Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir (French pronunciation: [simɔn də boˈvwaʁ]; January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986), was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues.
She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She is also noted for her lifelong polyamorous relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.
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Early yearsSimone de Beauvoir was born in Paris, the eldest daughter of Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a legal secretary who once aspired to be an actor,and Françoise (née) Brasseur, a banker’s daughter and devout Catholic, from a well-off background. Her younger sister, Hélène, was born two years later. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I, and Françoise insisted that the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school. Beauvoir herself was deeply religious as a child—at one point intending to become a nun—until a crisis of faith at age 14. She remained an atheist for the rest of her life.
Beauvoir was intellectually precocious from a young age, fueled by her father’s encouragement: he reportedly would boast, “Simone thinks like a man!”
After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie. She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, writing her thesis on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg. 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 which serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for the agrégation that she met École Normale students Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or beaver). 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.
After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie. She then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, writing her thesis on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg. 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 which serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for the agrégation that she met École Normale students Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or beaver). 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.
Sartre was dazzlingly intelligent and was just under 5 feet (1.5 m) tall.
He allowed Beauvoir to talk about herself.
During October 1929, the two became a couple and Sartre asked her to marry him.
One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".
Near the end of her life, Beauvoir said, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry." So they became an imaginary married couple.
Beauvoir chose to never marry and did not set up a joint household with Sartre. She never had children.This gave her time to earn an advanced academic degree, to join political causes and to travel, write, teach, and to have (male and female - the latter often shared) lovers.
He allowed Beauvoir to talk about herself.
During October 1929, the two became a couple and Sartre asked her to marry him.
One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".
Near the end of her life, Beauvoir said, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry." So they became an imaginary married couple.
Beauvoir chose to never marry and did not set up a joint household with Sartre. She never had children.This gave her time to earn an advanced academic degree, to join political causes and to travel, write, teach, and to have (male and female - the latter often shared) lovers.
She started her teaching career at a secondary school in Marseilles in 1931 and moved to the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen
A number of de Beauvoir's young female lovers were underage, and the nature of some of these relationships, some of which she instigated while working as a school teacher, has lead to a biographical controversy and debate over whether de Beauvoir had inclinations towards paedophilia.
A former student, Bianca Lamblin, originally Bianca Bienenfeld, later wrote critically about her seduction by her teacher, Simone de Beauvoir, when she was a 17 year old lycee student in her book, Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée. In 1941, de Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching job, due to an accusation that she had, in 1939, seduced her 17 year old lycee pupil Nathalie Sorokine. Beauvoir's rendez-vous were structured around philosophy lessons. Exasperated at having to discuss Kant before climbing into Beauvoir's bed, the student Nathalie Sorokine called Beauvoir "a clock in a refrigerator." When Sorokine's mother complained to the school, Beauvoir was fired, effectively ending her teaching career. De Beauvoir would, along with other French intellectuals, later petition for an abolition of all age of consent laws in France.
When Beauvoir was asked point blank in an interview if she were a lesbian, she angrily denied it. It should be noted, however, that Beauvoir tended to define things narrowly (she also claimed she was not a philosopher, again according to a strict definition). For Beauvoir, a lesbian is a woman who refuses to have anything (sexual) to do with males.
Further, Beauvoir was a major participant in the public erasure of her lesbian identity. A comparison of the unpublished diaries with published works shows a very different representation of the relationship with Zaza in Beauvoir's autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958) or of Beauvoir's lover Olga as the fictional Xavière in her novel She Came to Stay (1943). It has only recently been recognized that Beauvoir was the model for the lesbian Inès in Sartre's No Exit (1944).
Beauvoir's most explicit writing on lesbianism is found in a single chapter in volume II of The Second Sex, "The Lesbian." Claiming that all women are "naturally homosexual" (she doesn't explain what she means by this, but it seems to have something to do with a predilection for soft skin), Beauvoir distinguishes the lesbian from the heterosexual by her exclusive "refusal of the male and her taste for feminine flesh."
At first reading the chapter seems confused, contradictory, and filled with outrageous statements. It has even been seen as something against men . But not only has it always been considered the first serious philosophical treatment of lesbianism, we can see in retrospect the large extent to which the chapter anticipates current issues of lesbian identity and the performance of gender.
A former student, Bianca Lamblin, originally Bianca Bienenfeld, later wrote critically about her seduction by her teacher, Simone de Beauvoir, when she was a 17 year old lycee student in her book, Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée. In 1941, de Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching job, due to an accusation that she had, in 1939, seduced her 17 year old lycee pupil Nathalie Sorokine. Beauvoir's rendez-vous were structured around philosophy lessons. Exasperated at having to discuss Kant before climbing into Beauvoir's bed, the student Nathalie Sorokine called Beauvoir "a clock in a refrigerator." When Sorokine's mother complained to the school, Beauvoir was fired, effectively ending her teaching career. De Beauvoir would, along with other French intellectuals, later petition for an abolition of all age of consent laws in France.
When Beauvoir was asked point blank in an interview if she were a lesbian, she angrily denied it. It should be noted, however, that Beauvoir tended to define things narrowly (she also claimed she was not a philosopher, again according to a strict definition). For Beauvoir, a lesbian is a woman who refuses to have anything (sexual) to do with males.
Further, Beauvoir was a major participant in the public erasure of her lesbian identity. A comparison of the unpublished diaries with published works shows a very different representation of the relationship with Zaza in Beauvoir's autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958) or of Beauvoir's lover Olga as the fictional Xavière in her novel She Came to Stay (1943). It has only recently been recognized that Beauvoir was the model for the lesbian Inès in Sartre's No Exit (1944).
Beauvoir's most explicit writing on lesbianism is found in a single chapter in volume II of The Second Sex, "The Lesbian." Claiming that all women are "naturally homosexual" (she doesn't explain what she means by this, but it seems to have something to do with a predilection for soft skin), Beauvoir distinguishes the lesbian from the heterosexual by her exclusive "refusal of the male and her taste for feminine flesh."
At first reading the chapter seems confused, contradictory, and filled with outrageous statements. It has even been seen as something against men . But not only has it always been considered the first serious philosophical treatment of lesbianism, we can see in retrospect the large extent to which the chapter anticipates current issues of lesbian identity and the performance of gender.
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