'La Littérature Apparaît Lorsque Quelque Chose Dans La Vie Se Dérègle ...': Simone De Beauvoir's Search for Universal Meaning Through Writing the Self

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir's life and literary production are a testament to the idea that literature emerges when something in life goes slightly adrift. Writing served many functions for Beauvoir, but it was an activity to which she always turned in order to understand her social and historical milieu, as well as more personal obstacles. She often grappled with her place in the world, thus the relationship between individual experience and universal reality was one of her central preoccupations. This paper investigates how literature and writing were a way for Beauvoir to understand how her individual experience related to other consciousnesses and to a larger historical reality. I also examine how she deals with the individual's (including her own) independence in the face of these universal conditions. An analysis of narrative techniques in three of her novels (L'Invitée, Le Sang des autres, and Les Belles Images) will also be important in understanding how characters negotiate their relationship with others and with their own historicity. An examination of both her autobiographical writings and her novels will demonstrate how engagement with notions like the existence of others and the movement of History were, for Beauvoir, pathways to self-knowledge and, ultimately, transcendence.