Simone de Beauvoir

These three long stories draw us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises. In the title story, the heroine's serenity is shattered when she learns that her husband is having an affair. In "The Age of Discretion," a successful, happily married professor finds herself increasingly distressed by her son's absorption in his young wife and her worldly values. In "The Monologue," a rich, spoiled woman, home alone on New Year's Eve, pours out a lifetime's rage and frustration in a harrowing diatribe.

The Woman Destroyed

Emily McMeans

“When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values, and it is impossible for me to examine this conviction with an objective eye.”

“This sluggishness of the heart is called indulgence and wisdom: in fact it is death settling down within you. Not yet: not now.”

Many women have felt this way when a man does something for a woman’s benefit but is committed to deriving no pleasure from it. It is hard for women, in my view, to stomach kindness that doesn’t come from an enjoyment of being kind as is so often the case in our relationships with other women. Needless to say, this line will be used often by me.

“I ought to have been grateful for his kindness: but I was not. I was hurt by his indifference.”

Macy HB

The eternal youth of the world makes me feel breathless. 

What a relief! It is so tiring to hate someone you love.

All my life it will be two o’clock in the afternoon one Tuesday in June.

The Woman Destroyed quotes

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