Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
Average customer rating:

Lots of information but - yawn - hard work to get to it.

Comprehensive and Detailed - an Existensialist Must Read.

Bad book!

Complete

Too repetitive, lacks analysis of her works and her ideology

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
Deirdre Bair
Manufacturer: Touchstone
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0671741802

Book Description

This definitive biography is based on five years of interviews with de Beauvoir, and is written with her full cooperation. Bair penetrates the mystique of this brilliant and often paradoxical woman, who has been called one of the great minds of the 20th century, and surely, one of the most famously unconventional figures of her generation. "As a reference work . . . Simone de Beauvoir can be considered definitive".--The Atlantic. 16-page photographic insert.

Customer Reviews:

Lots of information but - yawn - hard work to get to it........2002-01-03

Turgid. There is no question this book is based on genuine and scholarly research. But the ordinary but informed reader is better leaving this one to the academicians.

Comprehensive and Detailed - an Existensialist Must Read........2001-01-12

Bair works really hard at making it clear that Sartre and De Beauvoir were two sides of the same coin. Larger than life as always but deeply and painfully human too. Despite the eventual demise of their "professional" relationship, and the eventual move of Sartre to study Flaubert and De Beauvior to her feminist crusade, the two are inextricably linked. Did she really have as much control (specially in the end) over Sartre and his life? We will never know. What Bair does though is succeed in making her human more than all of De Beauvior's work ever could. Despite the fact that De Beauvior and Sartre are larger than life, and they always will be, Bair makes her subject - human, vulnerable and understandable. It is comprehensive and exhaustive journey (despite whatever errors there might be), one worth taking at any junction in the readers Existential journey.

Miguel Llora

Bad book!.......1999-07-30

According to Claude Lanzmann there are several major errors which do occur in Bairs book, and basically it's gives a rotten and unworthy presentation of de Beauvoirs life and work.

/Leah Greber

Complete.......1999-07-12

Really, this book was a page-turner, a book of facts so well-written it made one want to know more, more, more, even when the knowing was almost painful out of de Beauvoir empathy. I wanted to read it as a companion to de Beauvoir's autobiographical series and was particularly grateful to Bair for pointing out incidents in which de Beauvoir "guilded the lily" when she recounted her own life. De Beauvoir's autobiography and this make perfect companions for a study on auto/biography and its subjectivication. (Also see Silent Woman by Janet Malcom.)

I had read previous biographical material on de Beauvoir, but none I ever felt was so complete, and helped me to know her so well. I strongly recommend this as history, literary criticism, psychology and philosophy.

Too repetitive, lacks analysis of her works and her ideology.......1999-07-07

The value of this biography is that it adds new facts andcorrects some of SdB's own mis- representations of her life. But it'stoo repetitive, often concentrating on insignficant chronologies of her trips, etc. Lacks sufficient explanation of the stultifying catholic education she rejected early in her life (was it guilt-inducing jansenistic sexophobia, the doctrine of a caring God, etc) or of the basic existentialist tenets which guided her life, such as the self-creating life project, absolute responsiblity for choices, etc. Badly in need of a final summing up chapter listing and analyzing the very disparate opinions about the contradictions and import of this amazing woman, eg was it unfathomable tenderness or simply self-delusion that enabled her to transform the ecstasy she felt with Nelson Algren into the sublimest and most poignant love affair? In many aspects of her life SdB could be a example for many women, but after reading this book one is still left wondering how and why.

Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beauvoir, 1926-1939

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Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beauvoir, 1926-1939
Jean-Paul Sartre
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0684193388

Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre

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Vivid and engaging portrait of a relationship -- but philosophically unenlightening
Corps au corps
Tete-a-Tete : Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
Success despite erotomania
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Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
Hazel Rowley
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060520590
Release Date: 2005-10-04

Book Description

They are one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean–Paul Sartre –– those passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher–writers –– had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. With Tete–a–Tete, distinguished biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays them up close, in their most intimate moments.

