Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Memoirs of A Dutiful Daughter is an autobiographical work in which Simone de Beauvoir details her formative years, focusing in particular on her awakening to herself as an individual in the context of conservative repression. The text starts, as autobiographies traditionally do, with an account of the author’s birth, which is very idealistic, complete with flowers and smiling onlookers. Born into an affluent Parisian family, the young de Beauvoir is well loved and even spoiled, but she is not altogether happy. From early on she has a sense of her own capabilities and begins to recognize the ways in which her society is designed to keep her from reaching her potential. de Beauvoir has Catholic virtues instilled in her by her mother and is made to attend Cours Desir, one of the leading Catholic girl’s schools in Paris, where she meets Zaza, who will act as her close friend and her foil during the course of her childhood and adolescence. 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". [35] However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz. [7] 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. [36] [37] However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness. a b "Simone de Beauvoir". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2023.

Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies. [83] 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. [84] Les Inséparables [ edit ] Zaza, now a young woman like Simone, falls in love with the Ecole Normale student Jean Pradelle. However, Zaza’s mother forbids the marriage, saying her daughter must enter an arranged marriage instead. Soon after, Zaza falls ill and dies. De Beauvoir draws a parallel between her life and her friend’s all-too-short one, Zaza’s obedience to her mother followed by her untimely death. The Age(s) of Consent: Gay Activism and the Sexuality of Minors in France and Quebec (1970-1980)" . Retrieved 29 July 2023.Riding, Alan (14 April 1996). "The Odd Couple". New York Times . Retrieved 9 November 2021. Beauvoir duly seduced her and, the following year, introduced her to Sartre, then 33, who also took her to bed. By 1939, now studying under Sartre at the Sorbonne, Bianca was convinced that she was the key figure in an idealized love triangle. 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.

I felt also that she was engaging with Freud, perhaps not surprising given his intellectual influence during the period of her adult life. She is careful to point out that she was happy being a girl and saw nothing superior about boys (although physically her upbringing was constrained, no swimming, no gymnastics, to the point that when she begins dancing lessons she feels clumsy and awkward, as she is also flushed with certain physical reactions to dancing in couples she gives up dancing lessons fear of or disquiet at the intensity of ones own physical or emotional reactions is also something of a theme, not just for Simone either by more broadly within her milieux, this was a culture which aimed to set people against themselves, and which sadly to some extent was successful ) and that she wasn't envious of them and indeed as a student rather liked male company in different ways. At the same time there was a psychological awareness, particularly here in her discussion of her father, of how his self regard meant he cold never fully share in de Beauvoir's academic success and likely career as a Lycée teacher, as the necessity of her having to earn a living and get a job with a secured pension was due to his failure to be a real man and provide a fat dowry for his daughter so she could be married off. A certain tension in their relationship developed as she passes exams and collects diplomas. La piccola suicida non aveva nemmeno peccato per disobbedienza; s'era soltanto esposta senza precauzione a forze oscure che avevano devastata la sua anima; perché Dio non l'aveva soccorsa? E come potevano, delle parole accozzate insieme dagli uomini, distruggere le prove soprannaturali?I felt a certain kinship with Beauvoir as I was reading this: her discovery of the complexity of the adult world and refusal to be treated as a child who did not belong to it, her struggle with the loss of faith and her precocious intellectual interests were things I related to deeply. I loved reading her thoughts about the effect "Little Women" had on her, not only because I also love Jo March, but because she thought Jo's relationship with Professor Bhaer to be more desirable than a more romantic alternative, because they have a greater intellectual connection. I simply couldn't agree more. We will remember his friendship with his sister Poupette and Zaza, his childhood friend, his love for his cousin Jacques, his admiration for Herbaud, and finally, Sartre, who will prove to be the one who will remain in his life forever. de Beauvoir, "America Day by Day", Carol Cosman (Translator) and Douglas Brinkley (Foreword), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 9780520210677.