I have previously shied away from books by Simone de Beauvoir, thinking that they would be too complicated or too philosophical for me, so it was only thanks to a book club in Barcelona that I got my hands on a novel by the author. Three short stories make up the entirety of the book, “The Age of Discretion” (30%), “The Monologue” (10%) and “The Woman Destroyed” (60%). I’m personally not a big fan of short stories that are not connected among each other, which was the case here, so my judgement of it is strongly linked to that fact. As a general summary whether I liked it or not – one story was an interesting character study, one I didn’t like at all and the final one peaked one’s curiosity, motivating one to read on in order to find out how the story ends.

I feel like there is always a fine line between taking a story as something fictitious, the opinions that are expressed by the characters being made up but also wondering about the connection between the stories and the author herself. My problem with it was how white and privileged all the characters were, with racist passages popping up here and there. It could be said that de Beauvoir simply wanted to portray the images of typical Parisian bourgeois women and the opinions that they predominantly carry. Nevertheless upon further research, I came across multiple opinions criticising the author for her racism and ethnocentrism (Storm Heter, 2021).

A tall Negro in an electric-blue raincoat and gray felt hat was listlessly sweeping the pavement: before, it used to be an earth-colored Algerian.

p. 14

The first story, “The Age of Discretion“, which was probably my favorite one, shone a light onto how people, and the relationships that they’re in, evolve and change with time, what it’s like to be a parent, to judge one’s child and what it’s like to come to terms with aging. To me, it was really frustrating to read through some parts. The story was told from a frank and direct point of view of the main female character and I simply couldn’t help thinking how much her child, her husband and she herself would have profited from her working on herself, putting her beliefs in life in question and making an effort to improve communication with her husband. It reminded me a bit of the book “Stoner” by John Williams, where you also felt so impotent as a reader, just hoping that the main character would finally do SOMETHING to get him out of his misery!

Once I used to cherish schemes and promises for the future; now my feelings and my joys are smoothed and softened with the shadowy velvet of time past.

p. 19-20

Luckily the second story and the one that I liked the least, “The Monologue” was really short, only making up 10% of the book. It just wasn’t my cup of tea, written as an endless train of thought, being in a completely different style that the other two stories. Until its end, I found it to be difficult to understand who was who among all the different characters that were spoken about. It felt like being inside the head and among the thoughts of a mentally ill person, which at least was an interesting perspective. Below you can find an example of what the 30 pages that it stretched throughout approximately read like:

Wind! It’s suddenly started to blow like fury how I should like an enormous disaster that would sweep everything away and me with it a typhoon a cyclone it would be restful to die if there were no one left to think about me: give up my body my poor little life to them no!

p. 103

Finally “The Woman Destroyed“ story concentrated on the marriage between a woman and a man, told from the female perspective through diary entries about all the circumstances in her life when she finds out that her husband is having an affair. There was a lot of toxicity within it, ranging from the woman blaming herself for being responsible for the affair “happening to her”, to insensitive advice from a female friend to just stick through it, convincing the main character to disregard her own feelings and just wait things out.

I found it very hard to accept that all children lie to their mothers. Not to me! I am not the kind of mother that is lied to: not a wife that is lied to. Idiotic vanity. All women think they are different; they all think there are some things that will never happen to them; and they are all wrong.

p. 136

She still urges me to go on being patient; she assures me that Maurice has not behaved very badly and that I ought still to retain my respect and liking for him.

p. 160

The most interesting part to me was probably discovering how de Beauvoir’s life was the exact opposite to the characters she described in these short stories. She was never married to her partner Jean-Paul Sartre, she was a defender of both being faithful and free, had several affairs herself and never had any children (Moorehead, 1974). I was surprised by this book since I would have expected it to be more feminist and more focusing on freedom for women as a theme but it actually portrays the exact opposite of all that. The reader is presented with 3 stories where women literally let themselves be destroyed by their partners, by feelings that they have failed the education of their children, by not accepting their bodies and by gossip.

My only life had been to create happiness around me. I have not made Maurice happy. And my daughters are not happy either. So what then? I no longer know anything. Not only do I not know what kind of a person I am, but also I do not know what kind of a person I ought to be.

p. 252

The value of this book to me is being a piece of writing that analyses the habits, thoughts and behavior of women within a specific social circle during a specific time. It demonstrates the issue for women, how putting the success of their marriage and the education of their children as the ultimate goals of their lives ruin them in the long run, not leaving them with enough time to understand who they are themselves. It’s by reading between the lines and seeing this piece of writing as a criticism towards the construct of marriage as a main building block in society that you can appreciate it, just like the author herself expressed it during an interview for the New York Times in 1974:

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.

Moorehead, 1974

In that same interview it becomes evident how she wanted to write a story about some things that she was disappointed with. How some women, especially within the upper and middle classes, were still not willing to give up a certain level of comfort in order to achieve equality with men and stand up for their rights. Upon taking the novel from the perspective of “the bigger picture”, it seems like it’s de Beauvoir shouting from the rooftops, “This is how you will end up if you don’t ask yourself enough questions, whether family life, a marriage and children are what will REALLY make you happy!” I would love to always have a copy of this book on hand and give it out to people saying, “Oh, you should get married because otherwise you’ll end up alone when you’re older” or “Oh, you should have children, otherwise you’ll be all alone and won’t have anyone to take care of you!” because it just is not that simple. Even though this book is not one of the best ones I have read, it has definitely opened up Simone de Beauvoir’s world in an accessible way to me and I’d be looking forward to reading both her autobiography and other novels of hers in the future!

★★★☆☆ (3/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-0-394-71103-3
Pantheon Books, 2013 (first published in French in 1967)}

Sources:

Moorehead, C. (1974): “A talk with Simone de Beauvoir”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/02/archives/a-talk-with-simone-de-beauvoirr-marriage-is-an-alienating.html. Last accessed 24/10/2023.

Storm Heter, T. (2021): “Beauvoir’s White Problem”. Hypotheses.org. https://lirecrire.hypotheses.org/3404. Last accessed: 24/10/2023.