ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Fallaize's international reputation as a scholar was forged particularly by her work on Beauvoir and French women's writing, but its range was much wider, encompassing early work on Malraux and Etienne Carjat. She was perhaps typical of the generation, broadly defined, that came of age intellectually in the heady theoretical days of structuralism and feminism, and that was also steeped in existentialism, an important springboard for so long overlooked. Existing work on Beauvoir was focused upon existentialism and politics, and reading the fiction as an expression of these. Feminist work on Beauvoir was appearing by this stage, but tended to celebrate the discovery of Beauvoir as feminist mother figure. The importance of the gender politics of narrative, of analysis of the texture of writing, and the championing of women writers expanding both the mainstream and the feminist canon are all to be seen again in her French Women's Writing.
