A Very Easy Death

Simone de Beauvoir is both the author of the memoir and a character within it, as she self-consciously examines the representation of herself and the alteration of her feelings over time. Beauvoir was born in 1908 in Paris. She was an intellectually precocious child in whom her mother encouraged a deep Catholic faith. Before her teenage years her relationship with her mother was loving. At 14, however, Beauvoir became an atheist, opening a rift between herself and her mother. As she grew into adulthood. Beauvoir grew to disdain her mother’s tyranny, faith, and bourgeois values. Nevertheless, Beauvoir attended Catholic school until she was 17. With no dowry to secure a marriage and fund her life, Beauvoir faced the prospect of having to support herself. Intellectually precocious and long interested in teaching, she studied philosophy and, at 21, became the youngest person ever to pass the national philosophy exam, securing her a position as a teacher. It was around this time that she met Jean-Paul Sartre, who would become her life partner; around this time her beloved school friend Zaza died. Her death devastated Beauvoir and provoked her later critiques of the bourgeois treatment of women (she believed Zaza died of a broken heart after being forced into an arranged marriage).