We witness Beauvoir and Sartre with their circle, holding court in Paris cafes. We learn the details of their infamous romantic entanglements with the young Olga Kosakiewicz and others; of their efforts to protest the wars in Algeria and Vietnam; and of Beauvoir's tempestuous love affair with Nelson Algren. We follow along on their many travels, involving meetings with dignitaries such as Roosevelt, Khrushchev, and Castro. We listen in on the couple's conversations about Sartre's Nausea, Being and Nothingness, and Words, and Beauvoir's The Second Sex, The Mandarins, and her memoirs. And we hear the anguished discussions that led Sartre to refuse the Nobel Prize.

The impact of their writings on modern thought cannot be overestimated, but Beauvoir and Sartre are remembered just as much for the lives they led. They were brilliant, courageous, profoundly innovative individuals, and Tete–a–Tete shows the passion, energy, daring, humor, and contradictions of their remarkable, unorthodox relationship. Theirs is a great story –– and a great story is precisely what Beauvoir and Sartre most wanted their lives to be.

Customer Reviews:

Vivid and engaging portrait of a relationship -- but philosophically unenlightening.......2006-12-22

This well-researched and detailed portrait of a remarkable and unique relationship between two remarkable and unique people is never less than engaging. It is well worth reading for anyone who has even a passing interest in the intellectual climate in France just preceding, during and after WWII, a period that produced an amazing list of artists and philosophers: Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, Lanzmann (all of whom figure in this narrative), the nouvelle vague in cinema, and many more. For that matter, it is well worth reading for anyone who is interested in life, and the details of these lives are intrinsically fascinating (which is not always to say admirable). Rowley had an almost unprecedented access to historical materials, and to many of the people involved, and put together a sensitive and coherent picture of Sartre and Beauvoir from roughly the time they met to their deaths. That she is able to paint such an intimate and compassionate portrait that does not shy away from depicting faults and inconsistencies in their lives and thought is a testament to Rowley's skills as a writer and as a historian.

The major weakness of the book is that her talent with philosophy is not equally on display here. In the course of telling her story, Rowley mentions the philosophical works of Sartre and Beauvoir, but says very little to illuminate the connection between their thinking and their lives. Even where she does discuss such connections, the links are fairly superficial. (Or, the connections are of the sort that can be made at the level of pop psychology between an artist and his or her work.) Existentialism comes across in her book in its fairly popular form: that there is no essence of human being and that we define ourselves through our actions. The connection between Sartre's existentialism and phenomenology gets summarized in the claim that Sartre learned from phenomenology that philosophy could be about everyday life. What she doesn't note is that beyond the fact Sartre learned from phenomenology to focus on everyday life, he also engaged in a systematic effort to redescribe life -- to show that our ordinary ways of conceiving everyday life are deeply flawed. Beauvoir's own significant and original philosophical work (apart from "The Second Sex") is hardly discussed -- her "Ethics of Ambiguity," for example, is never even mentioned. What she doesn't note is that Beauvoir had developed a powerful typology of ways in which one might respond to and realize freedom in one's life, in her "Ethics of Ambiguity" -- and it would be interesting to consider where she must have fit on that continuum. Perhaps most egregiously, she fails to emphasize that for both Sartre and Beauvoir, existentialist freedom is not primarily about the rejection of traditional bonds but about the recognition of the ways in which we bind ourselves to others through our projects and commitments -- so that "authenticity" is not just about being oneself but about the discovery that one cannot avoid belonging to others and to deny one's commitments to others is bad faith. If Sartre painted this inevitibility as a kind of hell in "No Exit," Beauvoir especially in the "Ethics of Ambiguity" depicts an acceptance of the ambiguous commitments that emerge from our being with others as the only genuine freedom and the only possible salvation. (In spite of her desire to depict Beauvoir as independent of Sartre, and her emphasis of Sartre's unwavering respect for her as a thinker, Rowley doesn't really give a sense of the independence of Beauvoir as a thinker -- and what comes across for the most part here is the popular but I think misleading picture of Sartre as the philosopher and Beauvoir as the memoirist who occasionally also applied philosophy to subjects like women and aging.) On this reading, then Sartre and Beauvoir come across primarily as writers whose ideas and commitments evolved over time to become more political, who rejected standard morality including and especially the moral prescriptions that reinforce the family, and who shared a unique form of relationship (that involved fidelity to each other in the sense that they would always tell each other the truth, even where they were willing to lie to others with whom they had secondary relationships). One might have wished for a more detailed account of their thinking if only because such an account would help to pose the question how their life must have been conceived by themselves, in accordance with their own thinking. Otherwise, and in spite of the book's other merits as a piece of history and biography that can complement a study of their work (or of the period), the book ends up reading like a soap opera for intellectuals. While I think this point deserves emphasis I don't want to overemphasize this. One of the merits of Rowley's book is that she takes as her model of biography the autobiographical works of Beauvoir -- and to that extent she does employ a similar approach to reflection on their lives that Beauvoir employs in her published works. I just would have liked to see a bit more reflection in the book about the relation between their lives and their more focused philosophical reflections. First and foremost, Sartre and Beavoir are engaged thinkers and a biography that rarely engages with their deepest thinking except at the superficial level of brief summary, seems to me to be lacking. Having said that, I should reiterate that apart from such misgivings I found the book to be very well written and thoroughly enjoyable and could hardly put it down.

