Simone de Beauvoir

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908 in Montparnasse, in a decent but poorly furnished apartment. Her family had bourgeois roots, though an aristocratic ancestor had been granted a title in 1786 and died during the French Revolution in 1790. Her father, Georges, was a lawyer who wanted to be an actor; her mother, Françoise, was a banker’s daughter and a devout Catholic. A dowry had been expected, but after Françoise’s father was jailed, the money never came. Beauvoir was raised mostly by her nanny, Louise, who had a tense relationship with Françoise. Her younger sister, Hélène, was born on 6 June 1910. Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, encouraged by her father, who would boast about her abilities. In *Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter*, she wrote about her youth. During World War I and the inflation that followed, the family’s finances shrank. Her father served at the front and then at the Ministry of War, but he refused to return to law and likely became physically abusive toward Françoise. He later worked in a shoe factory owned by his disgraced father-in-law, but he was unreliable, and the factory closed after the war. A relative gave him a job in newspaper advertising sales, but he lost that too. In 1919, the family moved into a small fifth-floor apartment with no central heating, running water, or bathroom.

As a young child, Beauvoir attended school only two days a week, starting at age five, and was otherwise taught by her mother. In her teens, she completed high school and then passed baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy at age seventeen in 1925. She studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature and languages at the Sorbonne. Though not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure to prepare for the agrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive national exam. While studying for it, she met École Normale students Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu, who gave her the nickname “Castor,” or “Beaver.” She completed her degree in 1928 and wrote a master’s thesis on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg in 1929, titled “Le concept chez Leibniz.” That same year, the agrégation jury placed Sartre first and Beauvoir second. She was twenty-one, making her the youngest person ever to pass the exam and the eighth woman to do so. She also finished second to Simone Weil in an exam for a certificate in General Philosophy and Logic, ahead of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Her success gave her economic independence.

During this period, Beauvoir stayed close to her sister Hélène, her friend Zara, and her cousin Jacques, with whom she had a romantic interest. Jacques was often hot and cold, but he courted her by discussing authors, banned books, art galleries, and music. After he failed his exams, he grew distant, and Beauvoir blamed herself. Eventually, her mother forbade their courtship.

Beauvoir was raised Catholic and educated in convent schools. At age seven, she began taking communion three times a week. She was deeply religious and intended to become a nun. At fourteen, she started to question her faith and abandoned religion in her teens, remaining an atheist for the rest of her life. She later explained her atheist beliefs in writing.

At eighteen, she visited Lourdes and felt disgust at the intellectual and sentimental atmosphere, believing her own sorrows could not compare to the suffering of the sick. She later revised this view in her diaries, writing that she should not be ashamed of living, and that since she had been given life, it was her duty to live as well as possible—anything else was moral suicide. To escape her mother’s control, she took a volunteer teaching position, adding extra volunteer days.

Beauvoir did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she widely regarded as one at the time of her death, but she had a major influence on feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She wrote novels, essays, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. Her best-known work is *The Second Sex* (1949), a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and a foundational text of contemporary feminism. She was also famous for her novels *She Came to Stay* (1943) and *The Mandarins* (1954). Her most enduring literary contribution is her memoirs, especially the first volume, *Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée* (1958). She won the Prix Goncourt in 1954, the Jerusalem Prize in 1975, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1978. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961, 1969, and 1973. In contemporary times, she has been criticized for having hurtful romantic and sexual relationships with three of her former students, two of whom also had relationships with Sartre.