I’m sure most people have heard of Simone de Beauvoir for some reason or another. She was a French writer, philosopher, and feminist, contributing novels, memoirs, essays, short stories, and an entire treatise on feminism (”The Second Sex”). Waiting for me is her “America Day by Day,” more of a travel journal of her time spent in the U.S., but I am dying to read “The Second Sex”. It’s comparable to Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” which I wrote about last year.
De Beauvoir was born in France in the early 1900s, and was encouraged to read and study by her father, while her mother maintained more traditional Catholic views, In spite of this (or maybe because of it?), De Beauvoir was an atheist for most of her life. De Beauvoir became only the 9th woman to graduate from the Sorbonne, and began teaching until she could support herself from her writing alone.
She is also known for her open relationship with the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, a relationship which lasted for 50 years of her life, until his death. She also had relationships with both women and men, and was outspoken about women’s rights, including abortion, which at the time was illegal in France. Although some of her relationships with women were considered controversial, it was both these and her affairs with men (including Sartre), which inspired her fictional works.
De Beauvoir is a must read in order to understand feminism and the historical oppression of women. It was she who first made the distinction between biological sex and the construction of gender and all its societal stereotypes that women still suffer from today. She was a firm believer in equal education and economic independence for women, and never married nor had children. And a proud feminist.