Article - Adventures of Feminism - Simone de Beauvoir - Ann Curthoys

Adventures of Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir's Autobiographies, Women's Liberation, and Self-Fashioning Author(s): Ann Curthoys Source: Feminist Review,
No. 64, Feminism 2000: One Step beyond? (Spring, 2000), pp. 3-18 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395698 . Accessed: 10/09/2013 17:55
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Adventures
of
Feminism:
Women's Simonede Beauvoir's and Liberation, Autobiographies, Self-Fashioning

Ann Curthoys
Abstract
While The SecondSex is usuallytaken as Simonede Beauvoir's majortheoretical c contributionto feminism,in the 1960s and 1970s it was very often throughher - especiallyMemoirsof a Dutiful Daughter,The Primeof Life, m autobiographies m and Forceof Circumstance, along with novels such as She Cameto Stay and The - that her feministideaswere most thoroughlyabsorbed.The autobi- ? Mandarins ographiesbecamenothing less than a guide for the fashioningof a new kind of feminineself. Where The Second Sex had intimatedthat a significantaspect of a humanliberationlay in women not losing their identityor their sense of self in c those of men, it was the autobiographies which suggestedand demonstrated in great detail how this might be done. In them, the rejectionof conventionalmar; riage and childrenwas no mere slogan, but the foundationof what seemed to, to be a fascinating and challenging life. In this paper, I reflect ,. youngfemalereaders on de Beauvoirand her historicaland contemporary firstthroughremrelevance: iniscenceand re-reading of the autobiographies thenwith an historical themselves; examinationof how they were read,takingSydney, as my example;and Australia, on subsequent feministcritique. finallyby offeringsome reflections
A
Keywords
self; de Beauvoir;autobiographies; feminism;women'sliberation;independence; femaleintellectual; 1960s Twentieth-century feminism was many things: a set of ideas, a political and social movement, a cultural renaissance. It was a force for change and a guide for living. Feminism was the site of the reinvention of the category 'woman' in the 1970s, and then of its deconstruction in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, at the turn of the century, after thirty years of involvement in feminism in all these aspects, I ponder the meaning and future of the feminism that has helped shape my life. In feminism's much-noticed episodic history, giving rise to the metaphor of waves, we seem to be at an ebb-tide. Something, the feminism of the last thirty years, has ended, and something else seems about to take its place. We live in an obscurely apocalyptic moment.
Feminist Review ISSN 0141-7789 print/ISSN 1466-4380 online ? Feminist Review Collective
One occasionfor reflectionon this sense of an endingand a turningpoint of the publicationof Simonede Beauvoir's has beenthe fiftiethanniversary
foundational and revolutionary book, The Second Sex. Just as the book's
in 1979 inspireda rush of scholarship,and de Beauthirtiethanniversary on her importance, voir'sdeathin 1986 led to an outpouringof reflections so the fiftieth anniversaryhas been marked by conferencesaround the with the world.1The conjunctionof this importantfeministanniversary end of a century,and indeeda millennium,seems to have focused all our text was so Does the feminismfor which de Beauvoir's mindswonderfully. still exist? important leadsme less to TheSecondSex than however, Thinkingaboutde Beauvoir, and novels, and to assessingfeminismless as a set to her autobiographies of ideas and a political movementthan as a guide to living. As a young TheSecondSex woman in Australiain the 1960s and 1970s, de Beauvoir's and indeedsome of the meantverylittle to me, while the autobiographies, WhereThe SecondSex had intimatedthat a signovels,meanteverything. their subjecnificantaspectof humanliberationlay in women reclaiming how was the which and demonstrated it tivity, suggested autobiographies this might be done. Indeed,de Beauvoirtells us that she conceivedof the first,and that The SecondSex was writtenin preparation autobiographies for them:'Wanting to talk about myself'she says, 'I becameawarethat to do so I should first have to describethe condition of woman in general' - Memoirsof a Dutiful (de Beauvoir,1965: 185). The autobiographies and All Said and Daughter, The Prime of Life, Force of Circumstance, Done - along with novels such as She Cameto Stay and The Mandarins, were importantin providinga guide for the fashioningof a new kind of
feminine self. In them, the details of a life - as an intellectual, a writer and a woman - were spelt out in painstaking and fascinating detail. For us, the young women in the 1960s who became the Women's Liberationists of the 1970s, her life was truly exemplary, to be pondered and explored for clues as to how we might live differently from our parents' generation and from most of the society around us. She demonstrated to us an art of living, in Foucault's terms in The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self a cultivation of the arts of the self, which was otherwise unfamiliar. By providing a glimpse of what it might mean to be independent, intellectual and female, the autobiographies helped lay the groundwork for second-wave feminism.