Corps au corps.......2006-09-12

This book is a factual chronology of the relationship between Beauvoir and Sartre, particularly as it relates to their extracurricular sexual relations. It is not an in-depth commentary or analysis on how they influenced each other's thinking and writings. I found this aspect of the book disappointing.

Attention should have been paid to how Sartre's way of life runs counter to his existential philosophy- freedom in action is paramount to JPS's existential man and yet he succumbs to addictions to drugs and alcohol in his mid-to-later life. Why does Beauvoir give Sartre her uncritical approval to his meaningless, manipulative and lecherous courtships? And how does such compliance reflect on her nascent feminism?

I expect biographies of two seminal philosophers to raise such questions and provide some level of explication. Despite these reservations, I recommend this book as it is well-researched and well-written.

Tete-a-Tete : Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre .......2006-03-21

I felt part of that tangled and emotionally complex world that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sarte wove around themselves while reading this book. It balanced the passion of their creativity with the very calculating anti-passion of their emotional lives. Never judging, just describing how one phase played into the next and the work that was born out of all that was inspiring enough. All the people who were caught up or made certain to be caught up in those two lives never really made a difference in the final out come. Their work was all that really mattered.

Success despite erotomania.......2006-02-26

De Beauvoir and Sartre, without any doubt, are among the most talented writers of the twentieth century. I have enjoyed de Beauvoir's novels over the years, even when I could never quite get connected with the turgid texts of Sartre; and Sartre could be a perfect idiot on matters political, while de Beauvoir always retained more than her share of good sense. But no matter. Both of these "intellectuals," as they are called in this book, wrote thoughtful books that deeply affected the thinking of the last century.

Now comes a book that conclusively shows one of this duo to have been, well, a sick character. A technical term might be erotomania, the insatiable drive for sexual gratification. Even when Sartre was close to death, blind, incontinent, suffering from dementia, his friends would provide him with young women that he would then proceed to grope. It was the culmination of a lifetime's obsession.

Hazel Rowley, in this scrupulously documented study, has shown us a deeply flawed human being achieve success, despite these considerable odds, at being outstandingly creative.

The human side of genius.......2006-01-15

This book vividly sets genuis in a human perspective. It is a sad story. Genine love requires fidelity and the human heart knows this even if philosophical genius doesn't. Certainly worth reading as an insight for any time. Besides, it provides a magnificent and totally unexpected view of Simone's marvelous behind.

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Perennial Classics)

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Simone rocks!
the Realm of Existentialism
I read this 20 years ago

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Perennial Classics)
Simone De Beauvoir
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060825197
Release Date: 2005-08-02

Book Description

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.

She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time.

Customer Reviews:

Simone rocks!.......2007-08-18

I have read many biographies and autobiographies of influential and powerful women in history and many were good, but Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is by far the best written I've come across. Not only is it very thoughtfully expressed, but de Beauvoir has me totally hooked on her writing.

So much of what she wrote about in her youth I could relate to: the feelings of being oppressed and pressures to conform to behaviors and beliefs she didn't believe in, wavering emotions of joy and pain in interactions with parents, sibling, and friends, wanting to break away from a suffocating atmosphere, and being her own person on HER terms. Many write of the same things, but she expressed exactly how she felt and thought in such a way that I felt I was right there with her! Few authors have grabbed me in such a feverish manner as to cause me to want to read EVERYTHING they wrote. I'm glad to say she is one of them. Highly recommended!

the Realm of Existentialism.......2007-07-30

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is the first of Simone de Beauvoir's four autobiographies.

