in full Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir

French philosopher, novelist and essayist, concerned with safety for factory workers, abortion rights for women, rights of the elderly, and lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre.

De Beauvoir was born in Paris into a bourgeois family. Her father was a lawyer, whose fortunes declined after World War I, and mother was a devout Roman Catholic, who raised her daughters in a strict, traditional mode. De Beauvoir was educated in private institutions. She studied philosophy at Sorbonne, and met there Sartre in 1929, joining his circle. At the age of 21 she passsed the difficult final examination, agrégation.

From 1931 to 1943 she taught at several schools in Marseille, Rouen and Paris, and was professor at Sorbonne during the WW II (1941-43). During the Nazi occupation of France de Beauvoir apparently was not involved with the activities of the Resistance, and she continued to work without opposition from the Germans. In 1945 war she published Le Sang des autres, a novel reflecting on the question of political involvement and the French Resistance.

After the war de Beauvoir founded with Sartre the monthly review Les Temps modernes. She travelled widely from 1944 to 1947, visiting Portugal, Tunis, Switzerland, Italy, USA, and China.

De Beauvoir's first book, L'Invitée, was published in 1943. It was an fictionalized treatment of Sartre's affair with Olga Kosakievicz, one of the several works dealing with de Beauvoir's and Sartre's relationship. Her breakthrough work was semiautobiographical Les Mandarins, which appeared in 1954. The central characters, psychologist Anne Dubreuilh, and her husband Robert, were thinly veiled de Beauvoir and Sartre, and the third wheel, American Lewis Brogan, was novelist Nelson Algren. De Beauvoir had met Algren in 1947 in the United States where she was on a lecture tour. Algren wished to marry her but in the end she remained loyal to Sartre.

The book was addressed to the leftist intellectuals to abandon their elitical "mandarin" status, and to participate in the real world political struggle. Roman Catholic authorities banned the novel as de Beuvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex (1949). De Beauvoir stated in it that 'one is not born a woman; one becomes one'. Women are 'the other' the sex defined by men and patriarchy as not male, and consequently as less than fully human. Recent authors have questioned de Beauvoir's assumptions of the male as norm but the material on misogyny in myth and literature has been extremely influential.

In 1958 de Beauvoir published Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, the first of four volume memoirs. She describet her happy childhood, intellectual development and her relationship with Sartre. It was followed La Force de l'âge (1960), La Force des choses (1963), and Tout compte fait (1972).

Until 1970s de Beauvoir's engagement with feminism was largely intellectual but then she became involved with the Feminist movement and began to be a vocal champion of women's rights, particularly on issues such as abortion and sexual violence.

In her late works de Beauvoir depicted the problems of aging and society's indifference to the elderly. A Very Easy Death dealt with clinical precision her mother's illnes.

In 1981 appeared her memoirs of Sartre's last years, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre. After Sartre's death de Beauvoir's life was marked by sometimes bitter disputes with the philosopher's adopted daughter Arlette Elkaim. Her dependence on alcohol and amphetamines fastened her physical and mental collapse. De Beauvoir died in Paris, on April 14, 1986, and she was buried in the same grave as Sartre.

For further reading: Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography by D. Bair (1990); Simone de Beauvoir by J. Heath (1989); The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir by E. Fallaize (1988); Simone de Beauvoir by L. Appignanesi (1988); Simone de Beauvoir: An Annotated Biography by J. Bennett and G. Hochmann (1988); Simone de Beauvoir: A Life, a Love Story by C. Francis and F. Gontier (1987); Simone de Beauvoir by J. Okely (1986); Simone de Beauvoir, a Femnist Mandarin by M. Evans (1985); After the Second Sex by A. Schwartzer (1984); Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits of Commitment by A. Whitmarsh (1981)

Place to see: Café de flore, 172 boulevard Saint-Germain , 75006 - Haut of Sartre, de Beauvoir and the Existentialists.
 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• L'Invitée, 1943 - She Came to Stay
• Pyrrhus et Cinéas, 1944
• Le sang des autres, 1945 - The Blood of Others
• Les bouches inutiles, 1945 - Who Shall Die?
• Touls les hommes sont mortels, 1946 - All Men Are Mortal
• Pour une morale de l'ambiguité, 1947 - The Ethics of Ambiguity
• L'Amérique au jour de jour, 1948 - America Day by Day
• Le Deuxiéme Sexe, vol. 1-2, 1949 - The Second Sex
• Le Mandarins, 1954 - The Mandarins - Mandariinit - Prix Goncourt
• La Longue March, 1957 - The Long March
• Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, 1958 - Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
• La Forcede l'âge I-II, 1960 - The Prime of Life
• La Force des choses, 1963 - Force of Circumstance
• Une mort très douche, 1964 - A Very Easy Death
• Les belles images, 1966 - transl.
• La femme rompue, 1967 - The Woman Destroyed
• La Vieillesse, 1970 - Old Age
• Tout compte fait, 1972 - All Said and Done
• Quand prime le spirituel, 1979 - When Things of the Spirit Come First
• La Cérémonie des adieux, 1981 - Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
• Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, 1983
• Lettres à Sartre, 1990 - Letters to Sartre
• Journal de guerre, 1990

Compiled by Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland (© 1997) and René Märtin (© 1998-2001).