Rememberingthe autobiographies
4
Some aspects of these autobiographies have stayed with me ever since I read them thirty years ago. Before re-reading them or any of the critical
for this article,I that has subsequently literature appearedin preparation noted what I remembered most clearly. remember the account FromMemoirsof a Dutiful DaughterI particularly as I was doing when I first read these books. I of studyingat university, the pleasuresto be anticipatedin being describedas especiallyremember de Beau'havinga mind like a man'. FromThe Primeof Life I remember whethershe was as good a philosopheras Sartre,and convoir discussing cludingthat she was not.
Etchedon my brainforeveris the discussionin The Primeof Life of living in hotels, moving from one to another.I kept wonderinghow could you Did this meanyou live in a hotel - would it not be inordinately expensive? had no furnitureof your own? I also rememberthe accounts of the etiquetteof cafe society,of meetingpeople, discussing,reading,and writing. remarkthat if One of the things that has stayedwith me is de Beauvoir's on enteringa cafe you see two of your friendstalkingintensely, you don't disturbthem by joining them. The idea that a cafe could be a focus for socialization,or a place to write, seemedutterlystrangeto me. I rememteacherin ber too, verywell, the accountof her earlyyearsas a university the 1930s, in provincialtowns like Marseilleand Rouen,and her going on long walks alone at this time. I don't remember much about her accountof the war, but I do remember the evocationin Forceof Circumstance, of Parisin the yearsimmediately after the war, the feelingof having to make a new and bettersociety,the I remember her talking feeling of liberation,freedom,and responsibility. of her publishers,and of Le TempsModerne.I remember the exploration of her affairwith Nelson Algren,especiallya scenein which they have sex in front of a fireplace,but also the fact they had to separate,with their lives embeddedin two differentcities, Parisand Chicago.I also remember her describing how the affairhad to end, since she had to live in Parisin orderto write, and he to stay in the US for the samereason.And I remember,too, the manystoriesof travelling,often alone, in North Africa,in the of thinking US, wherever.She writes at one point, I seem to remember, about how all these experiences,her knowledgeof the world, would die with her, and for some reason I still think about that, the death of one's particularcombinationof experiencesand ideas with one's own death; how little of one's life one can record. One of my strongestmemoriesfrom Forceof Circumstance is the harrownarrative of her about French the ing feelings society during Algerianwar - how she withdrewfrommuchpoliticallife and stayedin her hotel or flat playing classicalmusic. She is so horrifiedby the role of the Frenchin her position.Perhapsthis story Algeriashe cannotfind a way to articulate
of alienationremainsso vivid becauseit touchesways I have felt about my own society at differenttimes, especiallywhen conservative governments
' are in power, or at moments during Australia's involvement in the war in Vietnam. Her recounting of how much The Second Sex meant to women all over the world, who wrote to her to the end of her life, is with me still. And I remember from All Said and Done, the last volume, her meeting her companion and friend, Sylvie Le Bon, and her saying she thought in her sixties she would never make a new friend, but now in fact she had. But most of all, what I remember from the autobiographies collectively are two things: the seizing of independence, of taking responsibility for one's own life, and the impression of extraordinary candour and self-knowledge. How could I ever, I thought, be able to understand myself so well?