"The most innocent conversations were full of hidden traps; my parents construed my words with their own idiom and ascribed to me ideas that had nothing in common with what I really thought. I found myself repeating Barres' phrase: 'Why have words when their brutal precision bruises our complicated souls'. As soon as I opened my mouth, I provided them with a stick to beat me with, and once more I would be shut up in that world which I had spent years trying to get away from, in which everything, without any possibility of mistake, has its own name, its set place and its agreed function, in which hate and love, good and evil are as crudely differentiated as black and white, in which from the start everything is classified, catalogued, fixed and formulated, and irrevocably judged; that world with the sharp edges, its bare outlines starkly illuminated by an implacable flat light that is never once touched by the shadow of doubt."

In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir lives in a stark black-and-white world with no gray areas or blurred edges. Everything is stiff and rigid -- almost suffocatingly so -- she cannot breathe (philosophically speaking) and cries a lot. "Dutifulness" has a death-grip around her throat! She abhors blatant tradition, mindless religious rites and glaring absurdity -- but, she loves Paris, books, her first cousin Jacques, writing and nature!

The Luxembourg garden in Paris (filled with picturesque fountains, diverse minds and fragrant flowers, near the Sorbonne university) plays a major (inspirational) focal point in her formative years. At a very early age, Simone decides she will become a world renowned writer -- but, in order to accomplish such a feat, must give up any idea of marriage and children -- at least in the traditional sense. She plans to focus all her creative energies toward her #1 passion, writing.

A meticulous undertaking, satisfying -- very "Dutiful". --Katharena Eiermann, 2007, the Realm of Existentialism, Presidential Hopeful

I read this 20 years ago.......2006-05-30

and I was amazed at her perception, her understanding of what it is to see as a child and how ones relation with ones parents changes. This is must reading for anyone who has been a child or is a parent. Her intelligent articulation of our experience is a gift.

I'm just about to re-read it, and I bet I'll have more to say then.

A Very Easy Death (Pantheon Modern Writers Series)

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the Realm of Existentialism
Simone,Simone,Simone
Forget Sartre; De Beauvoir by way of Camus
Death Comes Not So Easily
I LOVE MY MOMMY!

A Very Easy Death (Pantheon Modern Writers Series)
Simone De Beauvoir
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0394728998
Release Date: 1985-02-12

Book Description

A poignant account of her mother's death from cancer.

Customer Reviews:

the Realm of Existentialism.......2006-12-30

Think: dealing with Death and Dying of loved one

"For indeed, comparatively speaking, her death was an easy one. "Don't leave me in the power of the brutes.""

It all boils down to have an operation and perhaps live a bit longer or euthanatize and be done with it. The subject is death and dying is a main theme of Existentialism, as it deals with the individual and reality. Simone de Beauvoir's mother is 78 and lives alone -- by choice. She has broken the main femur (A bone of the leg situated between the pelvis and knee in human beings. It is the largest and strongest bone in the body. Also called thighbone.). While in the hospital, it is discovered that this is the least of her problems, as she has peritonitis, a blockage in her intestine, a tumor, cancer. She will surely die (almost immediately) without an operation. Simone must decide. Very well written, A Very Easy Death takes place over a 4 week period -- that is how long de Beauvoir's mother lived, after the operation -- cramming as much life and reality between the book covers as possible, without being sappy or tedious.

"I thought of all those who have no one to make that appeal: what agony it must be to feel oneself a defenceless thing, utterly at the mercy of indifferent doctors and over-worked nurses. No hand on the forehead when terror seizes them; no sedative as soon as pain begins to tear them; no lying prattle to fill the silence of the void."

This book is about as real as it gets! --Katharena Eiermann, 2006,, the Realm of Existentialism -- Presidential Hopeful

Simone,Simone,Simone.......2005-01-31

Simone,Simone,Simone.
Whenever someone asked me "did you read Sartre?" ,I usually intend to say "yes,lots of books of him ".but actually other than 1-2 books,I heard Sartre a lot from Simone.Anyway,I read this book 10 years ago probably,and as for the other books of her I enjoyed much.It is about the death of her mother.I remembered that in one part of the book ,her mother wanted to hear that Simone becomes religous,but Simone still defended her believes about being a nonreligous woman,eventhough her mother was dying.I really like that ,because no matter what ,she was always behind her ideas,believes,feelings.She was a strong woman.She was smart.I do not admire people,but if I would, I would admire to her.I remember a saying of her which I want to be :"Being a woman,who thinks like a man,and who feels like a woman".In short,in this book you can see her strength as an independent woman again.Enjoy her ,and start to think independtly.Thanks to my dad for putting Simone's books in his library so that I could discover it.

