Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (UK: /də ˈboʊvwɑːr/, US: /də boʊ ˈvwoʊɑːr/; French: [simɔn də bovwaʁ]; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. She did not consider herself a philosopher during her lifetime, and others did not classify her as one at the time of her death. However, her work greatly influenced feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, and books about philosophy, politics, and social issues. She is best known for her book The Second Sex (1949), which examined the challenges women faced and became a key text in modern feminism. She also wrote famous novels, including She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954).

Her most lasting contribution to literature was her memoirs, especially the first volume, Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée (1958). She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature. She was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961, 1969, and 1973. However, she faced controversy when she briefly lost her teaching job after being accused of sexually abusing some of her students.

Personal life

Simone de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908, into a middle-class family in the 6th district of Paris. Her father, Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, was a lawyer who once wanted to be an actor. Her mother, Françoise Beauvoir (born Brasseur), was the daughter of a wealthy banker and a devout Catholic. Simone’s parents were often away from home, so she was mostly raised by her nanny, Louise. Louise had a difficult relationship with Françoise. Simone also had a sister named Hélène, who was born on June 6, 1910. Simone was very smart and showed great interest in learning, especially because her father encouraged her. He once said,

— Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), in Caroline Moorehead, A Talk with Simone de Beauvoir, The New York Times

In her book Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone wrote about her childhood:

— Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Book One, page 41

After finishing high school at Cours Desir, Simone took exams in mathematics and philosophy at age 17 in 1925. She then studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature at the Institut Sainte-Marie. Although she was not officially enrolled, she attended classes at the École Normale Supérieure to prepare for the agrégation, a difficult exam that ranks students in philosophy. It was there that she met Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu, who gave her the nickname "Castor" (meaning "beaver"). She later studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. In 1928, she earned her degree and wrote a thesis on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg. In 1929, she took the agrégation exam and came in second place, behind Sartre, who won first. At 21, she was the youngest person to pass the exam. She also finished second in an exam on "General Philosophy and Logic," behind Simone Weil. This achievement helped her become financially independent.

Simone was raised Catholic and attended convent schools. She was very religious and wanted to become a nun. However, at age 14, she began to question her faith and later stopped believing in religion. She remained an atheist for the rest of her life. She explained her beliefs in her book All Said and Done:

— Simone Bertrand de Beauvoir, All Said and Done

After World War I, Simone’s family struggled financially because they lost much of their wealth. Her mother wanted her daughters to attend a prestigious convent school, which made their situation worse. Without a dowry (a gift given to a bride), Simone had fewer marriage options. She decided to work to support herself. She worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss while they completed teaching requirements at the same school. From 1929 to 1943, she taught at the lycée level until she could earn enough money from her writing. She taught at the Lycée Montgrand in Marseille, the Lycée Jeanne-d’Arc in Rouen, and the Lycée Molière in Paris (1936–39).

In 1945, during the trial of Robert Brasillach, Simone supported his execution for supporting Fascism and the genocide of Jewish people. She explained her stance in her 1946 essay An Eye for an Eye.

Simone met Jean-Paul Sartre during her college years. She was not interested in a romantic relationship at first, but later changed her mind. In October 1929, they became a couple and remained together for 51 years until Sartre’s death in 1980. After being confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him temporarily. He once said, "Let’s sign a two-year lease." Although Simone wrote that marriage was impossible because she had no dowry, scholars note that her ideas about relationships in The Second Sex did not match traditional marriage standards of the time.

Instead of marrying, Simone and Sartre formed a lifelong "soul partnership" that was sexual but not exclusive and did not involve living together. She never married or had children, which gave her time to focus on her education, political causes, writing, and having relationships. Her open relationships sometimes overshadowed her academic work. A scholar once criticized an audience for asking more about Sartre’s work than about Beauvoir’s.

Simone and Sartre shared a deep intellectual connection. She said, "He is in my heart, in my body, and above all the incomparable friend of my thought." They read each other’s work, and debates continue about how much they influenced each other’s existentialist writings, such as Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay and Phenomenology and Intent. Recent studies of Beauvoir’s work focus on other influences, like Hegel and Leibniz. The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite inspired many French thinkers, including Sartre, to study Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, created her own critique of his ideas about consciousness.

