SOURCE: Epright, Carmela M., and Laura Hengehold. Review of Simone de Beauvoir, by Toril Moi. NWSA Journal 8, no. 3 (fall 1996): 177-80.

In the following review, Epright and Hengehold evaluate Simone de Beauvoir in the context of rehabilitating Beauvoir's critical reputation.

Until very recently, studies of Simone de Beauvoir have presented the French thinker either as the lifelong confidant, editor, and companion of Jean-Paul Sartre or as an early (and, some argue, dated and privileged) feminist and author of The Second Sex. Although Beauvoir's own philosophical writings include two monographs and numerous essays, articles, and letters, her contribution to the discipline has largely been ignored or dismissed as a mere footnote to Sartrean existentialism. Her novels, though immensely popular, have only begun to be approached in the same scholarly manner as the literary works of her male existentialist comrades.

Several factors, however, have contributed to a resurgence of philosophical and...