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Re-readingthe autobiographies
When I re-read the autobiographies recently, I wondered how it would all appear now, after thirty years of feminism, writing and living as an intellectual woman in Australia. How different would these books look? Strangely perhaps, their force and meaning still seems to me much the same - less exotic, less unusual, but still interesting in their articulation of the details of an intellectual life. This emphasis on detail emerges from the very beginning of The Prime of Life, which starts at the time when she has completed her final exams, has left her parents' house in the provinces and is beginning her adult life. She describes the room she lived in at her grandmother's home in Paris, with its simple furniture, orange wallpaper, divan and kerosene heater. She tells tuswhat she ate -'My lunch was a bowl of borsch at Dominique's, and for supper I took a cup of hot chocolate at La Coupole' (de Beauvoir, 1962: 16). And, especially important, she tells us what she wore: Clothes and cosmeticshad never interestedme overmuch,but I nevertheless took somepleasurein dressing as I wantedto.... All my life I had beendressed in cotton or woollen frocks,so now I reactedby choosing self-stylematerials instead- crepede chine and a ghastlyfabricof embossedvelvetcalled velours frappewhich was all the rage that winter.... I alwayswore the same get-up, whateverthe circumstances. (p. 16) she tells us about her new with Sartre. Tantalizingly, arrangements We would meet each morningin the Luxembourg Gardens... it was late at before we We walked the streets of night Paris,still talking- about separated. ourselvesand our relationship, our futurelife, our yet unwrittenbooks. (p. 17) And a little further on:
We imaginedourselvesto be wholly independent agents.... To be a writer,to create- this was an adventurescarcelyto be embarkedupon without a conabsolutecontrolover ends and means. victionof absoluteself-mastery, (pp. 18-19) They had little money but did not mind, and drank a lot: 'It was seldom that I got to bed before two in the morning. This explains why I got through the day so quickly: I was asleep' (p. 48). On Sartre'sinitiative they agreed to a long-term relationship which would not exclude others. They also agreed to tell one another everything: 'not only would we never lie to one another, but neither of us would conceal anything from the other' (p. 24). When she was posted to Marseille and he to Paris, he suggested marriage as a way of ensuring they would receive a double posting. She refused, and also confirmed to herself her decision not to have children, so great was her aversion to her own family life (p. 67). Yet if she and Sartre shared so much, they regarded their freedom very differently. What was freedom for her was irksome duty for him: It struckme as miraculous that I had brokenfree from my past, and was now self-sufficient and self-determining: I had establishedmy autonomyonce and and could now on the otherhand,had forever, nothing depriveme of it. Sartre, on moved to a of his as a man which he had long merely stage development foreseen with loathing ... [he] was entering the adult world which he so detested. (p.23) They had at this time little interest in politics, especially parliamentary politics, and as far as I can tell she does not mention the fact that at this time women in France could not vote. 'Changes of cabinet and League of Nations debates we found ... futile ... Vast financial scandals did not shock us, since for us capitalism and corruption were synonymous terms' (p. 45). In her recounting of her life in Marseille there is, indeed, the discussion of walking I had remembered over thirty years. She managed, she says, 'to turn a pastime into a most exacting duty' (pp. 76-7). On Thursdays and Sundays she always left the house before dawn, winter and summer alike, and returned after nightfall. Again the details, just as for Paris: I didn'tbotherwith all the preliminaries, and neverobtainedthe semiofficial rig of rucksack,studdedshoes, rough skirt, and windcheater. I would slip on an old dressand a pair of espadrilles, and take a few bananasand buns with me in a basket. (p. 77) What an enticing image of freedom, of stepping out, this still is.
At Rouen, she established a new routine, and recounted it in the by now familiar detail: Paul on the I worked, and correctedexercises,and had lunch in the Brasserie ... therewere few customers,becausethe food was not good. Rue Grand-Pont The silence,the casualservice,and the dim yellowishlight all attractedme. (p. 101) There she formed a close friendship with a student, Olga, who later had an affair with Sartre and they formed a trio, which ultimately dissolved. The three of them were united in: the provinces,family hatingSundaycrowds,fashionableladiesand gentlemen, and sort of 'humanism'. We liked exotic children, music; the quais life, any Seine with their coal and dockside the low, loafers; along barges disreputable little bars;and the silent lonelinessof the night.
