Simone de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908, in Paris, France. Later, after attending a Catholic college, she studied mathematics, literature, Latin, and philosophy. Thus, from 1929 to 1943, she was a professor of philosophy. Then she started her literary career with the publication of the novel the guest.
The writer, who died on April 14, 1986, was atheist, feminist, free love advocate and existentialist. His metaphysical novels are philosophical in character and realistically show the characters' everyday experience. However, her most famous work is theoretical and entitled the second sex.
Read too:Existentialism through the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre
Summary about Simone de Beauvoir
- The French writer was born in 1908 and died in 1986.
- In addition to being a novelist, she was a professor of philosophy.
- She was a feminist and advocate of free love, which she experienced with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
- His literary works have philosophical aspects associated with existentialism.
- His most famous theoretical work is the book the second sex.
- Her best-known novels are the guest and the mandarins.
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Biography of Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir born January 9, 1908, in Paris, in France. She was a member of a bourgeois family. At the age of three, she learned to read. Until the age of 17, she studied at Curso Désir, a private and Catholic educational establishment, but, already showing intellectual independence, the writer became an atheist at the age of 14.
With the bankruptcy of her maternal grandfather, the writer's family lost some of the financial power they had. Still, after acquiring a bachelor's degree in 1925, at her father's encouragement, Beauvoir continued to study.
She studied mathematics, literature, and Latin, but had a keen interest in philosophy, and it was at the University of Paris that she met the young philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). In 1929, the writer acquired the certificate of philosophy teacher. From there, she went on to teach in Paris, then in Marseille, while Sartre became a professor at the Lycée de Le Havre.
Afraid of losing contact with the girl, he asked her to marry him, but Beauvoir refused, as she was already against bourgeois marriage. She then went on to work as a teacher in Rouen. She returned permanently to Paris in 1936, where she worked as a teacher until 1943.
This year, debuted in literature with his novel the guest. In 1945, she founded, with Sartre (with whom she had an open love relationship) and other intellectuals, the magazine The Modern Times, existentialist character. After the war, the philosopher, avowedly communist, she made several trips around the world, recounted later in her memoirs.
When she published, in 1949, her theoretical work the second sex, an important feminist book, Simone de Beauvoir became known worldwide. The work generated positive and negative reactions and debates. The Vatican has included the book in its Index, a list of prohibited works. In 1954, the author received the famous Goncourt Prize for her novel the mandarins.
Two years later, she and Sartre broke with Soviet communism, but maintained the posture of leftist intellectuals. So, after writing her memoirs, she died on April 14, 1986 in Paris, and she was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, next to Sartre, who had died years earlier.
Read too: Hilda Hilst — Brazilian author whose works are marked by eroticism and existential questions
Major works by Simone de Beauvoir
→ Novels
- the guest (1943)
- the blood of others (1945)
- All men are mortal (1946)
- the mandarins (1954)
- the beautiful images (1966)
- the disillusioned woman (1967)
- When the spiritual dominates (1979)
→ Theater
- the useless mouths (1945)
→ Tests
- For a morality of ambiguity (1947)
- the second sex (1949)
- privileges (1955)
- old age (1970)
→ Autobiography
- Memories of a Well-Behaved Girl (1958)
- the strength of age (1960)
- the strength of things (1963)
- a very smooth death (1964)
- Ending balance (1972)
→ Biography
- the goodbye ceremony (1981)
Analysis of the guest
The romance the guesthas autobiographical traits and narrates the love triangle between Françoise, Pierre and Xavière. This relationship is similar to that experienced by Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre and Olga Kosakievicz (1915-1983). The work then shows an alternative relationship contrary to bourgeois monogamy.
At first, Françoise and Pierre live an almost unbreakable love relationship, despite having an open relationship. Until young Xavière enters the story, she befriends Françoise and awakens Pierre's sexual interest, which causes Françoise to become jealous.
THE The story takes place in Paris in the late 1930s.. Françoise Miquel is 30 years old. Pierre Labrousse, his lover, is about the same age. Both are intellectuals. Xavière Pagès is a young student who is seduced by Pierre. Later, Xavière sleeps with Gerbert, which makes Pierre jealous.
