'Becoming a Different Me': Simone de Beauvoir on Freedom and Transatlantic Sexual Stereotypes

Sofia Ahlberg

doi:10.18573/newreadings.69

Abstract

Europe’s relationship to America in general, and France’s in particular, centers around questions of freedom and dependency. This paper compares Europe’s search for independence with America’s ideology of freedom as articulated through today’s sexualised transatlantic rhetoric. I examine Simone de Beauvoir’s observations that differences in sexual relations and gender constructions are crucially linked to constitutional and cultural notions of liberty. Her portrayal of male disempowerment in the novel The Mandarins contrasts an intimidating American masculinity with its counterpart in Europe. European masculinity has been constructed as soft and peace loving, while its American counterpart is perceived as emboldened and tough. The ‘War on Terror’, as noted by Timothy Garton Ash and others, has reintroduced the sexual imagery into the verbal abuse hurled over the Atlantic. Europe’s tendency to deﬁne itself against America lends itself to revealing conclusions regarding de Beauvoir’s inability to dismantle cultural stereotypes about the ‘New World’ of possibility and abundance.

Highlights

Europe’s relationship to America in general, and France’s in particular, centers around questions of freedom and dependency
In particular France’s search for cultural autonomy in an increasingly Americanised world converges with debates regarding the limits of liberty in a nation that constitutionally and culturally celebrates its freedom
Often overlooked in this discussion are the opinions expressed by the Left Bank existentialists, whose views on the constraints of freedom were shaped by their attitudes to America

Summary

Into the Jars of Literary History

France has often objected to an American superpower because of the implications for French culture and the French language. Interesting in this respect, is that her focus is on male desires and wish-fulfilment, rather than on female consumption This is not to say, that Simone de Beauvoir herself was immune to this Jekyll and Hyde relationship, transposing her views on independence and freedom onto America as a way of coming to terms with her own limitations as an intellectual in France at the time. Even the way Dubreuilh is protective about France, wishing to enter politics as a way of saving his country from the clutches of America, signals a fearful possessiveness He continues to reject any affiliation with America, even if he is as repulsed by the news of Soviet labour camps as his increasingly estranged friend Henri Perron. What makes the transatlantic relationship at the time so complex, is the genuine appeal of the American dream of freedom in Europe, especially when symbolically exported in its most feminine and seductive form

The Lolita Syndrome

Becoming a Different Me