Presentation on the life and works of Simone de Beauvoir at Sinclair Community College.

2. “Life is occupied in both perpetuating
itself and surpassing itself. If all it does is
maintain itself, then living in only not
dying.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir

3. Formative Years
Born on Jan 9, 1908, de
Beauvoir spent all but five
years of her life in the
Montparnasse district of
Paris, France. She was
intellectually precocious
from a young age, fueled by
her father’s
encouragement: he
reportedly would boast,
“Simone thinks like a
man!(Bair, p. 60)
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Betrand de Beavoir
Source: Deirdre Bair. Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. Touchstone; 1st Touchstone Ed
edition (August 15, 1991)

4. De Beauvoir was devout Catholic until
her adolescence when she lost faith,
wish she described as both freeing and
terrifying . She wrote, “Alone: for the
first time I understood the terrible
significance of that word. Alone:
without witness, without anyone to
speak to, without refuge (1174).”
A Loss of Faith

5. After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics
and philosophy in 1925, she studied mathematics at
the Institut Catholique and literature/languages at the
Institut Sainte-Marie. She then studied philosophy at
the Sorbonne (1174).

6. Why Simone de Beauvoir became a philosopher, in her
own words:
“It went straight to
essentials….I had always
wanted to know everything;
philosophy would allow me to
satisfy this desire, for it aimed
at total reality.” *
*Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 158.

7. de Beauvoir key Philosophy points:
•Western Marxist- usually applied to theorists who downplay
the dominance of economic analysis, concerning themselves
instead with cultural and philosophical areas of Marxism.
•Phenomenology- a school of philosophy that emphasizes the
study of conscious experience. Started in early 20th Century in
Germany and spread through the rest of Europe and the U.S.

8. Sartre and de Beauvoir, circa 1929.

10. Bianca Lamblin (maiden: Bienenfeld) was a
17-year-old student of de Beauvoir and the
two, along with Sartre, began a sexual
relationship in 1939 that lasted until the end of
1940. de Beauvoir, who was 29 at the time, was
dismissed from her position as professor. For
the rest of her life de Beauvoir supported her
self by her own writings (source: Publisher’s
Weekly, 1996).
A Philosophical Sex Scandal
Source: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-55553-
251-2
de Beauvoir and Sartre, circa 1939.

11. “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.”~ Simone de
Beauvoir

13. The Second Sex, published in French in
1949 and translated into English in 1953,
set out to establish a feminist
existentialism that called for a moral
revolution. As an existentialist, Beauvoir
believed that existence precedes essence;
in other words, one is not born a woman,
but becomes one. Her analysis focuses
on the social construction of Woman as
the quintessential fundamental to the
oppression and stratification of women.
Further, she asserts that women are in
great part to blame for this oppression,
as they are just as capable as men of
making choices that could elevate their
status, but at that point in time had
chosen no to.
First
Edition
Cover
English
Translation
Cover

14. “FOR a long time I have hesitated to write a book
on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to
women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been
spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps
we should say no more about it. It is still talked
about, however, for the voluminous nonsense
uttered during the last century seems to have done
little to illuminate the problem. After all, is there a
problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women,
really?...One wonders if women still exist, if they
will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that
they should, what place they occupy in this world,
what their place should be.”
de Beauvoir Introduction:

15. I Need A Miracle…
• Equality!!!
– United Nations says women are gaining equal
rights as men all across the world
• Leader!!!!
– Not a male, female, or hermaphrodite
• What about the future?
– Future, potential female leaders of tomorrow,
where and how will they stand for the
progression of the female?
Bernie Patterson

16. There’s more to life..
• Woman’s conflict:
– What are the available roads towards happiness/
liberty for women?
• Are they blocked?
• Is there a longer route?
– What She wants vs. What “THEY” want
– A need for unity, not in groups, but as a whole
• Fear of going against “The Man”
Bernie Patterson

17. “Beauvoir's challenge to the philosophical status quo was part of an
evolving movement. Her challenge to the patriarchal status quo was
more dramatic. It was an event. Not at first, however, for at its
publication The Second Sex was regarded more as an affront to sexual
decency than a political indictment of patriarchy or a
phenomenological account of the meaning of “woman.”
The women who came to be known as second wave feminists
understood what Beauvoir's first readers missed. It was not sexual
decency that was being attacked but patriarchal indecency that was
on trial (Bergoffen, 2004).”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/
The Second Sex Response:

18. "Women are not a minority like the American Negroes or
the Jews; There are as many women as men on earth."
"They have gained only what men have been willing to
grant; they have taken nothing, they have only received."
"They have no past, no history, no religion of their own;
and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as
that of the proletariat."
"Woman has always been man's dependent, if not his
slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in
equality."
Important de Beauvoir Quotes:
Lisa Weber

19. “Migrant Mother”
•One of a series of photographs that
Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens
Thompson and her children in February
or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California.
•Lange was concluding a month's trip
photographing migratory farm labor
around the state for what was then the
Resettlement Administration.
•In 1960, Lange gave this account of the
experience: I saw and approached the
hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn
by a magnet…She told me her age, that
she was thirty-two. She said that they had
been living on frozen vegetables from the
surrounding fields, and birds that the
children killed. She had just sold the tires
from her car to buy food. ..”
(From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).
Lisa Weber

21. Gerassi: It’s now about twenty-five years since The
Second Sex was published. Many people, especially in
America, consider it the beginning of the contemporary
feminist movement. Would you ...
Beauvoir: I don’t think so. The current feminist
movement, which really started about five or six years ago,
did not really know the book. Then, as the movement
grew, some of the leaders took from it some of their
theoretical basis. But The Second Sex in no way launched
the feminist movement. Most of the women who became
very active in the movement were much too young in
1949-50, when the book came out, to be influenced by it.
Source: Gerassi, John. Interviews with de Beauvoir.
Society, Jan-Feb. 1976. 1995 by Transaction Publishers. http://www.marxists.org

22. The Simone de Beauvoir Award was established in honor and memory of this
Feminist theorist and writer. Since 2008, on the 9th of January, the birthday
of Simone de Beauvoir, the award is given to a remarkable personality whose
courage and thoughts are examples for everybody, in the spirit of Simone de
Beauvoir who wrote: "The ultimate end, for which human beings should aim,
is liberty, the only capable [thing], to establish every end on."[
The Simone de Beauvoir Award
http://www.institutfrancais.com/pre/medias/dynamic/communique/93/2170.pdf

24. In 2006, the city of Paris commissioned a sophisticated footbridge
across the Seine River in her honor and named it Passerelle
Simone-de-Beauvoir.

25. “Life isn't about
finding yourself. Life
is about creating
yourself.”
~ Simone de Beauvoir