(p. 204)2
it: |i
Back in Paris, she moved into a hotel, and had 'a divan, and bookshelves, and a really comfortable working desk' (p. 251). The details about her desk and bookshelves are important, for what mattered more than anything else was the desire to write. Her writing, and her economic independence, are crucial to her. Of the latter, she writes, I did not deny my femininity,any more than I took it for granted:I simply as men did.... I was ignoredit. I had the same freedomsand responsibilities the curse that most that of women, spared weighsupon dependence.... to earn one'slivingis not an end in itself,but it is the only way to achievesecurelybased innerindependence. (p. 292) In Force of Circumstance the affair with Algren in the late 1940s is described. I couldn't find the account of sex in front of the fireplace anywhere, and later found it in The Mandarins, a revealing misremembering, indicating how close both She Came to Stay and The Mandarins were to the autobiographies in content and sentiment.3 Yet there, in Force of Circumstance, just as I remembered it, was the account of how they had to part: Even if Sartrehadn'texisted, I would neverhave gone to live permanently in I if or had I tried to do would not have been able to bear so, Chicago; certainly more than one or two yearsof an exile which would have destroyedboth my reasonsfor writing and the possibilitiesof doing so. On his side, althoughI often suggestedit to him, Algrencould neverhave come to live in Paris,even for six monthsof the year;to write,he neededto stayrootedin his own country, in his own city, in the world he had createdfor himself.We had both already them elseshaped our lives, and there could be no question of transplanting where. 1965a: 160) (de Beauvoir,
And there,too, is the discussionof the immensepopularityof The Second Sex amongwomen, and the manymanywomen who wrote to her:' "Your book was a greathelp to me. Yourbook saved me," are the words I have o readin lettersfromwomen of all ages and all walks of life' (p. 192). Three hundredpages later,she returnsto this theme, telling of the many letters she has receivedin responseto her work - some tiresome,some insulting, someenvious,sharp-tongued, angry.But,she says, 'themajorityof my cortell their me of fellow feelings,confide their difficulties,ask m respondents for adviceor explanations'. Shelikesto meetstudentsof eithersex, 'to find out what young people are thinking,what they know, what they want, how they live' (p. 476). It is, she says, 'mostlyyoungwomen who come to see me ... they discuss their problems with me. Some of them make confessions'(p. 477). In the epilogueto Forceof Circumstance extravagant she pondersthe questionof femaleindependence. She has been attacked, she tells us, for maintaining her relationship with Sartrefor so manyyears while insistingthat women be independent.She insists that this relationship was never a dependentone: 'My independencehas never been in onto dangerbecauseI have neverunloadedany of my own responsibilities Sartre.I have never given my supportto any idea, any decision,without firsthavinganalysedit and acceptedit on my own account.My emotions have beenthe productof a directcontactwith the world ... he has helped me, as I have helpedhim. I have not lived throughhim' (p. 645).
'
I found the well-remembered discussionof the Algerianwar. Opposing Frenchactions in Algeria,she and Sartrebecomeisolated,and withdraw. 'My own situation',she says, 'with regardto my country,to the world, to myself,was completelyalteredby it all. I am an intellectual,I take words and the truth to be of value; every day I had to undergo an endlessly repeatedonslaughtof lies spewed from everymouth' (p. 365). She found that she was labelledanti-French and says, 'I becameso. I could no longer bear my fellow citizens.When I dined out with Lanzmannor Sartre,we hid away in a corner'(p. 368). And then later:'Westoppedgoing out' (p. 369). Evenlater: There wereto beno moretripsthrough France. andother Tavant, Saint-Savin, I had never seen no held attraction for me ... From thattime places longer any on I livedthrough theprideof ourautumns in humiliation, andthesweetness of summer in bitterness.
(p. 456)
And she rediscoversmusic, just as I had remembered.'Two or three eveningsa week, I would settle down on my divanwith a glass of Scotch and listen for threeor four hours' (p. 485), thoughthis pleasurein music seemsless connectedto herwithdrawalfromFrenchsocietyoverthe Algerian war than I had remembered. There, on the second last page of Force
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so well: 'I thinkwith sadness is the sentimentI remember of Circumstance, of all the books I've read, all the places I've seen, all the knowledgeI've amassedand that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings,all the culture,so many places:and suddenlynothing' (pp. 657-80). How Beauvoir's autobiographies read in How de de Beauvoir's were read in the the 1960s 1960s and and autobiographieswere
zc
early 1970s
