ABSTRACT

The three volumes of Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs contain nearly a million words. The first volume, the story of the development of a "dutiful daughter" from a completely conventional home into an independent, spiritually free young woman who finds happiness and meaning in her work and in an intellectual marriage, has moved many readers. The second volume, La Force de I'Age, was a record of human relationships, experiences, and travels, leading straight into wartime occupied France, and also into the discovery of politics as well as, in an unforgettable passage, death. The importance of the trivial presupposes an interest in the accuracy of details. But there is in this internationalist woman a very French and, possibly, aristocratic trait: she never takes the trouble to spell names correctly. Simone de Beauvoir supports the death penalty for political crimes, and after the war she was in favor of the execution of all those French "miliciens" who had blood on their hands.