Ambivalence romanesque et témoignage autobiographique : enjeux de la formation féminine chez Simone de Beauvoir

Abstract

For Simone de Beauvoir, the question of female formation is inseparable from a reflection on the literary forms that convey it. In the most properly novelistic component of her work, the construction of the identity of various female characters remains an unfinished process: from L'Invitée (1943) to La Femme rompue (1967), via Les Mandarins (1954), the demand for freedom from family and social constraints is often disrupted by a parallel tension towards bad faith. Female apprenticeship, on the other hand, becomes fundamental to understanding the formal and thematic organisation of the autobiographical project, and in particular of Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958). Through the narrative of her childhood and adolescence, Beauvoir adopts an explicitly oriented strategy here, aimed at illustrating the formative journey that enabled her to become one of the most important writers of her generation. This has decisive consequences for the form of the text itself, insofar as, in addition to respecting the pact of truth, there is a desire to bear witness and a performative aim.

Keywords

• ambivalence
• Beauvoir (Simone de)
• Bildungsroman
• testimony
• bad faith
• learning