[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 from the world she was describing—which may account for her harshness toward the heroines in some of these stories. Already, while teaching in the provinces, she and Sartre had been involved in a long and difficult triangle with one of de Beauvoir's students (the basis of L'invitée, her first published novel, translated into English as She Came to Stay). They had also been pulled into politics by the Spanish Civil War.
The common theme of these five stories … is the existentialist tragedy of placing essence before existence—that is, attempting to dispel the ambiguity and freedom of one's life by setting up an Absolute (God) or absolutes (social customs) on which one relies, making "things of the spirit come first." Some of the stories are roughly structured, while others are told without a complete command of that skill for transforming life and philosophy into art which de Beauvoir would beautifully master in her best fiction, The Mandarins. However, all five have an energy and rigor, an honesty of detail and a sense of hitting the bone of a story that are characteristic of de Beauvoir. (p. 314)
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