Forget Sartre; De Beauvoir by way of Camus.......2002-08-13

While enjoyable, this isn't a particularly great memoir. I find it to be a bit choppy, and most of the characters (including De Beauvoir herself) come off as exceedingly unlikable. Still, the subject of death is an interesting one, and the novel is short enough that anyone who is interested enough to consider reading it really has nothing to lose.

What I do find most interesting, however, is how De Beauvoir (who consults her over-rated companion Sartre in the memoir) seems to be preaching Albert Camus' concept of the quantitative life, and living life with full consciousness. Ultimately, the memoir is rather tragic because De Beauvoirs' dying, once inauthentic mother realizes this on her death bed, when it's too late. It's an excellent message, and although it's better from Camus' pen, it is interesting hearing it from De Beauvoir as well.

Death Comes Not So Easily.......2002-03-13

This is a book I would put on a must read list. Death has been spirited away behind closed doors, and banished from our thoughts until it forces its way through, as it always will. This is a must read for anyone working in "Health Care" or with the elderly, also anyone counseling families and the dying. I would hope to find it on a required reading list for medical schools as well. de Beauvoir gives an honest, raw account of her thoughts and fears as her Mother dies; it is a bit reassuring to see that not all of those thoughts are pure and idyllic. She gives any ethics committee a firm reference point in the consideration of assisted death vs. assisted living. Read this book, it will enhance your life.

I LOVE MY MOMMY!.......2001-03-14

The connection we have with our mothers is sacred. They are what brought us into this world, but the only thing that could separate us tighter is death. Our spirits and memories are ours to keep, but there is no longer any physical connection. In "A Very Easy Death", a relationship with a mother and daughter had gotten closer because of a death. In this death is what bonds the daughter to give full dedication and devotion to be with her mother. Unfortunately, the death that is connecting both daughter and mother is the death of her mother that is about to occur. Cancer is what is taking her mother away from her. While her mother is suffering and fighting against the cancer, the daughter is there by her side. She notices, "a full-blooded, spirited woman lived on inside her, but a stranger to herself, deformed and mutilated (Beauvoir 43)." Simone, the daughter, sees her full-hearted, spirited mother inside, but the cancer is the stranger of her body that is deforming and mutilating her. Although, Simone shows no suffering when she's around her mother, but she is indeed disturb when she's alone. Her mother is leaving her. Simone state "everyday had an irreplaceable value for her. And she was going to die. She did not know it: but I did. In her name, I revolted against it (Beauvoir 83)." Simone is spending precious time with her mother - spending valuable time, but the cancer is what is stopping her mother to notice it. The cancer has taken over her mother's life. This still does not stop Simone from being with her though. There is nowhere in doubt I'll leave my mother while she's miserable and suffering all at once. I cannot bare to think my mother actually leaving me, but it has to happen eventually. In "A Very Easy Death", Simone's mother demonstrates a role model on her own daughter and me. She displays a true role model that is fighting against her death. I enjoyed this novel dearly. It showed me that I should always keep that connection I have with my mother until the day "I" die.

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A work of real meaning, despite,..
Never thought that Sartre could make you cry?
A Beaver's Tale

Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
Simone De Beauvoir
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 039472898X
Release Date: 1985-02-12

Customer Reviews:

A work of real meaning, despite,.........2005-03-21

I could not quite make out how to perceive this book. On the one hand it is a testament of a lifelong friendship and love. On the other hand it seems to me it is an indictment of the beloved when they are no longer around to answer. And here the indictment comes not necessarily out of a desire to injure, but simply through stating the facts about certain aspects of Sartre's life. His capacity for multiple loyalty was very great especially when this had to do with young women. And according to other sources de Beauvoir's role in these relationships was not necessarily a very good one.
Still we are talking about two very significant 'minds' who fertilized each other- two great friends who helped and inspired each other- and if one , Sartre, was the senior partner, and the other deBeauvoir the survivor who has the last say still their dialogue and their life, and this work of farewell have real meaning.

