SOURCE: A review of The Woman Destroyed, in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. VII, No. 2, Spring, 1970, pp. 337-39.

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 nouvelles each of which reveals the inner struggle of a woman undergoing spiritual or emotional collapse. Told with high artistry, each tale employs a different variation of the first-person narrative point of view. The first, The Age of Discretion; a story of a woman scholar-author, is told with a skill worthy of a James or of a Flaubert. Concurrently with her account of her present actions and despair, the protagonist divulges bit by bit the relevant facts of her past and the conditions of her family relationships. The total effect, conveyed with exceptional economy of incident and detail, is one of harrowing crisis. The second...