Simone de Beauvoir

The Blood of Others

Marion

When I used the word 'revolution' to her, she flushed, You're only a child! You don't know what you're saying!" I tried to argue but she stopped me, her body shaken with passionate horror. It was senseless to try to change anything in the world or in life: things were bad enough, even if one did not meddle with them.

Everything that her heart and her mind condemned she rapidly defended - my father, marriage, capitalism. Because the wrong lay not in the institutions, but in the depths of our being, we must huddle in a corner and make ourselves as small as possible.

Better to accept everything, than to make an abortive effort, doomed in advance to failure! That prudence!

Jean Blomart, a French resistance leader against the German forces of occupation, waits throughout an endless night for his wounded lover to die.

Read this for my Simone de Beauvoir class. Deeply existential, what does it mean to be responsible for every person you’ve met? How do we recognise/justify each other’s existence? That exchange between Helene and Jean when he said “I’m fonder of you than I’ve been of anyone. But there’s too deep a misunderstanding between us. You’ve never tried to share my life, you’re only loved me for your own sake.” And she said despairingly “I want to 

Xiang

Read this for my Simone de Beauvoir class. Deeply existential, what does it mean to be responsible for every person you’ve met? How do we recognise/justify each other’s existence? That exchange between Helene and Jean when he said “I’m fonder of you than I’ve been of anyone. But there’s too deep a misunderstanding between us. You’ve never tried to share my life, you’re only loved me for your own sake.” And she said despairingly “I want to be your life.”

….!!!

Laura Mauler

Simone de Beauvoir might be one of the old school feminists, but she writes like a misogynist.

The Blood of Others

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