Sincethe mid-1970sand especiallysincede Beauvoir's deathin 1986, there has beena wealth of criticalwork which stressesthe constructed natureof in in and these (Hewitt, autobiography general autobiographies particular 1990; Pilardi, 1991). Scholarshave drawn attentionto significantomissions in the autobiographies, comparedto what we now know about her life from other sources such as her posthumouslypublishedletters. Significantomissionsincludede Beauvoir's sexualrelationswith women;her affairwith Jacques-Laurent Bost, portrayedin the autobiographies simply as a close friend;variousothersexualescapades suchas herexpulsionfrom a Parisianhigh school afterher affairwith a femalestudent;and her high consumptionof alcohol (Winegarten,1988; Bair, 1990; Simons, 1992). Her biographer DeirdreBairhas also revealedmanyminorerrorsof detail in her accountof specificevents,names, and places (Bair,1990). Michele Le Doeuff draws attention to the probable editorial role of Sartre(Le Doeuff, 1991: 135-210). MargaretWalterspoints out that even without this additionalknowledge,we can see from the texts themselvesthat de Beauvoirkeeps disturbingor disruptivethoughts at a distance, is often 1976: 362) about herrelationship with Sartre,and 'oddlyvague'(Walters, has a generaltendencyto admitor reveal,and then concealand minimize. The relationship with Sartreis, she says, I think accurately, 'an absenceat the heartof her life story' (p. 369). What I read in the 1960s as a frank and truthfulaccount of a life is, of course,not fully either.But this is not reallythe point, or at least not here. I now take the constructedness of any autobiography, any form of lifewith is the autobiographies, not writing,for granted.WhatI am concerned the (unknowable) truthof the life (Fraser, As Pilardi 1999). Jo-Ann points like all history,narrates the past selectively, andcannot out, autobiography, do otherwise (Pilardi, 1991: 151), and de Beauvoir'sautobiographies themselvesrepeatedlydraw attentionto the fact that the life is narrated, shapedand told. What interestsme here, then, is the importanceof such texts far beyondthe specificsocietyand culturethat producedthem.Given their immense international popularity, and the strong feelings they feminismthrough a excited, we can learn a lot about twentieth-century study of how they were read. It is to this 'reading'that I now turn.
1(
When I read the autobiographies and novels in Sydney in the late 1960s, I was part of the rapidly growing number of young women entering university, many the first in their families to do so. It was hard to know how to be a woman at university and beyond - there were few models, and there was a marked contradiction between the freedom we experienced in our education and the strong social conventions that threatened to pull us back into traditional female roles after graduation. Were we to be 'as good as the men' and pursue a life of economic independence, dedicated to intellectual activity and pursuits? Or were we to reject our education for marriage and motherhood? Or were we to forge something else altogether? In Sydney in the decade or two before the advent of Women's Liberation in 1970, there were, as in Paris, people rebelling against 'bourgeois', or more accurately in our case 'respectable suburban' morality, and there was also a variety of women's groups seeking equality and opportunity for women. The problem was that these two did not go together - the ideals of independence available to us were extremely masculine, while the practice of female activism was profoundly respectable and generally puritanical. Sydney has long had strong inner-city bohemian circles, and also long traditions of Francophilia in its intellectual life, at least since the 1890s (Docker, 1974, 1991). Ideals of independence and sexual freedom were available through the Sydney Push, which flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, with their libertarian philosophy and attempts to practise a libertarian sexuality. Yet they were so focused on masculinity that ideals of female independence were scarcely available; one of their strongest adherents was probably Germaine Greer, and she left Sydney for England in 1964 (Coombs, 1996). (A feminist critique from within the Libertarians came later, inspired by the advent of Women's Liberation in 1970.) In the 1950s and 1960s, feminism consisted of a variety of formally constituted women's organizations with widely divergent politics, yet similar aspirations to moral respectability, and all lacking significant presence and influence in the academy (McKenzie, 1962; Lake, 1999). Even - or perhaps especially - those women's organizations at the extreme left of the spectrum, such as the Union of Australian Women, in which my mother was active, prided themselves on their respectability regarding it as politically important, as necessary if working class women were to be involved. With their focus on the needs of working class women and their families, these organizations had little to offer a rising generation of university-trained women like myself. In such a situation, the world of books became paramount. Reading was a way of thinking about alternatives. Autobiographies and novels, as Mikhail Bakhtin suggests, can be a focus for such ruminations, as they explore moments of crisis, turning points, and threshold states in their
