Simone Ernestine Lucie Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January
9, 1908, in Paris, France. She was raised in an upper class bourgeois
Catholic family. Her father, named Georges de Beauvoir, had a passion
for books and theatre. He taught Simone reading at the age of 3, and
she attempted to write as soon as she could read. Her early development
was that of a remarkably talented child.
Her bold and spontaneous classmate, Zaza (Elisabeth Le Coin), was her
earliest and strongest friendship. Beauvoir and Zaza were both students
of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom Zaza loved. That relationship was
disrupted by Zaza's controlling parents. Zaza died of encephalitis at
age 20, leaving Beauvoir shocked and depressed. Zaza's short life was
described by Beauvoir in several versions and in various literary
forms; revealing Beauvoir's own post-traumatic scars. As Beauvoir was
trying to soothe the pain of loss, she drifted away from the
restrictive social order of French class society. For the rest of her
life, Beauvoir harbored her traumatized inner child, and played a game
of rebellion by advancing her individual choices. She had issues with
social rules regulating the impulses of her own life, or having a
stable relationship; and her life really turned into a series of
impulses.
She was a Sorbonne student when she met Jean-Paul Sartre at the study group in
1929. At that time she was nicknamed 'Castor' (Beaver), with the dual
meaning of her last name as English for the animal and its reputation
as a dedicated worker. Beauvoir and Sartre both learned to hate the
restrictions of upper class life. Both favored an 'authentic state of
being'. Her rebellious nature played a painful role in their
relationship from the very start. Knowing that her teaching assignment
would separate them, Jean-Paul Sartre proposed to her. His proposal and marriage
would lead to their teaching assignments in the same area. To his
dismay, she turned down his proposal and left.
In 1932 Beauvoir was teaching in Rouen. There she met Olga Kozakiewich
and began a relationship. In 1935 she introduced Sartre to her
18-year-old student Olga Kozakiewich and the three formed the 'family'.
Beauvoir merged both relationships into a trio, that led to an
unexpected and overwhelming outcome. While she imagined the trio would
illustrate the 'authenticity' of their relationships; in reality the
inevitable competition from the younger and independent-minded Olga
became a growing threat. Beauvoir saw Olga as an object, a mere cast
member of the game. She also overestimated her own tolerance.
Eventually the trio failed before the challenge to reciprocate in
recognition of each one's 'authentic' consciousness. Each member wrote
a different account of the same events in their 'family' life.
While her academic studies focused on the role of individual choice;
the realities of her private life conflicted with her theory. The
scenario that caused her earlier traumatic experience of her separation
from Zaza was being replayed with variations. Beauvoir continued
experimenting with her 'open family' by including her other students
and Sartre's students too. Other family member's 'authentic'
consciousness added to social inventiveness and a sort of a
group-therapy during the occupation of Paris in WWII. "Existence causes
transformation of consciousness" - commented Jean-Paul Sartre.
The Jean-Simone-Olga 'family' affair is immortalized in her first novel
'L'Invitee' (She Came to Stay, 1943). At that time they were living in
an occupied Paris. The open 'family' included several former students
of both Beauvoir and Sartre; forming a unique social group with Olga
Kazakiewich, Nathalie Sorokine and Jacques-Laurent Bost. The complex
manner of relationships in the 'family' was somewhat based on the
intellectual connection between students and teachers, who also
included sharing of cooking and other domestic duties. Beauvoir was
forced into a rare experience of cooking only during the war, while
being unencumbered with domestic duties for the rest of her life. The
author of 'The Second Sex' ate at cafés and lived in good hotels,
always being served.
Sartre and Beauvoir traveled to the South of France where they wooed
André Gide and André Malraux to their underground group 'Socialisme et Liberte'.
Their active resistance soon turned into writing for 'Combat',
published by 'Albert Camus'. In 1945 Beauvoir joined the editorial staff at
'Les Tempes Modernes', a leftist journal named after the Chaplin's
film. Sartre, being the magazine's founder among other intellectual
friends, published Beauvoir's works first, giving her a steady platform
and publicity. A that time she published 'Le Sang des Autres' (The
Blood of Others, 1945) a reflection of Resistance during WWII. Her
friend 'Albert Camus' wrote a positive review on Beauvoir's book. Her only
play 'Les Bouches Inuites' (Useless Mouths, 1945) was also called 'Who
Shall Die'. Her long project-study of the ethical question of
immortality led to her book 'All Men Are Mortal'. She was shocked by
the poor reception of her weak and confusing book.
