SOURCE: "Simone de Beauvoir's 'La Femme Rompue': Studies in Self-deception," in Essays in French Literature, No. 13, November, 1976, pp. 77-97.

In the following essay, Keefe details how Beauvoir played with the theme of self-deception in each of the novellas in The Woman Destroyed.

In the latest volume of her autobiography, Tout compte fait,^>1 Simone de Beauvoir observes that in both of the works of fiction that she published during the nineteen-sixties her intention was to do something that she had not previously attempted in her novels, namely to 'faire parler le silence',² or to 'demander au public de lire entre les lignes'.³ She also indicates, however, that whereas in Les Belles Images her principal aim was to portray the 'société technocratique' which she lives in but strongly disapproves of, La Femme rompue arose directly of her desire to illustrate the dilemmas and the mental state of certain married...