characters' lives. In them characters are forcedto realizetheirown incommost important of all, internal freedom pletion, indeterminacy,and, (Bakhtin,1984: 56, 69-72; Curthoysand Docker,1996: 27-9). As Patricia Malcolmsonsays of the generationof young educatedwomen in the US in the 1950s, 'therewas an expandinglibraryto help them comprehend their angst and develop strategies to contend with it' (Malcolmson, 1995: 562). In their school years, she suggests, novels like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women were significant in providing strong role models; in their university years this place was taken by de Beauvoir. Indeed, de Beauvoir herself had discussed in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter how important Little Women had been to her, especially the character of Jo March, who had in the fictional world of Little Women in the 1860s sought to express her creativity, personal autonomy, and economic independence (Malcolmson, 1995: 563). Interestingly, Jenny Turner sees de Beauvoir's autobiographies as 'very much a grown-up, sceptical version of Anne of Green Gables. The optimism is the same, the making the most of bad things, the determination to see things through' (Forster and Sutton, 1989: 38). The reading habits of young educated Australian women were very similar to those of their North American and British counterparts. To the list of significant novels for teenage girls, we must add, of course, Seven Little Australians, with its key character, Judy, significantly killed at the age of 13, as if her wildness and daring could belong only to childhood, never to womanhood. We wanted to be like Jo; we wept over Judy. Once we reached our twenties, new books took the place of these beloved teenage novels. In different ways these texts identified and articulated middle-class women's rising discontent. We saw our own nightmares in Betty Friedan's evocation of American suburbia in The Feminine Mystique and Hannah Gavron's examination of the loss of freedom entailed in marriage and motherhood in modern Britain in The Captive Wife (Curthoys, 1998). De Beauvoir's The Second Sex provided a sweeping interdisciplinary analysis of women's status as secondary, the Other, the inessential, the less than human, and many women have since written and spoken about the devastating impact the book had on them when they first read it (Friedan, 1985; Wenzel, 1986; Forster and Sutton, 1989). Though we often did not realize it then, The Second Sex was a major influence on key American feminist texts of the 1960s and early 1970s: two of them, Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, acknowledged de Beauvoir, and the third, Kate Millett's Sexual Politics could well have done.4 Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch had an equally radical impact (Bulbeck, 1997; McGrath, 1999). But for many women, as their worldwide sales indicated, it was de Beauvoir's autobiographies and novels which more than any other texts
1I
to the narrowoptions indicatedthat it was possibleto forge an alternative then facingwomen, and to live accordingto a differentconceptionof femininity, intellectuality, independence, sexuality and friendship. They offered,says ElizabethFallaize,'a femalestory which is both emblematic in its account of a twentieth-century woman's bid for freedom, and yet
exceptional, since so few women have publicly chronicled their lives in this
<
c
way' (Fallaize,1998: 11). In a book lengthstudy,TorilMoi concludedon a similarnote, that de Beauvoirhad 'opened the way for women to be and as women' (Moi, 1994: taken seriously- and loved - as intellectuals 256). Yet how could de Beauvoir's world relate to our world, Australianuniversitystudentand graduatelife in the 1960s?We, who had neverbeento I had nevermet Paris,could barelyimaginethe cafe societyshe described. I had to who life there in who been could describe Paris, anyone, think, to becomecosmoany kind of way at all. Our life, in a port city struggling was one of in shared Chinese households, restaurants, politan, eating in small a number of on hotels, living the edge drinking woman-friendly of the SydneyPush,involvementin intensepoliticalactivitysuch as opposition to the war in Vietnam,studyingfor examinations,or workingon a thesis. So the Parisevoked by de Beauvoirwas at once somewhatlike our own society,and yet so very differentfrom it. We did not 'take a cup of chocolateat La Coupole',or drinkdecentcoffee, or frequentthe samecafe day afterday. For us travelabroadwas not a summerholiday,but meant As Ros going away for a yearat least,givingup one'sordinarylife entirely. Pesmanhas shown, manywomen (morethan the men)did go, some never to return(Pesman,1996). Somehad alreadydiscovered de Beauvoir: Marone of these recalls that when she was a garet Walters, young women, student in Australiain about 1960 she read The Mandarins,and was immenselyaffectedby it. A few yearslater,in Britain,she discoveredThe SecondSex: 'it struckme', she says, as do so many others 'with the force of genuine revelation'(Walters,1976: 351; see also Forsterand Sutton, 1989: 44). I was unawareof it at the time, but in respondingso stronglyto the autoI was not alone. As Catharine Brosmanwrites: biographies,
To many readers,the volumesin which Beauvoirspeaksdirectlyof herself,in the personal mode, are the most appealing.Translatedinto numerouslanguages,the four volumesof her memoirshave from the beginningattracteda largeaudience. 1991: 134) (Brosman,
In an intriguing book, Daughtersof de Beauvoir,publishedafterherdeath, KateMillettwriteswittily of de Beauvoir's influence: she 'givestwo things
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,
o
| ec
t-
