Simone de Beauvoir, du Deuxième sexe à La Vieillesse : quand l’intime gagne le politique

Abstract

Philosophical essays, Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) and La Vieillesse (1970) have a political impact. Yet, even if there are just hints of private life in the first essay, Beauvoir explicitely confides her own experience in the second one. Between 1949 and 1970, the writer’s situation, as well as her writing evolved: she wrote four autobiographies. The second essay is close to an autobiography with a narrow intertextuality revealing a constant dialectic between her unique private experience and the universal and political impact she wants to confer on her work.

Keywords

• Simone de Beauvoir
• private experience
• politics
• autobiography
• essay