This would constantly be a problem she just couldn't comprehend, Simone had no plans to fall in love, to wed, to have children, to live a wife's life. She just wanted her own, on her own terms. a b c Simons, Margaret A.; Benjamin, Jessica; de Beauvoir, Simone (1979). "Simone de Beauvoir: An Interview". Feminist Studies. 5 (2): 330. doi: 10.2307/3177599. JSTOR 3177599. Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!" [17] Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on her dowry, and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself. [18]

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. Philosophy had neither opened up the heavens to me nor anchored me to earth...I had no fixed ideas of my own, but least I knew that I rejected Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas, Maritain, and also all empirical and materialist doctrines (p.234). Although she writes Literature took the place in my life that had once been occupied by religion: it absorbed me entirely, and transfigured my life (p.187) and while books play a certain part in her narrative she points out that it is far more the record of moods and prolonged feelings, partly perhaps because from about half way through she mentions that she started to keep a diary and no doubt her emotional state was something she wrote about, this stands in ironic counterpoint to her engagement in studying philosophy which does move her at so profound a level. Main article: The Mandarins Dunes cottage where Algren and Beauvoir summered in Miller Beach, Indiana

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Woodward, Kathleen (1993). "Simone de Beauvoir: Prospects for the Future of Older Women". Generations. 17 (2): 23. Beauvoir was raised in a Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir questioned her faith as she saw many changes in the world after witnessing tragedies throughout her life. [23] Consequently, she abandoned her faith in her early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of her life. [24] To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself." [25] Middle years [ edit ] Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Balzac Memorial a b Moi, Toril "While We Wait: The English Translation of 'The Second Sex'" in Signs 27(4) (Summer, 2002), pp. 1005–35.

In Paris, Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir is a square where Beauvoir's legacy lives on. It is one of the few squares in Paris to be officially named after a couple. The pair lived close to the square at 42 rue Bonaparte. A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920's. a b c d e f Bergoffen, Debra (16 August 2010). Zalta, Edward (ed.). "Simone de Beauvoir". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010ed.). Stanford University. ISSN 1095-5054 . Retrieved 11 June 2021.

Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78. [64] She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. [65] She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing. [66] The Second Sex [ edit ] The Second Sex 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. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir(1959) is the first of a multi-part autobiography series by a great intellectual and literary figures of the twentieth century. It depicts her early years growing up in a bourgeois French family, her adolescent rebellion against the convention and religious doctrine, and college education at the Sorbonne.