Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy",[9]The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporaryfeminism. She was also known for her novels, the most famous of which wereShe Came to Stay (1943) andThe Mandarins (1954).
Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908,[13] into abourgeoisParisian family in the6th arrondissement.[14][15][16] Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a lawyer who once aspired to be an actor,[17] and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devoutCatholic. Simone had a sister,Hélène, who was born two years later, on 6 June 1910. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly afterWorld War I, and Françoise insisted the two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school.[18]
Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!"[19] Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on herdowry, and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning a living for herself.[20]
She first worked withMaurice Merleau-Ponty andClaude Lévi-Strauss, when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at theÉcole Normale Supérieure in preparation for theagrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination that serves as a national ranking of students. It was while studying for it that she met École Normale studentsJean-Paul Sartre,Paul Nizan, andRené Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or "Beaver").[17] The jury for theagrégation narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam.[21] Additionally, Beauvoir finished an exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" second toSimone Weil. Her success as the eighth woman to pass theagrégation solidified her economic independence and furthered her feminist ideology.[9]
Writing of her youth inMemoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, she said:"...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual."[22]
Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years atCours Desir [fr].[23] After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy at the age of seventeen in 1925, she studied mathematics at theInstitut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at theInstitut Sainte-Marie [fr]. She then studied philosophy at theSorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote herDiplôme d'études supérieures spécialisées (roughly equivalent to anM.A. thesis) onLeibniz forLéon Brunschvicg in 1929 (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]).[24]
Beauvoir was raised in a Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir began to question her faith, consequently abandoning religion in her teens and remaining anatheist for the rest of her life.[25][26] To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself."[27]
During the trial ofRobert Brasillach Beauvoir was among a small number of prominent intellectuals advocating for his execution for 'intellectual crimes'. She defended this decision in her 1946 essay "An Eye for an Eye".[29][30]
Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he intended to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so.[25] She later changed her mind, and in October 1929,Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became a couple for the next 51 years, until his death in 1980.[31] After they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis. One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".[32] Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described inThe Second Sex and elsewhere bore little resemblance to the marriage standards of the day.[33]
I think marriage is a very alienating institution, for men as well as for women. I think it's a very dangerous institution—dangerous for men, who find themselves trapped, saddled with a wife and children to support; dangerous for women, who aren't financially independent and end up by depending on men who can throw them out when they are 40; and very dangerous for children, because their parents vent all their frustrations and mutual hatred on them. The very words 'conjugal rights' are dreadful. Any institution which solders one person to another, obliging people to sleep together who no longer want to is a bad one.[34]
Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.[35] She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers.[36] Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her academic reputation. A scholar who was lecturing with her[37] chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life."[38]
Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre'sBeing and Nothingness and Beauvoir'sShe Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent".[39] However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, includingHegel and Leibniz.[8] TheNeo-Hegelian revival led byAlexandre Kojève andJean Hyppolite in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel'sPhenomenology of Spirit.[40][41] However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.
Beauvoir wasbisexual, and her relationships with young women were controversial.[42] French authorBianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her bookMémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (Memoirs of a deranged young girl, published in English under the titleA Disgraceful Affair) that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s.[43] Beauvoirgroomed the 16-year-old girl before introducing her to Sartre. The three had a sexually exploitative relationship over the course of three years.[44] Bianca wrote herMémoires in response to the posthumous 1990 publication of Jean-Paul Sartre'sLettres au Castor et à quelques autres: 1926-1963 (Letters to Castor and other friends), in which she noted that she was referred to by the pseudonym Louise Védrine.[45] Bianca, upon learning that she was given a pseudonym, stated she felt "nauseated and disgusted when [she] discovered the true personality of the woman [she] had loved all [her] life".[44]
In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended again from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupilNatalie Sorokine in 1939.[46] Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 13 until 1945, when it became 15)[47][48] and Beauvoir's licence to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.[49]
Beauvoir described inLa Force de l'âge (The Prime of Life) a relationship of simple friendship with Sorokine[50] (in the book referred to as "Lise Oblanoff").[51] However, both Sorokine and Lamblin—along withOlga Kosakiewicz—stated later that their relationships with Beauvoir had damaged them psychologically.[42]
Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in the United States[52] and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Her 1955 travels in China were the basis of her 1957 travelogueThe Long March, in which she praised the efforts of the Chinese communists toemancipate women.[53]
She published several volumes of short stories, includingThe Woman Destroyed, which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging.She lived withClaude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959,[54] but perhaps her most famous lover was American authorNelson Algren. Beauvoir met Algren in Chicago in 1947, while she was on a four-month "exploration" trip of the United States using various means of transport: automobile, train, andGreyhound. She kept a detailed diary of the trip, which was published in France in 1948 with the titleAmerica Day by Day.[55] She wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband."[56] Algren won the National Book Award forThe Man with the Golden Arm in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France'smost prestigious literary prize forThe Mandarins, in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring.[57]
Algren in 1956
When Beauvoir visited Algren in Chicago,Art Shay took well-known nude and portrait photos of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote a play based on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship. The play was stage read in 1999 in Chicago.
Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting ofMemoirs of a Dutiful Daughter,The Prime of Life,Force of Circumstance (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation:After the War andHard Times), andAll Said and Done.[58] In 1964 Beauvoir published a novella-length autobiography,A Very Easy Death, covering the time she spent visiting her aging mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships.[59]
In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France'swomen's liberation movement. She wrote and signed theManifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Signatories were diverse[clarification needed] asCatherine Deneuve,Delphine Seyrig, and Beauvoir's sister Hélène. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France.
When asked in a 1975 interview withBetty Friedan if she would support a minimum wage for women who do housework, Beauvoir answered: "No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction", further stating that motherhood "should be a choice, and not a result of conditioning”.[60][61]
In 1977, Beauvoir signed apetition along with other French intellectuals that supported the freeing of three arrestedpaedophiles.[63][64] The petition explicitly addresses the 'Affaire de Versailles', where three adult men, Dejager (age 45), Gallien (age 43), and Burckhardt (age 39) had sexual relations with minors of both sexes aged 12–13.[65][66]
When Things of the Spirit Come First, a set of short stories Beauvoir had written decades previously but had not considered worth publishing, was released in 1980.[58]
In 1981 she wroteLa Cérémonie des adieux (A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening ofAdieux, Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication.[citation needed]
After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heirArlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heirSylvie Le Bon, unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.
Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir and Simone de Beauvoir met in the 1960s, when Beauvoir was in her fifties and Sylvie was a teenager. In 1980, Beauvoir, 72, legally adopted Sylvie, who was in her late thirties, by which point they had already been in an intimate relationship for decades. Although Beauvoir rejected the institution of marriage her entire life, this adoption was like a marriage for her. Some scholars argue that this adoption was not to secure a literary heir for Beauvoir, but as a form of resistance to the bio-heteronormative family unit.[68]
Beauvoir died ofpneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78.[69] She is buried next to Sartre at theMontparnasse Cemetery in Paris.[70] She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing.[71]
The Second Sex, first published in 1949 in French asLe Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra thatexistence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient").[72] With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as thesex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes.[73] Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential" Other.[74]
Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined as inferior to men. She pointed out thatAristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", whileThomas Aquinas referred to women as "imperfect men" and the "incidental" being.[75] She quotes "In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."[76]
Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.[77]
Chapters ofThe Second Sex were originally published inLes Temps modernes,[78] in June 1949. The second volume came a few months after the first in France.[79] It was published soon after in America due to the quick translation byHoward Parshley, as prompted byBlanche Knopf, wife of publisherAlfred A. Knopf. Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with the French language, and a minimal understanding of philosophy (he was a professor of biology atSmith College), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message.[80] For years, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars.[80]
Only in 2009 was there a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in 2010, reinstating a third of the original work.[81]
In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" ofThe Second Sex,[82] Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by the application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into apatriarchy.[citation needed]
Despite her contributions to the feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and her beliefs in women's economic independence and equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to call herself a feminist.[20] However, after observing the resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beauvoir stated she no longer believed asocialist revolution to be enough to bring about women's liberation. She publicly declared herself a feminist in 1972 in an interview withLe Nouvel Observateur.[83]
In 2018, the manuscript pages ofLe Deuxième Sexe were published.[84]
Beauvoir published her first novelShe Came to Stay in 1943.[85] It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship withOlga Kosakiewicz andWanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during the early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and marriedJacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation – the relationship between the self and the other.[citation needed]
In the novel, set just before the outbreak ofWorld War II, Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have aménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.[citation needed]
She Came to Stay was followed by many others, includingThe Blood of Others, which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in theResistance in World War II.[58]
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre inBeijing, 1955
In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay,Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essayThe Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); it is perhaps the most accessible entry intoFrench existentialism. In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such asBeing and Nothingness. InThe Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.[8]
At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre editedLes Temps Modernes, a political journal that Sartre founded along withMaurice Merleau-Ponty and others.[86] Beauvoir usedLes Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death. However,Sartre andMerleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to leaveLes Temps modernes. Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's later years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to force[clarification needed] to offer his opinions.[citation needed]
Dunes cottage where Algren and Beauvoir summered inMiller Beach, Indiana
Published in 1954,The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, thePrix Goncourt.[87] It is aroman à clef set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writerNelson Algren, to whom the book is dedicated.[88]
Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in bothThe Mandarins and her autobiographies.[88] Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.[89]
Beauvoir's early novelLes Inséparables, long suppressed, was published in French in 2020 and two different English translations in 2021, by Sandra Smith in the US andLauren Elkin in the UK.[90] Written in 1954, the book describes her first love, a classmate named Elisabeth Lacoin ("Zaza") who died before age 22 ofviral encephalitis, and had as a teenager a "passionate and tragic" relationship with Beauvoir. According toSylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir, Beauvoir never forgave Madame Lacoin for what happened, believing that Elisabeth-Zaza was murdered by the oppressive socio-cultural environment in which she had been raised.[91] Disapproved by Sartre, the novel was deemed "too intimate" to be published during Beauvoir's lifetime.