Simone was bisexual and had relationships with young women, which some people found controversial. French author Bianca Lamblin wrote in her book Memoirs of a Deranged Young Girl that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher, Simone, who was in her 30s. Simone introduced her to Sartre, and the three had a sexually exploitative relationship for three years. Bianca wrote her memoirs after Sartre’s 1990 book Letters to Castor and Other Friends revealed that she was referred to by the pseudonym Louise Védrine. Bianca said she felt "nauseated and disgusted" when she learned the truth about the woman she had loved.

In 1943, Simone was suspended from her teaching job after being accused of seducing her 17-year-old student, Natalie Sorokine, in 1939. Sorokine’s parents charged Simone with "debauching a minor" (the legal age of consent in France was 13 until 1945, when it became 15). Her teaching license was revoked but later restored.

In The Prime of Life, Simone described

The Second Sex

The Second Sex, first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, changes an existentialist idea—that existence comes before essence—into a feminist one. Simone de Beauvoir wrote, "One is not born a woman but becomes a woman" ("On ne naît pas femme, on le devient"). This phrase explains the difference between biological sex and the social and historical ideas about gender, which include stereotypes. Beauvoir argued that the main reason for women's oppression is how society and history have defined femininity as the "other."

Beauvoir called women the "second sex" because society sees them as less important than men. She noted that Aristotle said women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities," and Thomas Aquinas called women "imperfect men" and "incidental" beings. She also quoted, "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."

Beauvoir believed women have the same ability to make choices as men. She said women can choose to move beyond being limited by their circumstances and reach a state called "transcendence," where they take responsibility for themselves and the world, choosing their freedom.

Parts of The Second Sex were first published in Les Temps modernes in June 1949. The second volume appeared in France a few months later. In the United States, the book was published quickly after a translation by Howard Parshley, as requested by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf. However, Parshley had limited knowledge of French and philosophy (he was a biology professor at Smith College), so many parts of the book were mistranslated or removed, changing Beauvoir's original message. For years, Knopf refused to publish a more accurate version, even after scholars asked.

In 2009, a second translation was released to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the book's original publication. In 2010, Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier created the first full translation, adding back about one-third of the original text.

In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of The Second Sex, Beauvoir argued that men made women the "Other" in society by creating a false image of mystery around them. She said men used this to avoid understanding women's problems or helping them. She also noted that this kind of oppression by higher groups toward lower groups happens in other areas, such as race, class, and religion, but she believed it was most extreme with gender, where men used stereotypes to support a male-dominated society.

Although Beauvoir supported the feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and believed in women's economic independence and equal education, she was at first hesitant to call herself a feminist. Later, after seeing the feminist movement grow in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she said a socialist revolution alone was not enough to free women. In 1972, she publicly called herself a feminist in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.

In 2018, the original manuscript pages of Le Deuxième Sexe were published.

Other notable works

Simone de Beauvoir wrote her first novel, She Came to Stay, in 1943. Some people believe the story was inspired by her and Jean-Paul Sartre’s relationships with Olga Kosakiewicz and her sister, Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of Beauvoir’s students at a school in Rouen during the early 1930s. She became close to Olga, but Sartre was not accepted by her. Instead, he began a relationship with Wanda. After Sartre died, he continued to support Wanda. He also helped Olga for many years until she married Jacques-Laurent Bost, who was also a lover of Beauvoir. The main idea of the novel focuses on a philosophical question: how people relate to themselves and others.

The novel is set just before World War II began. Beauvoir created a character based on the complicated relationships between Olga and Wanda. In the story, fictional versions of Beauvoir and Sartre are involved in a relationship with a young woman. The novel also explores how Beauvoir and Sartre’s relationship was affected by this situation.

After She Came to Stay, Beauvoir wrote other books, including The Blood of Others, which examines the idea of personal responsibility. The story follows two French students in love during World War II who join the Resistance.