In 1947 Beauvoir was on a 5-month lecture tour of American
Universities. There she met writer Nelson Algren. Their relationship lasted
17 years, complicating her other relationships. She called him
"crocodile husband" for his American smile. He called her "frog wife"
for being French, both called it love. She wrote a book 'L'Amerique au
Jour le Jour' (America Day by Day, 1948) critical of social problems,
class, and racial inequalities in the United States. Around 1950 Nelson
Algren proposed to marry her in a letter. Beauvoir once again declined
an offer of marriage. They wrote over three hundred passionate letters
from 1947 - 1964. She caused much pain to Jean-Paul Sartre; who wanted a family,
and finally in 1962, he adopted a Jewish Algerian girl, named Arlette
El Kaim.
In America Beauvoir learned of Alfred Kinsey and his gender studies in the
1930's and 1940's. She started writing 'The Second Sex' at the time of
the 'Kinsey Report' (1948). In 1949 her first excerpts from 'The Second
Sex' appeared in France in the May, June, and July issues of the
Sartre's magazine 'Les Tempes Modernes'. Her book was published in
November of 1949, and made a sensation on both continents. By the
1950's Beauvoir had started to doubt her attractiveness. Her affair
with reporter Claude Lanzmann, 17 years her junior, brought her new
energy of assurance. They moved in together for 2 years, but she also
needed to keep both the "crocodile husband" and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1954 she
was awarded the Prix Goncourt for 'Les Mandarins' (The Mandarins) and
purchased a small apartment in Montparnasse. There she would live with
Sartre between her travels until her death.
In 'The Second Sex', first published in French in 1949, she presented a
combination of 'feminism' with 'existentialism' with a 'Freudian' view
of sexuality. The news was that it was written by a brilliant woman.
She became recognized as one of the "founding mothers" of the modern
day feminism. Her works were translated and published worldwide. The
English translation of her main works were made by her principal
English translator, Patrick O'Brian, the author of the story for the film
'Master and Commander'.
In 1955 Beauvoir and Sartre went on official visits to the Soviet Union
and to communist China. As left-leaning academics they accepted the
official invitations from the communist governments. Sartre and
Beauvoir met with Nikita Khrushchev. She accepted the commission from both
communist governments and wrote her 'La Longue Marche' (The Long March,
1957). She wrote in her letter to her "crocodile husband", Nelson
Algren, that "the book was written largely to obtain money." She was
apparently unconcerned by the brutal nature of the communist
dictatorships. Beauvoir praised communism, the Chinese government, and
the achievements of the Revolution. In 1960 she and Sartre accepted the
invitation of Fidel Castro and made a trip to Cuba. At the same time
she actively supported the Vietnamese Communist party. In 1967 Beauvoir
and Sartre joined Bertrand Russell in the 'Tribunal of war Crimes in Vietnam'.
Her mother, Francoise de Beauvoir, whom she loathed at times, caused
her more emotional pain than the millions of victims of communism. Her
book 'A Very Easy Death' (1958) recounts the death of her mother, which
was her way of coping with her loss; while she barely mentioned her
father's death. During the illness of her mother, Beauvoir bonded with
Sylvie Le Bon and developed a ten-year relationship with feelings that
inspired her beautiful book 'All Said and Done' (1972). She adopted
'Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir' in 1980. In her later years Beauvoir's
dependence on alcohol and amphetamine drugs led to Sartre's alienation
from her. Sartre bought a house in the South of France and moved there
with his adopted Jewish daughter, musician Arlette El Kaim Sartre.
After the death of Sartre in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to
her (Lettres au Castor, 1983) as well as a very cold book of memoirs
'Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre', written from 1981-1985. Her bitter
disputes with Sartre's daughter, Arlette El Kaim, ended only with
Beauvoir's death.
Beauvoir was certainly not the first brilliant writer who turned her
promiscuity on both continents into a money-making business under the
mask of "academic writing" and "social experiment." Her writings show
her profound knowledge and powerful thought which could be above the
delusional ideals of both her own bourgeois past and Sartre's "utopian"
and "communist" present. Her form of denial eventually led to an
ordinary path of drugs and alcohol. Simone de Beauvoir died of
complications of alcoholism on April 14, 1986. She was laid to rest in
the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris,
France.
