Daughters of de Beauvoir - ACE182.4

Newsfilm of the Liberation of Paris. De Beauvoir’s description of her "good fortune" in reality living up to expectation. Film of Sartre and of Juliette Greco. Commentary talks about the Existentialist movement. De Beauvoir and Sartre leaving their house. Commentary says that the success of de Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay (L'Invitée, 1943), enabled her to give up teaching and concentrate on her writing. Marge Piercy, Writer, talking about dressing like Juliette Greco which was both "aesthetically satisfying [and] dirt cheap". Photograph of her with her French husband; his conventional ideas inhibited her, and reading The Second Sex gave her a vocabulary to articulate and analyse her thoughts. Piercy talking about discovering in the autobiographies that de Beauvoir seemed able to retain her sense of integrity without giving up her life as a woman. She talks about her own intellectual and emotional life, and about de Beauvoir’s relationship with Sartre. Description of The Mandarins (Les Mandarins, 1954); photographs of de Beauvoir with Nelson Algren and with Sartre. Her autobiography on the possibility of "reconciliation between fidelity and freedom". Eva Figes, Writer, considers that de Beauvoir and Sartre’s relationship was not an equal one; though de Beauvoir may suggest that "a free and equal relationship" is possible, in her case it was not so. Photograph of Figes with her family. She started writing after her marriage broke up, wanting to be politically involved, to write literary criticism, to be "engaged"; she re-read The Second Sex but found that it was no help: it was old-fashioned, ambivalent about, and didn’t discuss major debating points concerning female sexuality, and starting from accepted norms rather than turning arguments on their head. Schoolgirls in class; library. De Beauvoir’s description of researching and writing The Second Sex, its reception by the public, and the insulting language used about her. Pegg talks feeling depressed and panicked by her situation and, through reading The Second Sex, realising that she was not unique, that most women live their lives through men who are in the "outside" world. She decided to go to university, despite resistance from her husband, felt guilty, and had to juggle home life and study. She reads de Beauvoir’s words on the role of wife/cook/housekeeper. Pegg believes that, though de Beauvoir was Sartre’s "other", her work will endure longer than his.