Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir

First published:Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, 1958 (English translation, 1959)

Type of work: Autobiography

Time of work: 1908-1929

Locale: Paris

Principal Personages:

• Simone de Beauvoir, the author
• Georges de Beauvoir, her father
• Francoise de Beauvoir, her mother
• Elizabeth (Zaza) Mabille, her friend
• Jacques Laiguillon, her cousin
• Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher, her lifelong friend

Form and Content

From 1956 to 1958, Simone de Beauvoir composed the first of a series of autobiographical volumes that covered the course of her life. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter dealt with her childhood and youth to the age of twenty-one; it was followed by La Force de l’age in 1960 (The Prime of Life, 1962), which dealt with her life from 1929 to 1944, La Force des choses in 1963 (Force of Circumstance, 1964), which brought her life up to the date of publication, and a final volume, a summary, Tout compte fait (1972; All Said and Done, 1974), which differed from the previous three in that it was organized thematically rather than chronologically. These autobiographical writings are among de Beauvoir’s finest achievements. Her reconstructions of her life, even after consultations with cautious friends, retain a “disarming candor” that has led some critics to describe her as a modern Montaigne. Like the sixteenth century philosopher, she is a writer whose ability to combine introspective analysis with philosophical consideration has enabled her to produce “a truthful account of a life that could, and should, help others” (as Konrad Bieber claims) to understand themselves as well as some of the dominant social and political movements of the twentieth century.

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter reaches as much as fifty years back in time from the moment of its production. To compose the work, de Beauvoir was directed by a diary which she had begun as a young girl, fortified by a prodigious memory for detail which she combined with careful historical research, and guided by one of her most basic principles, the idea that one must be ruthlessly accurate, keenly analytic, and as dispassionate as possible about the self. In the first volume of her memoirs, she relates how her most esteemed faculty, her mind, was formed, and how her distinct sensibility developed. The course she charts is from a comfortable, sheltered Catholic childhood in the early days of the twentieth century, la belle epoque of peace and serenity (which was actually a continuation of nineteenth century norms and assumptions), toward the emergence of a young woman who was intellectually self-confident, ready for pioneer political activity, committed to a life of writing, and disdainful of most social institutions and conventions.

The volume is divided into four books, the first an attempt to recapture the instinctive and impulsive young child’s responses and reactions to the world, the second devoted to an understanding of the psychology of her parents and their world, the third tracing the uncertainty and doubt she felt as she began to reject the protective, pampered life for which her family had prepared her, and the fourth, in which she reaches adulthood and begins to share the intellectual and artistic life of some of the most influential people of the twentieth century. The structure of the book is like an ever-widening spiral from the compact realm of the self-centered child to the amorphous universe of the questioning adult. Through this pattern, an event is often analyzed and considered for all of its ramifications, then temporarily put aside, and later recollected in a larger, still-relevant context. The central themes of the work—individual growth and personal freedom, the responsibility of the artist to her work and of a person to her society, the flow of historical change, the nature of love and its relationship to a productive life—are all developed from an intensely personal perspective. The severe tone of de Beauvoir’s voice is never modified in order to charm the reader. The intensity of the writing matches the intensity of the mind of the author, and the evocative power of de Beauvoir’s prose has an appeal that derives from directness, honesty, and an uncompromising confidence in the reader’s ability to match the writer’s seriousness. This voice risked the condemnation of antagonist commentators, but succeeded in drawing responses such as Judith Okely’s avowal, “She was our mother, our sister and something of ourselves.”

Critical Context

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is not only a vivid self-portrait but also a critical evaluation of French society during a period of transition. In the process of becoming the woman who could work for artistic and social freedom, de Beauvoir emphasizes her mental maturation, offering not only a very detailed and systematic description of the development of her mind but also an analytic explanation of her relationship to the basic propositions of the most brilliant French theoretical savants. Her friends were the precursors of Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and the like, and her autobiographical writing is crucial to an understanding of the mind-forged power of the Left Bank activists who set the agenda for philosophical discourse until at least the 1960’s.

In addition, Simone de Beauvoir’s memoir places the foundations for the visionary feminist thinking of her middle years. The Second Sex was not only revolutionary in its examination of women in Western society but also a book which, as Carole Ascher points out, “made it all right” for a woman “to be an intellectual.” Judith Okely describes it as a rare example of a female chronicle of apprenticeship that shares common themes of choice and struggle with such familiar male autobiographical novels as D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913), James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (1934). “If the autobiography is sufficiently probing,” Okely maintains, “it demands that the reader probe her own past.” For readers of both sexes, the universality of individual experience expressed with singular eloquence remains as de Beauvoir’s essential literary legacy.

Bibliography

Bair, Deirdre. Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. New York: Summit Books, 1990. An informative biography based on extensive interviews with Simone de Beauvoir and with many of her contemporaries. Carefully documented, with great attention to detail, the book offers an indispensable background and a comprehensive context for a reading of Beauvoir’s work. Excellent notes, a useful index, and sixteen pages of photographs.

Brosman, Catharine Savage. Simone de Beauvoir Revisited. Boston: Twayne, 1991. An introduction to Simone de Beauvoir’s thought and an assessment of her lasting contributions to philosophy and literature. The book is an update of Konrad Bieber’s Simone de Beauvoir (1979) in the light of more recent work done on Beauvoir. A selected bibliography concentrates on studies published since 1975.

Cottrell, Robert D. Simone de Beauvoir. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975. Starting with a chapter on Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, this concise work examines Beauvoir’s philosophical and ethical positions and their evolution in the context of her writing career. A bibliography of the earlier work done on Beauvoir is included.

Hewitt, Leah D. Autobiographical Tightropes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. This book has a chapter on Beauvoir’s autobiography as a problematic female autobiography, and juxtaposes it with the autobiographical writings of Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé.

Marks, Elaine. Critical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. Twenty-seven essays on Beauvoir, some by French authors (translated into English) and others by well-known American writers and scholars such as Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Kate Millett, Gerda Lerner, and Alice Jardin, discuss various aspects of Beauvoir’s life, work, and influence.

Patterson, Yolanda Astarita. Simone de Beauvoir and the Demystification of Motherhood. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1989. In her introduction, Patterson considers American and French views of motherhood and then goes on to explore the treatment of the theme in Beauvoir’s works as well as Beauvoir’s presentation of her own mother. Includes interviews with Beauvoir and her sister Hélène. Has a good bibliography and a useful index.