Beauvoir'sThe Second Sex is considered a foundational work in the history of feminism. Beauvoir had denied being feminist multiple times but ultimately admitted that she was one afterThe Second Sex became crucial in the world of feminism.[71] The work has had a profound influence, opening the way forsecond-wave feminism in theUnited States,Canada,Australia, and around the world.[8] Although Beauvoir has been quoted as saying "There is a certain unreasonable demand that I find a little stupid because it would enclose me, immobilize me completely in a sort of feminist concrete block," her works on feminism have paved the way for all future feminists.[92] The founders of the second-wave readThe Second Sex in translation, includingKate Millett,Shulamith Firestone,Juliet Mitchell,Ann Oakley andGermaine Greer. All acknowledged their profound debt to Beauvoir, including visiting her in France, consulting with her at crucial moments, and dedicating works to her.[93]Betty Friedan, whose 1963 bookThe Feminine Mystique is often regarded as the opening salvo of second-wave feminism in the United States, later said that readingThe Second Sex in the early 1950s[93] "led me to whatever original analysis of women's existence I have been able to contribute to the Women's movement and its unique politics. I looked to Simone de Beauvoir for a philosophical and intellectual authority."[94]
At one point in the early 1970s, Beauvoir also aligned herself with the French League for Women's Rights as a means to campaign and fight against sexism in French society.[92] Beauvoir's influence goes beyond just her impact on second-wave founders, and extends to numerous aspects of feminism, including literary criticism, history, philosophy, theology, criticism of scientific discourse, andpsychotherapy.[8] When Beauvoir first became involved with the feminism movement, one of her objectives was legalizing abortion.[92]Donna Haraway wrote that, "despite important differences, all the modern feminist meanings of gender have roots in Simone de Beauvoir's claim that 'one is not born a woman [one becomes one].'"[8] This "most famous feminist sentence ever written"[95] is echoed in the title ofMonique Wittig's 1981 essayOne Is Not Born a Woman.[93][96][97]Judith Butler took the concept a step further, arguing that Beauvoir's choice of the verbto become suggests thatgender is a process, constantly being renewed in an ongoing interaction between the surrounding culture and individual choice.[93][98]
In Paris,Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir is a square where Beauvoir's legacy lives on. It is one of the few squares in Paris to be officially named after a couple. The pair lived close to the square at 42rue Bonaparte.
^Bergoffen, Debra; Burke, Megan (2021). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.)."Simone de Beauvoir".The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved9 April 2022.
^abcdefBergoffen, Debra (16 August 2010). Zalta, Edward (ed.)."Simone de Beauvoir".Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010 ed.). Stanford University.ISSN1095-5054. Retrieved11 June 2021.
^ab"Simone de Beauvoir".The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2023.
^Norwich, John Julius (1985–1993).Oxford illustrated encyclopedia. Judge, Harry George., Toyne, Anthony. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press. p. 40.ISBN0-19-869129-7.OCLC11814265.
^Bertrand de Beauvoir, Simone (1974).All Said and Done. Translated by O'Brian, Patrick. New York: G. P. Putnam's & Sons. p. 478.ISBN9780399112515.
^Kelly Oliver (ed.),French Feminism Reader, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p. 1;Bulletin 2006 de l'Association amicale des anciens et anciennes élèves du lycée Molière, 2006, p. 22.
^abRiding, Alan (14 April 1996)."The Odd Couple".New York Times. Retrieved9 November 2021.Beauvoir duly seduced her and, the following year, introduced her to Sartre, then 33, who also took her to bed. By 1939, now studying under Sartre at the Sorbonne, Bianca was convinced that she was the key figure in an idealized love triangle.
^de Beauvoir, "America Day by Day", Carol Cosman (Translator) and Douglas Brinkley (Foreword), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.ISBN9780520210677.
^Crean, Jeffrey (2024).The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History. New Approaches to International History series. London, UK:Bloomsbury Academic. p. 93.ISBN978-1-350-23394-2.
^Menand, Louis (26 September 2005)."Stand By Your Man".The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Retrieved28 December 2017.
