Simone de Beauvoir
(born January 9, 1908,
Paris
, France?died April 14, 1986, Paris) was a French writer and
feminist
, a member of the
intellectual
fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of
existentialism
. She is known primarily for her
treatise
Le Deuxieme Sexe,
2 vol. (1949;
The Second Sex
), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the
myth
of the “eternal feminine.” It became a classic of feminist
literature
.
Schooled in private institutions, Beauvoir attended the Sorbonne, where in 1929 she passed her
agregation
in
philosophy
and met
Jean-Paul Sartre
, beginning a lifelong association with him. She taught at a number of schools (1931?43) before turning to
writing
for her livelihood. In 1945 she and Sartre founded and began editing
Le Temps modernes,
a monthly review.
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Her novels expound the major
existential
themes, demonstrating her
conception
of the writer’s commitment to the times.
L’Invitee
(1943;
She Came To Stay
) describes the subtle destruction of a couple’s relationship brought about by a young girl’s prolonged stay in their home; it also treats the difficult problem of the relationship of a
conscience
to “the other,” each individual conscience being fundamentally a predator to another. Of her other works of fiction, perhaps the best known is
Les Mandarins
(1954;
The Mandarins
), for which she won the
Prix Goncourt
. It is a chronicle of the attempts of post-World War II
intellectuals
to leave their “mandarin” (educated elite) status and engage in political activism.
She also wrote four books of philosophy, including
Pour une Morale de
l’ambiguite
(1947;
The Ethics of Ambiguity
); travel books on China (
La Longue Marche: essai sur la Chine
[1957];
The Long March
) and the
United States
(
L’Amerique au jour de jour
[1948];
America Day by Day
); and a number of essays, some of them book-length, the best known of which is
The Second Sex.
In 2009 a new English-language translation of
The Second Sex
was published, making the entire original text available to English-speaking readers for the first time; the earlier translation (1953) had been severely edited.
Several volumes of Beauvoir’s work are devoted to
autobiography
. These include
Memoires d’une jeune fille rangee
(1958;
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
),
La Force de l’age
(1960;
The Prime of Life
),
La Force des choses
(1963;
Force of Circumstance
), and
Tout compte fait
(1972;
All Said and Done
). This body of work, beyond its personal interest,
constitutes
a clear and telling portrait of French intellectual life from the 1930s to the 1970s.
In addition to treating feminist issues, Beauvoir was concerned with the issue of aging, which she addressed in
Une Mort tres douce
(1964;
A Very Easy Death
), on her mother’s death in a hospital, and in
La Vieillesse
(1970;
Old Age
), a bitter reflection on society’s indifference to the elderly. In 1981 she wrote
La Ceremonie des adieux
(
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
), a painful account of Sartre’s last years.
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Simone de Beauvoir revealed herself as a woman of
formidable
courage and
integrity
, whose life supported her thesis: the basic options of an individual must be made on the
premises
of an equal vocation for man and woman founded on a common structure of their being, independent of their sexuality.