Simone de Beauvoir Summary

Simone De Beauvoir (1908 - 1986) (Full name Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir) French philosopher, novelist, nonfiction writer, short story writer, and playwright. Simone De Beauvoir: ... Read more

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), a French writer, first articulated what has since become the basis of the modern feminist movement. She was the author of novels, autobiographies, and non-fiction analy... Read more

In the following review of Beauvoir's collection The Woman Destroyed, Tindall argues that the women protagonists featured in the three novellas suffer from a "human condition" rat... Read more

Below, Ascher comments on the existentialist elements connecting Beauvoir's stories. In 1937, shortly before she turned 30, Simone de Beauvoir began a group of loosely linked short stories set ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Keefe studies characterization in Beauvoir's stories. On a number of occasions in the early nineteen-thirties Beauvoir began writing novels, but she abandoned each of ... Read more

In the following essay, McNeece identifies the role language plays in the sufferings of Beauvoir's women protagonists in the collection The Woman Destroyed. Simone de Beauvoir's death in... Read more

Below, Connell finds the novellas of The Woman Destroyed highly credible, purporting that they should not be read as fiction but rather as "extensions of the author." Two long stories an... Read more

Here, Westbrook examines Beauvoir's novellas as existential works. Simone de Beauvoir's The Woman Destroyed (La Femme Rompue), currently a best-seller in France, consists of three nouvel... Read more

In the following assessment of When Things of the Spirit Come First, the critic finds Beauvoir's stories immature but significant for the light they shed on "both the difficulties of the... Read more

In the following review of When Things of the Spirit Come First, Annan discusses how the stories reflect Beauvoir's values. These five linked stories about five young women make a French versio... Read more

Critical Essay by Nadine Gordimer Entertained, appalled (once or twice), irritated (occasionally), enthralled (often), amused (in places where this was not the author's intention), moved and, a... Read more

Critical Essay by IrÈne M. PagÈs Les Belles Images, "The Pretty Pictures": the title is ironic. It tells us that Simone de Beauvoir intends her novel to be a criticism of i... Read more

Critical Essay by Adrianne Blue The ruthlessness with which Simone de Beauvoir documents Sartre's deterioration is, at first, appalling. The puddle of piss he leaves on a chair is recorded. So ... Read more

Critical Essay by Lawrence L. Langer Simone de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death does not qualify as the "ultimate revelation" [that is, a completely honest presentation of another�... Read more

Critical Essay by Catherine Savage Brosman The information on the cover [of Quand prime le spirituel], which indicates that this is the author's first book and that it is a novel, is somewhat m... Read more

Critical Essay by Carol Ascher [When de Beauvoir wrote the stories now published as When Things of The Spirit Come First: Five Early Tales, she] had already removed herself morally and politically fro... Read more

Critical Essay by Carol Sternhell A beacon, a symbol, the author of feminism's most important theoretical text, a great lover, a militant at 76—Simone de Beauvoir seems beyond criticism,... Read more

In the following essay, Keefe discusses Beauvoir's political perspective during the Cold War and attitudes concerning the United States and the U.S.S.R. as reflected in Le sange des autres, Les... Read more

In the following essay, Kruks offers a reexamination of Beauvoir's view of female subjectivity and her relationship to contemporary postmodern and feminist thought. Theoretical debate among Nor... Read more