What is the main message of Becoming Beauvoir?

Becoming Beauvoir explores the life and ideas of Simone de Beauvoir, revealing her influential role in shaping feminist philosophy.

How long does it take to read Becoming Beauvoir?

The reading time for Becoming Beauvoir varies, but it typically takes several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Is Becoming Beauvoir a good book? Is it worth reading?

Becoming Beauvoir is a must-read for anyone interested in feminist philosophy. It offers profound insights into the life and work of Simone de Beauvoir.

Who is the author of Becoming Beauvoir?

Kate Kirkpatrick is the author of Becoming Beauvoir .

Becoming Beauvoir Summary of Key Ideas and Review

Name: Becoming Beauvoir
Rating: 4.4 (113 reviews)
Author: Kate Kirkpatrick

Introduction

What’s in it for me?

In her groundbreaking work, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir anatomized many of the injustices that women have suffered over the centuries. The book was published in 1949, and it sparked countless important conversations, which played out across universities, on television, and in the pages of newspapers. It also inspired a generation of second-wave feminists.

But Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical work has often been dismissed as relying too heavily on the ideas of her lifelong partner, the philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. For decades, her status as a major thinker has been undermined by people eager to discount the work of an intellectual woman.

In these blinks, you’ll discover that Beauvoir’s work was as distinctive and original as her famous partner’s. You’ll see how their ideas differed, and how their relationship, though important, wasn’t the only thing going on in Beauvoir’s life. Most importantly, you’ll learn exactly where Beauvoir’s ideas came from and how they developed over time.

In these blinks, you’ll also learn

how religion shaped Beauvoir’s worldview;
which novel she loved most as a child; and
that she considered Sartre extremely ugly, at first.

Key idea 1 of 8

Simone de Beauvoir has been misrepresented all her life.

If you’re familiar with French philosophy, it’s likely that you’ll be able to conjure a mental image of Simone de Beauvoir. There she is, elegantly dressed, sitting at one of her favorite cafés in Montparnasse, with a pot of coffee and her notebook. And always accompanied by Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher, and her lifelong friend and partner.

In fact, it’s almost impossible to imagine one without the other. Beauvoir is often portrayed as being the slightly lesser figure in the partnership – not quite as self-assured, not quite as brilliant. This impression colored the way that she was seen throughout her life. It also couldn’t be further from the truth.

The key message here is: Simone de Beauvoir has been misrepresented all her life.

Since her emergence on the intellectual scene, Beauvoir has been misrepresented. The time in which she lived is largely to blame. During the twentieth century, many couldn’t imagine a woman who was independent – free in both thought and deed. This meant that important facts about her life were twisted and biographers and book reviewers turned a blind eye to her ideas.

But, in recent years, more facts have come to light that challenge this idea of Beauvoir. Her student journals, previously unpublished, and a number of letters she wrote to other men show that she was not merely a submissive figure in her relationship.

Although Jean-Paul Sartre was a powerful influence on her work, Beauvoir had already discussed many ideas in her journals that were later attributed to Sartre. In fact, many of the philosophical ideas contained in Being and Nothingness, Sartre’s 1943 book, were explored by Beauvoir before its publication. For instance, her early distinction between being “for myself” and being “for others” is strikingly similar to a distinction drawn by Sartre in his book.

And then there are her letters to other men, which reveal that her romantic devotion to Sartre was far from complete. He was her great intellectual partner, but by no means the main romantic affair in her life. In fact, the only man she ever referred to with the affectionate tu, was the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, with whom she lived from 1952 to 1959.

Despite these truths, society continued to misrepresent her and belittle her ideas. In France, she was nicknamed “Notre Dame de Sartre,” our lady of Sartre. And the New Yorker described her, reductively, as “the prettiest Existentialist you ever saw.”

Why was she treated this way? Well, she was a woman with a formidable intellect and a powerful sense of independence. That was simply unacceptable.

Key idea 2 of 8

The seeds of Beauvoir’s philosophy were present even in childhood.

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris, in 1908, to Georges and Francois Beauvoir. As the child of an upper-middle-class family, Simone loved to explore her family’s country estates, studying the natural world as she did so.

Her parents sent her to a prestigious convent school. There she became a precocious student, leading her father to proudly exclaim: “Simone thinks like a man!” It was during these early years that the foundations of her ideas were laid.

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Key idea 3 of 8

Beauvoir’s relationship with faith shaped her philosophy.

As a child, Simone de Beauvoir would arise early in the morning and watch the natural world waking up at her family's country estate. She saw it all as the marvelous workings of God.

During her early life, she attended mass three times a week, and kept a notebook to record what she called “saintly resolutions.” For a while, she even considered becoming a nun. But things changed when she entered her teens. The world began to appear less perfect to her, and her mind was flooded with doubt.

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Key idea 4 of 8

An experience in the summer of 1926 had a lasting influence on Beauvoir’s philosophy.

A single lifetime may contain many transformative events: accidents, chance encounters, sudden windfalls. If your life didn’t contain such fateful moments, it might have unfolded completely differently.

For Simone de Beauvoir, the life-changing event came in the summer of 1926. She was 18, and she and her aunt had traveled to Lourdes, a Catholic pilgrimage site.

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Key idea 5 of 8

Simone de Beauvoir’s early encounter with Sartre was significant, but not earthshaking.

After excelling at school, Simone de Beauvoir embarked on a course of higher education. She passed her baccalaureate exams in philosophy and math, before starting her degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne.

She finished in 1928, and then began preparing for the notoriously difficult agrégation exam, which would allow her to teach. It was during this time, at the elite École Normale Supérieure, that she met Jean-Paul Sartre. He was studying for the same exam. However, their early meeting wasn’t quite as momentous as many people think.

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Key idea 6 of 8

Beauvoir’s open relationship with Sartre, though important to her, stirred complex feelings and had a dark side.

In 1929, shortly after they became romantically involved, Sartre and Beauvoir spent time together on her family estate at Meyrignac. Wandering through the summer meadows, they cemented their bond. They talked constantly, about life, literature, and philosophy. They also discussed the kind of life that they’d like to live together.

It was during this enchanting time that they decided on the terms of their relationship. They would have an open one, with many “contingent loves.”

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Key idea 7 of 8

Beauvoir disagreed with a key facet of Sartre’s philosophy.

In 1943, Sartre published the philosophical work that secured his place as a renowned French intellectual: Being and Nothingness. This was his thesis in support of existentialism.

Although the pair had long conversations about their shared ideas on existentialism, there was a claim in Sartre’s book that Beauvoir disagreed with. This disagreement would go on to shape her own work significantly.

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Key idea 8 of 8

The question of an ethical life is what defined Beauvoir’s life and work.

Beauvoir’s philosophy was beginning to move away from Sartre’s on the question of ethics. In fact, in the whole of Being and Nothingness, Sartre only had a few short, inconclusive pages on an ethical life. While freedom itself was important to him, he wasn’t particularly certain on what to do with that freedom.

For instance, Sartre complained that some people don’t differentiate between getting drunk in their room and becoming a world leader. But he wasn’t able to explain why the difference between those two things matters. Beauvoir, on the other hand, could.

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