To complicate matters, Françoise also sleeps with Gerbert, which makes Xavière jealous. In this way, the plot is built through the affective and intellectual relationships between these characters. Xavière, “the guest”, who could also be called “the intruder”, walks towards a surprising tragic end.
Read too:Niketche — a history of polygamy: an analysis of female submission in African culture
Features of Simone de Beauvoir's work
Simone de Beauvoir she wrote both theoretical and literary texts. The author's essays have an existentialist and feminist perspective. They discuss issues such as ethic, politics, situation, human ambiguity, otherness, individual action, freedom, objectification and oppression.
Her literary texts, both Affairs As for memories, they also have a philosophical character. In them, discussions about the otherness and ambiguity of the subject are present. beauvoir she wrote the so-called “metaphysical novel”. The novelist and philosopher understood the metaphysics as an attitude, along the existentialist lines.
She defended that the human essence (subjectivity) is in the individual and not in a mystical force outside him. Her literary texts represent the human metaphysical experience based on the everyday life of her characters. The metaphysical novel makes explicit the character's individual experience.
In this way, she takes a look at reality, where human experience takes place. It then seeks to show the relationship between the character and the world in which he lives, in addition to his conflict with reality, with himself and with the other. In this way, Simone de Beauvoir can be considered a postmodernist author.
Thoughts by Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir, in addition to being a novelist, was also a philosopher. His theoretical and literary texts reveal his feminist thoughts around the condition of women in society, free love and existentialism. The author considered that love relationships built on a traditional romantic basis only cause the suffering of the individuals involved.
In this type of relationship, there is the annulment of the individual, especially the female, in favor of the couple. For her, this type of relationship ends up being an obligation imposed mainly on women, which prevents them from experiencing free love. In addition, she points to objectification, facilitated by female submission.
In this way, the woman, as an object, cannot be the subject of her existence. She is brought up to overvalue her love life and to give up everything. This life based on love leads a woman to frustration with men who will never be able to live up to her ideals.
For the philosopher, the True love must be founded “on the mutual recognition of two freedoms”, without abdications or mutilations. Thus, love would be, for both, "a revelation of oneself through the gift of oneself and the recognition of the universe”.|1| In this way, Simone de Beauvoir became one of the main representatives of the feminist movement.
Is it over there questioned the social rolesimposed on women and men, and showed the inequalities between the sexes, the way in which women are considered, in social importance, the “second sex”:
One of the misunderstandings that my book [the second sex] aroused was that it was thought that I was denying any difference between men and women: on the contrary, in writing it, I measured what separates them; what I maintained was that these dissimilarities are cultural, not natural.. I have systematically told how they are created, from childhood to old age; I have examined the possibilities that this world offers women, those that are denied them, their limits, their opportunities and lack of opportunities, their evasions, their accomplishments.|2|
Simone de Beauvoir's feminism is considered existentialist, as the author herself points out:
The perspective we adopt is that of existentialist morals. Every subject is concretely placed through projects as a transcendence; it only achieves its freedom by constantly surpassing it in view of other freedoms; there is no other justification for present existence than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls into immanence, there is a degradation of existence “in itself”, of freedom into facticity; this fall is a moral failure, if consented to by the subject. If inflicted on him, it takes on the appearance of frustration or oppression.|3|
Finally, it is worth remembering that existentialism is founded on reflection on action, choices and freedom. He questions human existence itself and what it is to be a human. It thinks about the ways in which human beings relate to reality and about the strength of determinism and conditioning. However, in the existentialist theory, existence precedes essence, which must be constructed by each of us.
Video lesson on Simone de Beauvoir and the female condition
Simone de Beauvoir quotes
Below, we are going to read some phrases by Simone de Beauvoir taken from her works the second sex, Memories of a Well-Behaved Girl, the mandarins and All men are mortal:
“The happy couple that recognizes each other in love defies the universe and time; enough, it realizes the absolute.”
“Every child that is born is a god who becomes a man.”
“You are not born a woman, you become a woman.”
“All victories hide an abdication.”
“In every tear, there is hope.”
“If you live long enough, you will see that every victory turns to defeat.”
Grades
|1| the second sex. Translation by Sérgio Milliet.
|2| the strength of things. Translation by Maria Helena Franco Martins.
|3| the second sex. Translation by Sérgio Milliet.
By Warley Souza
Literature teacher