to other women. One is a sense of example.There she is in Paris,living this life. She'sthe brave,independent spirit,she'swrit largewhat I would like to be, herein Podunk'.'And the otherthing',Millettwent on, 'is that she gives a woman'slife a sense of adventure.She brokea lot of rules ... In every respect she defied convention, all the way along' (Forsterand relatesthe autobiographies to herown life Sutton,1989: 29). JennyTurner in Aberdeenand Edinburgh, in very similartermsto those I've used here, being especiallystruck by the importanceof de Beauvoir'sevocation of Parisian cafe societyfor the pursuitof publicintellectual life, and the problems of its absencein Edinburgh (Forsterand Sutton, 1989: 34). It was this feelingthat de Beauvoirhad taughtus how to live, that made so many women mournher death when it happenedin 1986. One of her Americanbiographers, MargaretSimon,wrote: 'It makesme cry to think of her again; I wish she could have lived forever' (Simons, 1986: 205). MargePiercydescribesher tremendous feelingof loss: 'therewould be no more work, no more volumes of the autobiography; a conversationthat had gone on in my headfromthe time I was twentyyearsold was silenced' (Forster and Sutton, 1989: 122). Feminists from all over the world attended the funeral, and for years afterwardscontinued to put fresh flowers, and notes saying things like 'Simone,we will never forget you', on her grave (Forsterand Sutton, 1989: 129). Karen Vintges, in her interesting study Philosophy as Passion points out that this widespreadreading of de Beauvoiras an exemplar of the self-determiningintellectual woman was in accord with de Beauvoir's own expressed intentions: she wanted to be an exemplary woman, wanted to prove a woman could live as subject, wanted 'to give us an image that had formerlybeen inconceivable:a woman who lives a successful life as intellectualand who experiencesherselfpositively as both woman and intellectual'(Vintges, 1996: 114). In other words, she was creatingin her texts, before our eyes, as Vintgessays, her own 'concrete, elaboratedarts of living'. This is not to say de Beauvoirwanted other women to be like her. She stressedher own singularityfar too much for that. In The Prime of Life she wrote that her main purposehad been to 'isolate and identify my own particularbrand of femininity' (de Beauvoir, 1962: 291). But she saw a focus on her own life as a way of addressing other people with their singular lives. As she put it, 'writing about myselfis the most appropriate way of talkingto othersabout themselves' in 1996: I think she achieved her aim, writing 119). (quoted Vintges, about her life in a way that enabled the rest of us to think differently about what our own life might be. Millions of women aroundthe world did indeedread her as talkingto them about their lives throughthe story of her own.
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z Readingde Beauvoirnow therehavealso beenmanyfeminist Yet for all this talk of inspiration,
critics.In herevocationof a life, of cultivatingan art of the self, she risked ? and receivedenormous censure, especiallyin her own country.A great manywords have been writtencriticizingde Beauvoirfrom a late twenti- z eth-centuryfeminist perspective.She failed to recognizesufficientlythe A importanceof differencesbetweenwomen; she had a male conceptionof women'sbodies and sexuality;she did not envisagea collectivewomen's m the oppressionshe observed- in Juliet i movementas a meansof redressing Mitchell'swords, she 'failsnoticeablyto projecta convincingimageof the : future' (Mitchell: 1971: 82). The Second Sex, in particular,has been sexual its claimthat thereis a universal attackedfor its 'falseuniversalism', The women and men 1991: between 72). (Pilardi, hostilityto asymmetry has been explored by her work, from both feministsand anti-feminists, the fact TorilMoi, who notes 'the strikinghostilityof Beauvoircriticism: number of that there is a surprisingly sarcastic,sarcondescending, high donic or dismissiveaccounts'(Moi, 1994: 74). Hostile feministreadings of the autobiographies tend to see them (and I find this very curious)as a woman who loses her freedomand autonomyfor the sake of depicting her relationshipto a man, Sartre.As Brosmansuggests,the result of her perceiveddeferenceto Sartreis that 'to many recentfeminists,Beauvoiris only half way one of theirs,perhapseven not at all' (Brosman,1991: 33). EllenWillis is quite typical in concludingthat 'de Beauvoirwas no more able than the most traditionalhousewifeto transcendor circumvent male her involved its own of set tradesacrifices, supremacy; path complicated offs, and illusions'(Willis,1992: 162-3). These criticismshave had an effect. And times have changed.Simonede Beauvoir's work and influenceendures,but less importantly. While The Second Sex endures as a classic feminist text (though read typically in extractratherthan the whole text), the autobiographies appearto be not nearlyso well readtoday.In Australia,they seem to be virtuallyunknown to young women. This is not surprising. I don't think books such as The Primeof Life and Forceof Circumstance can have the samemeaningnow as they did in the 1960s and 1970s, for so much has changed.What was new and scarcelyimaginablethen is being lived everyday in all its messy detail by a multitudeof women. The successesof the women'smovement have, perhaps,made these texts obsolete. Yet there have been feminist failurestoo, and it is in dealing with these that perhaps de Beauvoir will continue to be important. From both without and within, sharpcritiqueshave been made of the key concepts of 'second-wavefeminism',especiallynotions of 'sisterhood','women's The conceptof 'gender'remains,but seems 5 oppression',and 'patriarchy'.