Never thought that Sartre could make you cry?.......2002-11-24

Then you need to read this book. It is Simone de Beauvoir's first-person account of the last ten years of Sartre's life, and it is heartbreaking to read in several places. Her descriptions in particular of his final few days are wrenching, and I did actually cry as she described Sartre's death. The prose is characteristic of de Beauvoir: deeply and intimately detailed, meticulous, and dense in some places. But the reading is ultimately rewarding as it gives the reader an even more thorough understanding of the devoted side of de Beauvoir--and the very human and mortal side of the great philosopher Sartre.

A Beaver's Tale.......2001-06-18

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were *the* couple of the 20th century. For all the immense history they created, it may be beyond our ability to imagine just how and why they were first drawn together, or more why they *stayed* together right up until Sartre's death in 1980. This two-part memoir is remarkable for its poignant intimacy, first as an historical record from 1970-1980, and then as a transcription of de Beauvoir's own interviews with Sartre during that same period of time. These two were a rough mix, as though that was a revelation. And, ironically, it's perhaps de Beauvior's own deep emotional commitment that comes through most clearly in these pages. On the other hand, we're also offered a fascinating view of their long public life together. From the times of divided German-occupied France, to the political activism of the 60s and beyond...and, above all, the writings they produced! If anything, this book reveals how moot is the point of Sartre's caustic personality, and to what extent he may have "used" her. (As if a woman of this caliber *could* be used!) Their focus was always on the change they hoped to produce in the world. Well, and for de Beauvoir, at least, there was also the issue of their own personal relationship. Therein lies the charm of this book. You won't be disappointed.

The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings

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The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings
Shari (ed.) Benstock
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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Binding: Paperback

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The Female Autograph: Theory and Practice of Autobiography from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century
Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives

ASIN: 0807842184

Book Description

This collection of twelve essays discusses the principles and practices of women's autobiographical writing in the United States, England, and France from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Employing feminist and poststructuralist methodologies, the essays examine a wide range of private life writings—letters, journals, diaries, memoirs, pedagogical texts, and fictional and factual autobiographies. The concepts of theory and practice—as opposing and mutually exclusive methodologies, as focal points for conflicting interpretations, and finally as complementary approaches to the study of literature—are central to this collection.

The Private Self explores the links between the historical devaluation of women's writings and the cultural definitions of women that have constrained their writing practices and excluded them from the canon of traditional autobiographical texts. Collectively, these essays expose the cultural biases that derive from notions of selfhood defined by a white, masculine, and Christian experience. In an effort to revise our prevailing concept of autobiography, these essays deal with differences of race, class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender.

Discussed here are writings by more than two dozen women including Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Alice James, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Forten Grimke, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Sophie Kovalevsky, Anais Nin, Hilda Doolittle, and Simone de Beauvoir. The work of these writers reveals a split between public and private self-representations, and it is the notion of a private self expressed through women's autobiographical writings that forms the link among all the essays.

Letters to Sartre
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Letters to Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir
Manufacturer: Arcade Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Philosophers | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Beauvoir, Simone de | ( B ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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The Second Sex

ASIN: 1559702125

Book Description

In 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre's letters, maintaining that her own letters to him had been lost. They were found by de Beauvoir's adopted daughter, and published to a storm of controversy in France. Tracing the emotional and triangular complications of her life with Sartre, the letters reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent, but also as vulnerable, passionate, jealous and committed.

Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (P.S.)

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Vivid and engaging portrait of a relationship -- but philosophically unenlightening

Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (P.S.)
Hazel Rowley
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Philosophers | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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She Came to Stay
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Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beauvoir, 1926-1939

ASIN: 0060520604
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

Passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays Sartre and Beauvoir up close.

Tête-à-Tête magnificently details the passion, daring, humor, and contradictions of a remarkably unorthodox relationship.

Customer Reviews:

Vivid and engaging portrait of a relationship -- but philosophically unenlightening.......2006-12-20

Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman

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Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman
Toril Moi
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women Writers & Feminist Theory | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 063119181X

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