as honest and true as possible in her examination of their life together. To the critics and to members of Sartre’s family, however, it seemed as if she was attacking the late philosopher.
De Beauvoir passed away on April 14. After her death, several additional works were published, including Letters to Sartre (1990), Journal of a Resistance Fighter (1990), and, in 1997, her passionate Letters to Algren. Most important, The Second Sex is still considered a primary text for feminist studies.
Other Works by Simone de Beauvoir
All Men Are Mortal. Translated by Euan Cameron. London: Virago, 1995.
When Things of the Spirit Come First: Five Early Tales. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Works about Simone de Beauvoir
Bauer, Nancy. Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy and Feminism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Pilardi, Jo-Ann. Simone de Beauvoir Writing the Self: Philosophy Becomes Autobiography. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999.
Scholz, Sally. On de Beauvoir. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2000.
Simons, Margaret A. Beauvoir and “The Second Sex”: Feminism, Race and the Origins of Existentialism. Boston: Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1999.