-
1
A
and cross-cultural critiques have deconstructed the category 'woman' into a thousand fragments, and Spivak's notion of 'strategic essentialism' fails to rescue it as a tool for analysis. The long-standing debate between universalist ideals and the seeking of equality on the one hand, and a philosophy of difference on the other, remains unresolved and increasingly unenlightening. Investigations of sexuality and the body are an exciting area of scholarship, but they now owe less than ever to a distinctively feminist analysis. Specifically feminist ideas seem to be temporarily exhausted. In this context of epochal ennui, a re-reading of de Beauvoir with a more sympathetic eye may suggest some new lines of enquiry. With her emphasis on women's complicity in their own fate and history, even while recognizing the force of sexual inequality, she returns us, I think, to problems of individual responsibility and historical agency. She gives concrete illustration of Foucault's idea of an elaboration of the arts, or care of the self. She returns us to our most basic questions: freedom and responsibility, love and sexuality, intellectual and economic independence. Perhaps the adventure of her life, and of the feminism it helped inspire, is not over yet.
Notes
Ann Curthoysis ManningClarkProfessorof History at the Australian National Canberra. She writes about feminism,race relations,postwarpolitical University, history,journalismand popularculture,nationalidentity,and historicalwriting. e-mail:Ann.Curthoys@anu.edu.au 1 In Australia alonetherehave beenno fewerthan four separate held conferences, in severalcapitalcities during1999. This articleis basedon a paperwrittenfor the conference in Melbourne,organizedby ChipsSowerwine andJoy Damousi, and held by the HistoryDepartment and Women'sStudies,at the University of 13 1999. thanks to and also to Liaufor Melbourne, August them, My Stephanie researchassistance,and John Dockerfor discussionof variousdrafts. 2 Colin Nettlebeckat the University of Melbourneis conductinga detailedstudy of her relationship with jazz, and delivereda paperon this at the Universityof Melbourneconference mentionedabove. 3 My thanksto SylviaLawsonfor helpingme solve this puzzle.Her book, How Simonede BeauvoirDied in Australia,is due to be publishedin 2000. 4 BettyFriedanlater visitedSimonede Beauvoirin Paris,and reportedthe event in her book It Changedmy Life. She now found de Beauvoircold and aloof, unableto identifywith 'ordinary women'and saw heras someonewho 'haslived .. dependence man (Friedan,1985: 305, 306). Sexual a whole life in ... upon a man'
acknowledges, I|z 'I owe a great s Beauvoir pointedout to Millettand Millettherselflaterindicated: debtto TheSecondSex. I couldn'thavewrittenSexualPoliticswithoutit' (Forster 0 Firestone's The Dialecticof Sex: The Casefor and Sutton,1989: 22). Shulamith who endured'. g 'to Simonede Beauvoir, Feminist Revolution (1970) was dedicated
z -4 C
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Adventures of Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir's Autobiographies, Women's Liberation, and Self-Fashioning Author(s): Ann Curthoys Source: Feminist Review,

Women's Simonede Beauvoir's and Liberation, Autobiographies, Self-Fashioning

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