^Algren was her guide through the Chicago underworld, among drug addicts and petty thieves.De Beauvoir, Simone (1999).America Day by Day. Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN9780520209794. Retrieved29 July 2023.
^"Sexual Morality and the Law", Chapter 16 ofPolitics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Edited by Lawrence D. Krizman. New York/London: 1990, Routledge,ISBN0-415-90149-9, p. 275.
^Mikkola, Mari (3 January 2018). "Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.).The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
^Beauvoir, Simone de. "Woman: Myth and Reality". ** in Jacobus, Lee A. (ed.).A World of Ideas. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2006. 780–95. ** in Prince, Althea, and Susan Silva Wayne.Feminisms and Womanisms: A Women's Studies Reader. Women's Press, Toronto 2004 p. 59–65.
^Fallaize, Elizabeth (1998).Simone de Beauvoir: A critical reader (Digital print ed.). London: Routledge. p. 6.ISBN978-0415147033.
^"Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma: A Dialogue between Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan".Saturday Review. 14 June 1975. p. 16. as quoted inFallaize (2007) p. 9.
^Mann, Bonnie (20 July 2017)."Introduction". In Bonnie Mann; Martina Ferrari (eds.).On ne naît pas femme : on le devient: The Life of a Sentence. Oxford University Press. p. 11.ISBN978-0-19-067801-2....the sentence in question isOn ne naît pas femme : on le devient—in other words, the most famous feminist sentence ever written... Surely if any sentence deserves a biography, or multiple biographies, it is this sentence that has inspired generations of women.
^Butler 1990, p. 112 'One is not born a woman.' Monique Wittig echoed that phrase in an article by the same name, published inFeminist Issues (1:1).
^McCann, Carole Ruth; Kim, Seung-Kyung, eds. (2003)."25 One Is Not Born a Woman".Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Psychology Press. p. 249.ISBN978-0-415-93153-3.OCLC465003710.As individuals as well we question 'woman', which for us, as for Simone de Beauvoir, is only a myth. She said: 'One is not born, but becomes a woman.'
^Bell, Vikki (25 October 1999).Performativity & Belonging. Theory, Culture & Society. London: SAGE Publications. p. 135.ISBN978-0-7619-6523-7.OCLC796008155.Moreover, Beauvoir's use of the term 'becoming' leads Butler to wonder further that '...if gender is something that one becomes – but can never be – then gender itself is a kind of becoming or activity, and that gender ought not to be conceived as a noun or a substantial thing or a static cultural marker, but rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort.'Butler (1990) p. 12.
Fraser, M., 1999.Identity Without Selfhood: Simone de Beauvoir and Bisexuality, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Axel Madsen,Hearts and Minds: The Common Journey of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, William Morrow & Co, 1977.
Hélène Rouch, 2001–2002, Trois conceptions du sexe: Simone de Beauvoir entre Adrienne Sahuqué etSuzanne Lilar,Simone de Beauvoir Studies, n° 18, pp. 49–60.
Beauvoir, Simone de (2005), "Introduction fromThe Second Sex", inCudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.),Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, Oxford, UK Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 27–36,ISBN9781405116619.
Beauvoir and Sartre by Christine Daigle (Editor); Jacob Golomb (Editor)
Becoming Beauvoir by Kate Kirkpatrick
The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir by Claudia Card (Editor)
Découvrir Beauvoir by Alexandre Feron
Differences by Emily Anne Parker (Editor); Anne van Leeuwen (Editor)
The Existential Phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir by Wendy O'Brien (Editor); Lester E. Embree (Editor)
Identity without selfhood : Simone de Beauvoir and bisexuality by Mariam Fraser
Mémoires / Simone de Beauvoir by édition publiée sous la direction de Jean-Louis Jeannelle et d'Éliane Lecarme-Tabone ; chronologie par Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
The prime of life : the autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir by Simone de Beauvoir; Peter Green (Translator); Toril Moi (Introduction by)
Sex, Love, and Letters by Judith G. Coffin
Simone de Beauvoir by Deirdre Bair
Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Age by Silvia Stoller (Editor)
Patrick O'Brian was Beauvoir's principal English translator, until he attained commercial success as anovelist.
Beauvoir, Simone (1997), ""Introduction" to The Second Sex", in Nicholson, Linda (ed.),The second wave: a reader in feminist theory, New York: Routledge, pp. 11–18,ISBN9780415917612.
Philosophical Writings (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004, edited by Margaret A. Simons et al.) contains a selection of essays by Beauvoir translated for the first time into English. Among those are: "Pyrrhus and Cineas", discussing the futility or utility of action, two previously unpublished chapters from her novelShe Came to Stay and an introduction toThe Ethics of Ambiguity.
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