In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, about ethical choices. The characters in the essay have a conversation to discuss questions like, “What makes an action ethical?” and “Can violence ever be right?”

Beauvoir continued writing about existentialism in her next essay, The Ethics of Ambiguity, published in 1947.

— Debra Bergoffen, Simone de Beauvoir, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition)
— Dmitri, in Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Part IV Book XI Chapter 4
— Shannon Mussett, Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Beauvoir, Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty started a political magazine called Les Temps Modernes. The magazine included writers with different ideas, such as communists, Catholics, and socialists. Sartre explained the purpose of Les Temps Modernes in the introduction of its first issue, published on October 1, 1945.

Beauvoir used the magazine to share her own work and ideas before writing full books. She stayed as an editor until her death. However, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a long disagreement, and Merleau-Ponty left the magazine. Beauvoir supported Sartre and stopped working with Merleau-Ponty. In her later years, Beauvoir held meetings for the magazine in her home and contributed more than Sartre, who often needed encouragement to share his thoughts.

In 1954, Beauvoir’s book The Mandarins won France’s top literary award, the Prix Goncourt. The novel is a fictionalized story set after World War II and follows the lives of philosophers and friends in Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, who is honored in the book.

Algren was upset by how openly Beauvoir described their personal life in The Mandarins and her autobiographies. He criticized her work in reviews of American translations. Many details about this part of Beauvoir’s life, including letters she wrote to Algren, became public only after her death.

Beauvoir’s early novel Les Inséparables, which was not published for many years, came out in French in 2020 and in English in 2021. The book, written in 1954, tells the story of her first love, a classmate named Elisabeth Lacoin, who died before age 22 from a disease called viral encephalitis. As a teenager, Elisabeth had a deep and difficult relationship with Beauvoir. According to Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir, Beauvoir believed that Elisabeth’s death was caused by the strict society she lived in. Sartre did not approve of the novel, calling it too personal to publish during Beauvoir’s lifetime.

Legacy

Simone de Beauvoir's book The Second Sex is seen as an important work in the history of feminism. Although she once said she was not a feminist, she later agreed that her book helped shape the feminist movement. The Second Sex had a big impact, helping start the second wave of feminism in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. Even though Beauvoir once joked that being labeled a feminist felt like being trapped in a "concrete block," her work helped future feminists. Leaders of the second wave, like Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Ann Oakley, and Germaine Greer, read The Second Sex in translation. They all respected Beauvoir's ideas and visited her in France or dedicated their own works to her. Betty Friedan, who wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963—a book often seen as the start of second-wave feminism in the U.S.—said that reading The Second Sex in the 1950s helped her understand women's lives and contributed to her work for the women's movement.

Beauvoir had a close relationship with many readers. Many people wrote her letters about her work, and she often replied. One person who received a letter from Beauvoir was Annie Ernaux, a Nobel Prize winner. In the letter, Beauvoir praised Ernaux's talent after the publication of her first book, Les Armoires vides.

In the early 1970s, Beauvoir supported the French League for Women's Rights to fight against sexism in France. Her influence on feminism goes beyond just helping start the second wave. Her ideas also affected areas like literary criticism, history, philosophy, religion, science, and therapy. When Beauvoir first joined the feminist movement, she wanted to make abortion legal. Donna Haraway said that modern ideas about gender come from Beauvoir's famous statement: "One is not born a woman [one becomes one]." This quote is used in the title of Monique Wittig's 1981 essay One Is Not Born a Woman. Judith Butler later said that Beauvoir's use of the word "become" suggests that gender is a process shaped by culture and personal choices.

In Paris, there is a square named Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir to honor Beauvoir and her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre. It is one of the few squares in Paris named after a couple. They lived nearby at 42 rue Bonaparte.

In 2019, Time magazine created 89 new covers to celebrate women who made history from 1920 to 2019. Beauvoir was chosen to represent the year 1949.

Prizes

• Prix Goncourt, 1954
• Jerusalem Prize, 1975
• Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 1978 /